Gardening Tips

02-15-03

This week I would like to keep things short and give away some of my tips that I have learned over the years I have been gardening. Included will be some tips that I have picked up from other gardeners that I have found helpful also.

WEED AND GRASS KILLER

If you would like to get rid of grass or weeds in or around your garden and do not like to use the commercial weed or grass killers just do the following.

In a sprayer mix equal parts of water and 5% white vinegar. Spray the area where you want to kill the unwanted plants and in a few days you will notice them begin to turn yellow and die. You may notice a few remaining green spots where you may have missed with the spray. Just go back and spray over these. I have used this for several years and have never known of it to fail. If you use 10% vinegar, then mix it two thirds water to one third vinegar. Caution do not spray any plants you do not want to kill. It will kill any plants you spray it on. A simple piece of cardboard held up as a shield to protect a plant is enough to keep from killing it.

BLOSSOM END ROT FORMULA

In a container mix the following:

1 scoop of compost

1 tablespoon of Epsom Salts

1 tablespoon of gypsum

Mix thoroughly and add to the planting hole you plant the tomato plant in. Kiss your root rot problems good by.

BUG ZAPPER

In one gallon of water mix 1 tablespoon of Ivory dish washing detergent. Spray on unwanted bugs and watch them scoot. For some reason Palmolive seems to work better than any other brand. I do not know why but it does.

FOR PROBLEM CLAY SOIL

Calcium is the very best additive you can get (other than compost) to add to a clay soil to break it up. It helps compost to make the clay soil fluffy. Never think NPK only always think CNPK (Calcium, Nitrogen, Phosphate, Potassium).

GROW POTATOES IN A WIRE CAGE

My father-in-law uses this method to grow large, clean potatoes. He makes a wire cage with a 4 foot radius of 6x6 hog wire. Inside of the cage, on top of the ground place about 6 inches of straw hay. Water well and put in seed potatoes. You can space them about 6 to 8 inches apart all over the circle. On top of the potatoes place another layer of straw. Keep watered but not soaking. After the plants emerge above the top of the straw about 5 or 6 inches cover them up with straw except for the last 2 or 3 leaves. Continue doing this until the plants reach the top of the wire cage. Let the plants bloom and die back at this stage. When you open the cage, you will find bushels of clean, large potatoes. It seems that potatoes like tomatoes will root all the way up the plant if they are covered. At each place they take root, they will also make tubers. You can harvest these at any time by simply reaching through the wire and feeling for the potatoes. Pull what you want and leave the rest to continue growing. The trick in this is to keep it evenly watered through out the growing period.

And the very best tip of all is using lots and lots of compost. If you have access to it the very best is compost made of cotton burrs. This is trash left over from the ginning process. Most gins will let you have all you want for the asking. I haul several pickup loads a week for my gardens. For those of you that can't get cotton burr compost, there are probably places all around you that would be more than happy for you to haul away their "trash" just to get it out of the way. My older brother can't get cotton burr compost, but he gets mushroom compost free from a local grower in his area.

I hope these tips can be of some help to each of you.

Happy Gardening

Byron and Caroline Tumlinson