Favorite gardening tip

Yeah, soul - and don't all babies look alike!!!

UGh! You've got that right; tgif!

~* Robin

I add mulch to my potting soil. It boosts the amount, improves drainage, retains moisture and when it breaks down, it enriches the soil.

I also mulch my potted plants. It seals in moisture and keeps the containers cooler.

Good One Capt Micha. Thanks.

That is a really good idea CaptMicha, instead of adding it to my list, I wrote it up top in the margin. I just hope I can find my list when I need it:)

Rachel

the one tip i got from a neighbor years ago that i thank her in my head every day for is: i hate hose hangers. the hose seems to be always tangled no matter what you do. so------when youre done watering, start at the faucet end and start figure eighting the hose. start with a big one and each loop you do, get smaller. my hose is trained after all these years and i dont know how well-behaved an old stiff hose would work, but on new ones and old pliable ones. this little trick is the most satisfying of all my garden "jobs". debi

Hi everyone. Im a newbie here. Some things I do in the garden are everytime I clean out the icebox everthing go in the garden...except ment and milk products. I just dig a hole and throw it in. My gardens are doing great. They love their treats and less garbage. I use newspaper and cardboard every spring under the mulch. Also use jute to tie my plants up,blends in great and breaks down in a year or two. Also I have pvc pipes stuck in the ground about 6 inches from my roses that I use to feed them. Oh the best one I got is for those invasive plants. Cut the bottom off a 3 gallon (or whateversize you like) and bury it with you plant in the middle. Keeps your plant confide to that area and when it gets full you know when its time to divide them. Well that is enough gabbing for me.

Happy gardening, Mary

here's a pic of my Claret Purple Butterfly Bush

Welcome to DG, you will love it here!! Good tips mspondreller, but I think your shrub is not a Butterfly bush - it is an Althea, or Rose of Sharon. Very pretty tho.

I have a big garden and no built-in drip or watering system, because I change things around in the garden so often that it wouldn't be practical. I do tend to forget about sprinklers and leave them on overnight (or even for a couple of days), however. Now I've devised a remedy for that. I have nine faucets with attached hoses in my garden. Each faucet has a rubber band hanging around it. If I turn on a sprinkler, I remove the rubber band from that faucet and wear it on my wrist. I return the rubber band when I turn off the hose. If I'm still wearing a couple of rubber bands at the end of the day, I walk around the garden to find the sprinklers I forgot. It's done wonders for my water bill.

If you feel silly wearing rubber bands around your wrist, you can improvise and use something else.

Zuzu,
I use a cheap timer on my faucet. It can go down to 5 min. This helps my water bill a lot.

Mary, I think your picture is a Rose of Sharon too.

Carol

How cheap, will it work on old, low-tech faucets, and where did you get it?

We Love our timers. We purchased them at home depot and the are not that much, and yes they work on regular old style spikets and hoses. I have a watering system for my "nursery area" where all of my plants that are housed there in pots get watered every 48 hours for a certain amount of time. (when it's not raining, as it has been the whole first part of July) Also, you can set the timer to come on multiple times a day if you needed to keep seeds damp for example.

If you want to take it further, Home Depot also has micro irrigation supplies and thank goodness, my husband just loves tinkering with this stuff and I have all kinds of micro irrigation going on where I need it. I dumpster dive for plants that are half dead and the nursery is throwing them out. I bring them back home to my "nursery", soak in miracle grow food mixture and repot in large pots and sit them down in the nursery to either make it or not. This area is also where I put the pots of things I have purchased and not been able to plant just yet, but they need watering in their pots. I have two little boys and I don't know what I'd do without irrigation like this :)

Something I just learned last night...

