Gardening 101: Tips, Tricks and So Much More

reply to post by MyMindIsMyOwn


Just the right time of year for this thread. I always have a vegtable garden and this year I intend to add a greenhouse for winter veggies.

reply to post by mugger


LOL My dad was a big fishing guy, and he always threw the guts/waste into the garden. Yes, we always had a great garden, but being a kid and weeding and digging up fish heads used to really creep us girls out.
Eggshells are great, not only for the plants, but they tear up some types of pests too!

I think one of the most important things about starting out as a new gardner is to not worry too much about the more advanced techniques that you will pick up as you get more experienced. It can become overwhelming and put you off even starting.

Learn the basics by simply following the instructions on the seed packet........ seeds want to grow and usually do in most conditions unless there are drastic issues like drought, frost etc.

Where you live will determine what you can grow outside, I'm in Scotland and can only grow tomatoes, peppers etc in a greenhouse.

Know that every gardner will give you different advice, for instance Dizziedame says...

Originally posted by dizziedame
not good to plant tomatos and peppers close to esch other.

Whereas this site suggests

PEPPERS, BELL (Sweet Peppers): Plant peppers near tomatoes, parsley, basil, geraniums, marjoram, lovage, petunia and carrots

Hot peppers like to be grouped with cucumbers, eggplant, escarole, tomato, okra, Swiss chard and squash.

So sometimes its best to just learn by doing and most importantly, have fun doing it.

Ok thats my advice to new gardners

I'll pop back later and tell you about my plans for homemade fertilizer this year.

anybody tried straw bale gardening?
www.growandmake.com...
my nephew has put his tomatoes in bales for the last two years and it seems to work really well.

OH, One of the things many forget about is WOOD ASH!

My garden was not very good until I added wood ash. I had used lime but wood ash worked much much better for sweeting the compost. Especially a compost of oak leaves and manure.

I only use my wood ash because some people put plastic and other things in their wood stoves.

reply to post by crimvelvet


Thank you Crimvelvet. I have been fighting this quack grass for about ten years now and I have finally given up trying. I have tried the lasagna gardening method and used cardboard as the base and even it did not hinder the growth of the grass. It slipped right through wherever it could get through. I've tried newspaper in areas, weedblocker cloth, I have even used the plastic trim that you bury along your garden edge. It is horrible stufff. Thank you for the websites to look into, I will do that, maybe someone has come up with an ingenious method of getting rid of it in the last few years. The last two years I have just been planting in tubs and containers and have been doing well that way. Where I live we didn't have much of a growing season at all last year but I'm hoping good things this year.

I also have issues with a lovely plant that a neighbor gave me. It is called Comfry. Its a beautiful plant but extremely invasive and impossible to get rid of. Its roots become a huge hard clump that gets deeper and deeper over time and breaks as soon as you get a shovel near it. And each little piece becomes a new massive plant that you can't get rid of. Ok, I'm done whining now. I may just invest in the roundup and kill everything off

Three Sisters Garden

I am thinking about making a three sisters section in my garden this year, has anyone here tried this?

What is a Three Sisters Garden?

It is an ancient method of gardening using an intercropping system which grows corn, beans, and squash crops simultaneously in the same growing area that is typically a rounded mound of soil, often called a hill.

Corn is the oldest sister. She stands tall in the center.

Squash is the next sister. She grows over the mound, protecting her sisters from weeds and shades the soil from the sun with her leaves, keeping it cool and moist.

Beans are the third sister. She climbs through squash and then up corn to bind all together as she reaches for the sun. Beans help keep the soil fertile by coverting the sun's energy into nitrogen filled nodules that grow on its roots. As beans grow they use the stored nitrogen as food.

faq.gardenweb.com...

www.kidsgardening.com...

reply to post by Christarella


Your comfry is sort of a blessing in disguise, as it makes a great source of fertilizer.

Comfry draws a lot of the essential nutrients from soil but it stores nearly all of them in it's foliage.

Just chop up the leaves, put them in a suitably-sized container and basically allow them to decompose or rot ... add some water if need be ... then just use that around the base of plants as fertilizer.

reply to post by cazzy2211


Can't wait to hear about your homemade fertilizer ideas!

