Gardening tips.

I have a few ideas I would like to share, hope you can add to this.

When I plant tomatoes outside, I use stakes for the indeterminate and cages for the ones that don't get pruned, the determinate. Helps me remember not to prune the caged ones.

Great way to get rid of all that chickweed is to go over the garden with your rake when it is still small, it will kill 95% of it.

Please share your tips with us.

Well my tip for the week is don't let your chickens loose in the yard after your son has meticulously picked out and planted his very own bedding plants, because yes, chickens LOVE eating them...especially portulaca (sp?). My son is not a happy camper right now. Oops!!
And they didn't touch my planters at all - just his, the little jerks!!

We have a major problem with cutworms,the best solution we found is to put toothpicks on opposite sides of the stem,they can't wrap around the stem therefor can't cut it.

never thought of that one Dry your egg shells and crush them, I do this to all of my egg shells, sprinkle them in the trench when you plant onions, garlic, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes etc., works like a hot dam and supplies plants with calcium

Also on cutworms, I plant our cabbages inside old toilet paper rolls. Roots from most started plants slide right in. Leave the top of the roll just above soil level and the cutworm can't reach it.

Oh good thread. I could speak more to the don'ts.....I purchased a mere few cucumber, specialty ones, and some melons, put them outside and they have all but died. Reminder, don't put out the tenders, like these, until the weather warms up. It to me is unseasonably cold and wet. What a waster of money.

I like the eggshell, Debbie, that will be implemented in my garlic clove planting this fall. Never thought about them, knew about the power of the calcium, but had forgotten.

Love the toilet roll idea. Haven't come across cutworms up here.

If you have the means, parasitic (predatory) nemotodes are excellent for ridding the soil of any kind of below soil worm or maggot that destroys crops.

BtK is also very good for above the soil, sprayed on leaves, but a pain in the butt to work and use, must be reapplied if the sun gets on it, annuls after three days I think, if memory serves, so good though to spray on underside of leaves. Excellent for the cabbage moth larvae.

Keeping my eye on this post for more good ideas. Man, we need some sun, not rain...have those wonderful days, yep, my wishes for us all, CynthiaM, and if you want to, just have the day that you wish to have

I had a major infestation of flea beetles this spring. At first, they were eating all the Radishes. I had white radishes go to seed last year. I dont eat em, but I dont mind them all over the garden because their a lot easier to pull up than Stinkweed!
Anyway, I put out my Brocoli transplants, lo and behold, the flea beetles attack them too. Google sugested Diatomaceous earth (which some of us already use for chickens!) and it worked like a charm. I dusted it on relatively thick, made sure there was a fairly good spread of it on the ground too. Those buggers can jump!

For cut worms I put a four inch piece of PVC pipe around the plant about three inch's into the soil ,one inch above the top and that stops them cold ,I've heard that soot from a fire will also repel them ?.,I also put my lawn clippings around all my plants as soon as the show proper development ,keeps the weeds down to almost nothing ,soil retains it moisture and any vegies that lay on the ground stay clean ,and in fall I till in the clippings ,feed the worms and do it all over again next year

I have successfully combated blight on tomatoes with a mixture of 75% apple cider vinegar and water sprayed on the leaves. Vinegar is a natural fungicide and blight is a fungus -- it's much like a yeast infection for tomato plants.

Sweetened wrote:I have successfully combated blight on tomatoes with a mixture of 75% apple cider vinegar and water sprayed on the leaves. Vinegar is a natural fungicide and blight is a fungus -- it's much like a yeast infection for tomato plants.

Late last fall my garden got late season blight, what caused the potato famine that killed all the Irish:( A horticulturalist told me not to plant anything from the nightshade family in my garden for 5 years. I wonder if I sprayed the soil in my garden with Apple Cider Vinegar if it would kill the blight? May be a tad bit pricey

debbiej wrote:

Sweetened wrote:I have successfully combated blight on tomatoes with a mixture of 75% apple cider vinegar and water sprayed on the leaves. Vinegar is a natural fungicide and blight is a fungus -- it's much like a yeast infection for tomato plants.

