Gardening Tips (Archived)

Work With What You Have

We do not have a great space for our garden, but we make do with what we have. For us, that means it needs to be alongside our children's large sandbox because there really is no other place for it.

Because of our smaller area, we chose to go with Square Foot Gardening. This is obviously great for small spaces and can still have a high yield. Last year our garden was about 10x10 ft and this year we are expanding it to 10x20 ft.

But, if you don't have the desire to plant a whole garden or just simply don't have the space (perhaps you live in an apartment), you can at least consider planting one plant in a container or a tiny herb garden in your kitchen. As long as you do something it will be better for you and your family than if you did nothing.

Keep Records

If you keep records of your gardening, it will help you immensely the following year. Last summer, I sketched a scale of the garden and noted what we planted, where and how many of each plant.

The placement will come in handy for crop rotation. Especially for things like tomatoes and potatoes. If you rotate them, not only will it help specific soil nutrients to not become depleted, it will also help keep pests at bay, such as the potato bug that will be down in the ground just wating for next years batch of potatoes. But, you're too smart for that and your potatoes will be somewhere else. :)

I also kept track (as much as possible) of what our yield was for each vegetable. For example, the number of quarts of green beans (or in my case 1/2 quarts since we didn't plant enough) that I froze and the number of tomatoes we canned. That way, as we eat these vegetables during the winter, I can see where we end up and will know if we need to plant more or less of that particular produce.

Resources

Those that have gardened for awhile are probably your best resource. My husband loves getting gardening tips from family members that have been at it much longer than us. Those old timers especially, have a lot of good tips!

What We Learned From Last year

• If your expecting a frost, simply use a tarp over your garden to help keep those plants going.
• if you need to pick your green tomatoes at the end of the season because it's getting too cold for them to ripen, put them in a paper bag in your home. It'll take a couple weeks, but they will ripen. I did scores of tomatoes this way last fall.
• buy tomato plants that are specific for containers. Otherwise they will not produce healthy tomatoes.
• rotate the placement of your tomatoes and potatoes from year to year to help reduce pests
• when dealing with a pesky rabbit or two, it might help to scatter hair clippings throughout the garden or to put soap shavings around the ede of the garden. Marigolds are also supposed to help (and if nothing else, they make the garden look prettier!) However, they are an added expense so the kids and I harvested the seeds from last year to plant this year. We hope to start them indoors and then transplant them to the garden.

Do you garden? If so, do you have your garden in? If you don't garden, do you think you might give it a try?

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