I have mums that I thought I had killed last winter and low and behold they came back with a vengeance and I'm sure the messenger (Mighty Plant) helped when they started coming up green where I thought there was nothing. Being as how they were little sweet nothings last fall, they quickly started growing into each other and weren't all able to completely fill out in that nice rounded form since I did not get to them before that happened. I moved all of them and gave them ample room to grow. Some were taking off and looking great while a few others looked awful and are on their way out. I did everything I knew to do to save them including prayer and asking for divine guidance as to why this was happening. Well last night I was reading a book on perennials and I figured it out on accident. The ones that are dying were the ones where i got sloppy and the hole was dug too deep and I put them in and covered with a few inches of soil.. The lesson here is that certain plants need to be put into the ground at certtain levels.. put them in at the wrong level and you will kill them.. Irises for example need to be put in very shallow with part of the fat part of the bottom showing. Other plants, like mums need to go in right at ground level and not too deeply, and others enjoy a deeper planting- tomatoes come immediately to mind... So, learn about planting your particular plants before you plant!! :) I will go out this morning and redig the mums and bring them up some in hopes that I can save what is left of them.

Susan

This message was edited Jul 28, 2005 6:31 AM

Great timing on your tip, Susan! I have a mum that I need to plant. :) Thanks!

yep, rose of sharon. debi

The one infestation of white fly that I had was cured by taking the old fashioned fly paper that you can buy very inexpensively at a hardware store and tying them all over the plant. The next day the white flies were off the plant and on the sticky fly paper,they have never come back!
Peppermint tea is great for early fertilization of seedlings. Start watering with three tea bags steeped over night in a gallon water can. Seedlings love it!!

I love the soaker hoses, but hate having to move them around or have so many that your garden looks like it's full of black snakes. Sooooo, when our old hoses spring leaks or aren't good for much, I lay them in the gardens and attack them with an ice pick, making holes every six or eight inches. It's more interesting if you do it with the hose connected and the water running LOL....but you'll have a mini sprinkling system that will cover a large area. The holes, no matter how you do them will vary in size and direction, so you can move it around to get the most effective shower. I can't wait for another hose to die.

meezersfive, you paint such a fun picture!! LOL ~ Suzi :)

Wow, that was a great visual.. seeing you from the street in your yard with an ice pick looking like your attacking the ground :)

Susan

This is a two year thread full of hints.......

It sure is...I just now discovered it..and am writing things down!!

Spring is on the way- so I am sure there are more tips for 2006!!

My number 1 tip is - When using man made products in your garden - A LITTLE IS A LOT!!

The 99 cent store is a gardeners best friend. I stock my greenhouse with odds and ends, extension cords and some inexpensive made for the garden items. Sometimes I use Bungie cords (green) to gather together an unruly shrub.

Uncovered rain barrells. During the summer, put tad poles and water snails in the water, they will help keep the mosquito larvae minimal, they love to eat the little buggers. (yes the snails too) Place a few oxygenating water plants in the barrell or container- You have a mini eco system and rain water to use on special plants.

When cleaning a pond, make sure to check the debris for Dragon fly larvae. They arent the prettiest, but you may be throwing out next years Dragonflies with the the debris from the pond bottom.
You can click here if your not familiar with what they look like. http://davesgarden.com/journal/ed/viewimage.php?did=8766

Tired of heavy pots?... Use lava rocks for drainage to lighten the load. ( they are pourous and lite.) Be sure to rinse them thuroughly like anything else you put in the pot for drainage.

Create a quarantine area. When bringing new plants in to the garden, put them in the area for a week and observe closely leaf conditions. It could be as simple as a piece of plywood accross a couple of saw horse in a shaded area.

And last but not least, if your Staghorn fern is full from the bananas (which I had no idea till I read this) there are many bromeliads who enjoy a nice banana snack. Often times bananas and apples will promote blooming. Place at the base of plant stem in pot or... If you really want the bromeliad to bloom, place the plant in a loose fitting plastic bag along with the banana or bananas- close the bag - leave for 1 week- remove plant and watch for a bloom.

Rj

Your comments are wonderful!!!

Judy

OH thanks Judy! This is great fun reading the tips...I cant wait to try the bananas on my staghorn ferns!!
Rj

Rj.

Can you give me list of oxygenating water plants? And do they need anything to support them on?

I'll get some tad poles and water snails at the creek in the spring, I'll release them before fall comes.

~* Robin

Edited for numb fingers.