Also about the peppers here is something that I noticed several years ago. I had a half row of broccoli and brussels sprouts on one side of a row of various hot peppers and then a whole row of japanese eggplants on the other. Of my garden this was the only section to not have alot of pests that I had to try to control. This was merely an observation at the time, I had no backup info at the time. So, what I have done the past couple of years is to place my hot pepper plants in various spots in the garden and have had success with keeping pest infestation to a minimum. Couple that with the planting of marigolds around the perimeter it has helped me a great deal.

reply to post by 12m8keall2c


Thank you Thank you very much for that. I will definitely look into it. Such beautiful plants and medicinal as well. I just wish so much the neighbor would have warned me about its growth habits. I would have put it someplace I could contain it. Or at least tried. Unfortunately I spread it all over the place because it was so big and beautiful and filled in my bare yard. Lessons learned

I would say pay attention to the moon pohases when you plant. You want your plants to germinate in conjunction with the new moon. Germination under a growing moon will mean better growing plants.

reply to post by Christarella


Comfry is an amazing fertilizer but it sounds like you have the self seeding type. I bought some Bocking 14 Comfry which produces sterile flowers so doesn't have that problem, root cuttings are used to propogate new plants.

It is a great medicinal plant and if I remember rightly, the leaves are used to heal wounds too.

I know the flowers are beautiful but maybe you could nip the flowerheads off before they produce seed and it could keep the plant under control.

reply to post by Reevster


I didn't know what it was called, but yes, I have heard of that as my stepmother uses that method in her garden and it saves a great deal of space and time for her. Her yield is fantastic as well. If you decide to do it, let us know how it worked out for you.

reply to post by Reevster


Thanks every single one of those books have been deleted, just saying so nobody else wastes their time.

reply to post by crimvelvet


Thanks for all of your great posts, Crim! As I am not too far behind you in the age race I have been kicking around the idea of raised bed gardening as well simply because the back and knees are not what they used to be. Not sure what the best method would be for me here but I'm glad you brought to the table the use of RR ties and landscape timbers and the fact that the chemicals used to treat them would leach into the soil.

Wood ash is great for the garden as well. I have tossed wood ash from an outdoor fireplace into the garden for a while now and it really does add to the quality of the soil. That along with the untreated mulch and some compost makes the most lushious loamy soil that has also increased the earthworm population, which is a good thing!

Thanks again for all the informative posts! And while I know you say you've not gardened for a while and are a whiz at raising animals, feel free to post some tips on the raising of your animals as well here as I think there are several people who are interested in that too to compliment the garden to become self sustaining. I believe it was dizziedame who mentioned the building of a chicken coop and their interest in that. I have limited knowledge of raising farm animals and would welcome the knowledge that you can bring to the table.

reply to post by Wetpaint72


The bees!

sorry its short post.

reply to post by sligtlyskeptical


For many years people have planted in accordance to the phases of the moon. As I have mentioned in several posts on other threads, I come from a farm family in the mountains of Va. They planted in accordance to the moon phases as well and well.... I wish I had listened more carefully to what they were trying to teach as now I am trying like heck to recreate some of that knowledge for myself. But here is an article I found to be interesting on the topic. Hope you enjoy the read!

Planting by the moon phases

reply to post by crimvelvet


Thats not nice. not to get up you I hate cats and love birds. Birds are an important part of your garden alot of birds catch and eat pests. If bees disappear which seems to be happening at the moment, birds will be one of the only pollinators left.

reply to post by Slipdig1


But for those living on a farm or larger piece of property a mouser or two is a good thing for keeping rodents to a minimum. While there may be some birds that die, it is part of the food chain that has been going on for centuries and I don't think either will become extinct any time soon.

I have 2 very close friends who have a farm close by that have 3 mousers on their property. They have plenty to catch in the way of rodents so the birds are pretty much left alone. There are a tremendous amount of birds on their farm... excellent place to go and just sit a bit and watch the wildlife on a warm summer evening.

But good point about the bees. I am fortunate that last year I saw a big resurgence of honey bees in my local area. It was to the point that if I went outside via my back door where there is a row of Rose of Sharon you could almost hear the buzzing from there! I was just as pleased as punch.

reply to post by Slipdig1


Darn I guess the internet police must have hit that site...that sucks.

I did find another site with a few gardening free ebooks along with other self-sufficiency-guide ebooks etc.

www.self-sufficiency-guide.com...

I am sure there are more still up and running , I may take a look later.