Garden hacks, Gardening & Landscape

Garden Hacks For Lazy Gardeners

Here are some gardening hacks to use in your garden.

Composting tips

Adding coffee grounds to the soil in your garden is a great way to enrich it with nitrogen, which encourages microorganism growth in the soil. Using coffee grounds seems to deter snails and slugs that may cause damage to your plants.

Egg shells can be a great way to deter slugs from feeding on your vegetables plants. Simply put cracked egg shells at the base of your plants, and they will not want to crawl over the sharp shells.

A great way to discourage pests from getting too close to your plants is to place a layer of foil around the plants. Many insects do not like metal surfaces, so this would prevent most pests from reaching the stems of your plants especially squash bores. Make sure it is shiny side up, as this will also serve as a method of reflecting the sunlight back to the plant.

If you don’t have a lot of space for a garden, it is best to create vertical growing space instead of overcrowding an area on the ground, as this hinders the growth of the vegetables that you plant. If you allow certain plants to grow upwards, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, it can also protect them from soil born pests that may stunt their growth.

How to build a pvc cucumber trellis

Make a tool holder from a terracotta pot and add abrasive sand, and mineral oil in that. It will not only hold your garden tools as you thrust them in but the sand and mineral oil mixed in it also clean and sharpen them at the same time.

When you boil or steam some vegetables on the stove top, don’t pour the water down the drain. Once the water has cooled, pour this vegetable water in your plants to fertilize them instead of wasting it. You can also do the same with your boiled egg water.

Deadhead spent flowers from your plants to promote more blooms and remove top shoots and emerging flowers of your herbs to help them have a healthy growth and prevent bolting. Also, most of the new gardeners avoid pruning their plants but it is important too and helps in rejuvenating the growth of plants.

How long do seeds last

If weeds are surfacing in your garden do this: Before you put a layer of mulch on your planting beds, cover the garden bed with newspapers and then drop a layer of mulch to smother the weeds or use old carpet for paths between the beds like I have done.

Garden Pests

Garden Pummeled by Hail

It’s such a sinking feeling to have one’s garden pummeled by hail especially for farmers who lost crops.

Anyways in a few days to a week you’ll probably get a good idea what is salvageable or not. It never looks pretty after the storm but in a few weeks, it’ll be kind of normal again.

Damaged leaves can still function, just not as well as they once did. Don’t trim them immediately. Give the plant a chance to grow new leaves and draw nutrients out of the old leaves before trimming. A half of a leaf is better than no leaf.

For tomatoes, start using a fungicide spray because their wounds and torn leaves will let fungi into their system like late blight.

With damaged flowers, you may be able to trim back the top leaves, which bore the brunt of the weather damage, to reveal less damaged leaves below.

It is a good idea to fertilize your plants, which will help them to grow new leaves. Be sure to stay on top of watering, especially any plants that were severely damaged. An addition of 2 to 3 inches of mulch will also benefit these plants.

We lost most of our fruit tree fruit to a late frost. June was non-stop rain; July brings heat and hail. How the season will finish is anyone’s guess.

Landscaping, Shade Trees and Shrubs

Creating a Garden Collection

Creating a garden starts out as an innocent pursuit. You just want a pretty patch of flower or vegetables that flows and looks beautiful at least three seasons out of four. But there is that one plant that outshines the others. It outperforms them by looking great or by being the big, bold bright spot that everyone comments on. And you start doing a little bit of research on what it really wants, because let’s be honest, you got lucky by plunking it in the right place. And the next year it is even more beautiful. And you want more. More. More. More.

You are hooked.
This is how plant collections start. At least this is how mine have started and most of them have snuck up on me. I don’t set out to have a “collection” of a specific plant, I just really like them and suddenly have a whole bunch of them (and often, less money in my bank account).

My first plant collection was viburnum shrubs. I thought there was just one. I liked it because of the blooms, leaves, and was basically pest proof (including rabbit, deer, and grasshopper). Now I have 7 varieties of the plant.

Once you decide you love a plant you start searching out different cultivars: the usual suspects you can find in your neighbor’s garden just won’t do. You search out specialty nurseries who will sell those unusual cultivars and, you hope, send you better plants than you can pick up at a local nursery. You’re really in trouble when you start buying books on a specific plant and scope out plant-specific online forums.

Other collections I have are coral bells and hostas under the shade of trees. If you know theses plants already you have an idea of the amount of varieties present in each plant.

I feel the pull of new collections, too. I’ve recently developed a fascination with tree peonies (again, a plant that requires a great deal of patience. What is with me?) The world of dwarf conifers is amazing, but it’s one I feel I really need to study before delving into because in many cases there are too many to pick from. I would love some of them bordering the walkway up to the house. There’s that whole toad lily thing that I learned last week I’m totally missing out on.