This message was edited Jan 27, 2006 8:12 PM

I bought fruit tree spikes in bulk at the garden center and used them around my thornless blackberry plants. I drove three around each plant in the spring, about 10 inches away from the cane. I've done this for two years and was amazed at the size of the berries - they were as big as half my thumb and the crop exceded my expectations.

Louise

I use the ones from the pet store...they are long fern like plants. They dont need to be planted, just toss them in they produce the oxygen, and the tad pole and snail waste feed the o2 plants. I/ll try to find a picture for you. Just keep the water container in a location that gets some sun, or if you need to keep it out of site, I use a yellow coloured plastic garbaged size container. The yellow keeps it bright all the way to the bottom. The plants really grow.. In the aquarium they are usually about 9 inches,, they were getting to 2 and 3 feet long!.
I usually put tad pole eggs in the rain barrell.. As soon as the frogs or toads lay the eggs I get a water tray from a potted plant, and scoop the eggs in..then dump them in the bucket.
Rj

Okay Robin...
This is the one I use..Egeria najans -- now you know why I say oxygenating plant..!!

Stem plant with small leaf whorls, moderate light, grows planted or floating and suitable for free-spawning fish in cooler water


http://www.aquabotanic.com/plantsandfish.htm
Egeria najans

If I only knew that last summer when I was trying to grow my blackberry vine!!! Thanks

You're welcome!!
I also rooted many, many cuttings from the plants. When the side shoots get about 4 or 5 inches long, I use a razor blade to cut them off even with the cane,
put them in a small pot ( I like yogurt cups), water them and place three of them in a gallon plastic zip top bag. I place them on a shelf on my deck. They root in about 4 to 5 weeks.

Louise

Great Tips Rj.... We had considered a pond, but we haven't taken the plung yet.. we have a pool and a 200 gallon salt water tank and that is plenty water to take care of!! :)

Susan

*what a bunch of great tips!!! I saved a lot of them for later reference.
Here's a couple from me:
*Plastic bottles filled with water (may not look too pretty, but...) placed around plants (like "wall-o-water ?!) absorb heat during the day and release it on cool evenings.
*If you love crawling around in the garden, but hate the muddy paths, ryegrass seed is cheap, pretty, and grows only until you cut it, (and then makes a fine mulch). My main garden path is wide enough for the mower, and the side paths just mostly get trampled down into nice soft grassy places to kneel. Where it gets missed by the mower, it will grow up a foot or so and make pretty little shade pockets/wind-breaks)
*When laying soaker hose in the garden, I bury the solid black 1/2" hose (that I won't need to move) under the paths, but leave the joints above ground for changes in layout/adding soaker hose to additional beds, etc. In my raised beds, I only bury the soaker hose about 4" down, this makes it easy to pull up when re-digging the bed, adding compost and turning, then I rebury it to protect it from the sun and save on evaporation.
*Flag drippers saved my life!!!! *s* So easy to unclog. I'll never use those little disc thingies again!
*O! Pantyhose! My Grandpa used to use them to store onions in the root cellar. Drop in an onion, tie a knot, repeat. Hang a pair of scissors nearby and cut off below each knot, as needed.

Nice to know about ryegrass :)

What are flag drippers??

Susan

"Flag drippers" - http://www.dripirrigation.com/product_info.php?cPath=38_62&products_id=363

~* Robin

This message was edited Feb 23, 2006 7:58 AM

oh but of course!! Flag drippers!!

Thanks Robin!

:)

Susan

*doing a lil happy dance* I've been trying to get on for hours!!! I don't know why, but Netscape keeps giving me a "permission denied" message with the admin addy every time I try to access a page. Not even log on! Just if I go anywhere on the site! Very strange! So here's a non garden tip. Try a different browser!!! *LOL*

I noticed that I could not post a new thread last night. Technical problems I guess.
After several attempts I gave up.

My best tip would be.. buy leaf mulch by the truck loads. It has helped to amend my heavy clay soil, at a better price than bags. Our local university has students that work in agriculture. The leaves are collected from around the city of Bowling Green, KY
25.00 for a large truck.

Also I love my Slogger gardening shoes.
Teresa in KY

I always say you can't have too much mulch or bad guano...lol

desert...if your near a large city go wireless--its free and they never deny you!