Late last fall my garden got late season blight, what caused the potato famine that killed all the Irish:( A horticulturalist told me not to plant anything from the nightshade family in my garden for 5 years. I wonder if I sprayed the soil in my garden with Apple Cider Vinegar if it would kill the blight? May be a tad bit pricey

Soil has a remarkable ability to absorb and neutralize almost anything you put on it. Most likely the vinegar would just bond with the humus in the soil and do nothing. Also, fungus spores in soil are so tough I doubt anything could kill them other than years without a host.

As a side note, I have experimented with success with using highly concentrated acetic acid (vinegar) to kill weeds, best done on a sunny day.

Also, since this topic is about gardening tips...organic greenhouse folks use skim milk powder to control powdery mildew, and it may have some application with other fungus problems as well.

debbiej wrote:Late last fall my garden got late season blight, what caused the potato famine that killed all the Irish:( A horticulturalist told me not to plant anything from the nightshade family in my garden for 5 years. I wonder if I sprayed the soil in my garden with Apple Cider Vinegar if it would kill the blight? May be a tad bit pricey

This is exactly how I found out about it my trick. My potatoes and tomatoes blighted badly not last year, but the year before, from all the rains and high melt-off we had. There was just so much moisture. Part of the reason you're told to water from the bottom of a tomato plant is because the fungus that causes blight has a hard time adhering to dry fruits and leaves.

I was treating an area in the basement for mould due to flooding using cooking grade acv. I'll have to look up what brand I buy from the store. It's been pasteurized but not filtered, so still contains some of the mother and is not nearly as expensive as the health-food quality stuff. It occurred to me that mould is a fungus and so is blight, why wouldn't you treat it the same way? I made sure to rip out and garbage (not compost) all of my night shade plants, picking up every little undeveloped green tomato that fell, dug the area and left it over winter.

Next season (so last year). I planted as I always did, made sure to water from the bottom and I barely watered at all. If the plant got droopy, I gave it one more day of suffering before watering it (when tomatoes start to droop, they push their roots further into the ground -- if you water the same day you notice it, they kill off that root growth -- waiting a day or so they'll keep the root bed). Every week I would give a gentle spritz of 3 parts ACV to 1 part water being sure to get the leaves and undersides of fruit, would pull off any dead/dying/withered leaves and branches and would re-spray after rains. I paid close attention to the bottom leaves as the fungal spores are launched upwards from the ground.

I had beautiful, vibrant tomatoes and no occurrences of blight. I'll do the same this year.

--- If you're equally as weary about trying this technique and having it happen again as you are leaving the garden devoid of nightshade for 5 years, another option could be to use baking soda to alkalize the soil for a year, wherever you had planted your tomatoes. Nothing will grow there if you stir in the soda 2 times in the year. As soon as you can work the soil next year, toss in some well composted manure and maybe some grass clippings and, with the rain/melt off, the soil will come back. I would think the fungus would have been washed away/killed off that way, though I could be wrong there.

All I know is what worked for me!

Oh blight, the most awful thing of the garden, be it tomatoes or potatoes, although never experienced potato blight. Back on the coast, guaranteed that blight would get ya, even with a greenhouse, one year it got my plants, sigh...so much work, down the drain. Haven't experienced blight here yet, but don't doubt for a minute I will. Sweetened I will remember that acv spray for sure. Have a most wonderful day, CynthiaM.

debbiej wrote:never thought of that one Dry your egg shells and crush them, I do this to all of my egg shells, sprinkle them in the trench when you plant onions, garlic, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes etc., works like a hot dam and supplies plants with calcium

I also use eggshells to stop the onslaught of the slug army from devouring anything in their path.

All year my eggshells go into a big bucket, and come spring, get crushed and sprinkled everywhere.


Excess carrots and other below ground veggies can be left in the ground and covered with straw to prevent freezing.
Homemade root cellar theory. I have harvested carrots months past picking time.

Have a manure pile? Your vines (pumpkins, cucumbers, melons etc) LOVE the heat they produce (not to mention the nutrients). On cooler days you can watch the leaves turn themselves upside down to soak up the heat from the ground.

Every year my pooh-pile (I suddenly feel like Uno talking about crap), becomes the big pumpkin and vines patch. It also helps with the readiness for that pile to go into the garden in the fall.