11 More Tips for the Home Garden

You guys were so enthusiastic about my quick list of gardening tips I posted last week. Thanks for that! And many of you asked for more quick bits of info to apply to your own growing spaces. So, without further ado, here’s a few more things to keep in mind for the growing season:

• Learn companion plant combinations. They hugely benefit crop health and yield (I.e. plant tomatoes and carrots together, avoid garlic and broccoli together, etc.).
• An upside-down tomato cage is a great cucumber trellis. It works for zucchini too!
• Nasturtiums are pollinator attractors, delicious edible flowers for humans, and deter pests from the garden.
• Allysum is a great pollinator attractant and companion crop. In addition you can mulch it right back into your soil after it dies for a nutrient boost.
• Plant tender lettuces under your tomatoes. They appreciate the partial shade and contribute nutrients that the tomatoes love to the soil.
  
• Spray your walkway weeds with 30% industrial strength vinegar. This is much stronger than traditional vinegar. Spray on during a sunny morning. By night, the weeds are dead. Get the vinegar on amazon!
  
• A garden that is watered everyday is less hardy than a garden watered every other. The latter has a longer root system as it reaches for water.
  
• Sprinkle cinnamon on seedling soil when they’re in trays when starting. This keeps mold and gnats away.
  
• Volesscram is an all natural essential oil and blood 🤮 product that can be sprinkled on garden pathways to deter voles.
  
• If you have a slug problem, use a shallow dinner plate and pour beer on it at dusk. By morning, the slugs should have been attracted to the beer and drown.
  
• For pillbug infestations (and for slugs too), place a scrap piece of lumber in your affected garden bed at dusk. In the morning remove the board and all the accumulated slugs and pillbugs that are stuck to it out of the garden.

Happy growing!