Lawanda's Garden

This is the busiest time of year for gardeners and everyone is looking for tips to make this year’s garden the best one ever.  Here are a few things that have worked for me.

• If your soil is rock-hard clay like mine, it is very difficult to plant a row of seeds and cover them with the required ¼ or ½ inch of soil.  After making a shallow trench to plant the seeds, which is tricky enough with all the clumps of clay, I use a trowel to sprinkle compost or top soil purchased in 40-lb. bags over the seeds.  This darker soil also warms faster which speeds germination.
• Sprinkle dried milk in the hole before you plant your tomatoes.  If you’ve already planted, scratch dried milk into the soil around each plant.  There is a compound in the milk that wards off wilt diseases.  I first tried this last year and it was the first year in the seventeen years that I’ve been gardening (and buying supposed disease resistant plants) that my tomato plants stayed healthy and green all season.
• Mix two tablespoons of Epsom salt in one gallon of water.  Water tomatoes and peppers with a pint per plant just as bloom begins.  Epsom salt supplies magnesium, an important trace mineral for healthy plant growth.
• Sprinkle coffee grounds sparingly over carrot plantings to repel root maggots.
• Spray seaweed extract or fish emulsion diluted to ¾ teaspoon per quart of water to help just about every seedling in your garden get off to a good start.  Spray when seedlings have developed four true leaves.  Watering tomatoes and peppers with the diluted solution when they are first set out in the garden helps alleviate transplant shock.
• The easiest way to compost is to dig a hole or trench in the garden and throw all your food scraps and yard waste into it.  When the hole is nearly full, cover it with soil and dig a new hole.
• Instead of pulling out bean and pea plants when they finish producing, cut them off at ground level and leave them there until you are ready to turn the soil over in fall.  The roots of legumes provide nitrogen to the soil and they will continue to do so even after the plant is cut down.
• Keep your garden weeded in May and June when the weeds are small and there won’t be much weeding to do in July and August.