I just love being mentored by a knowledgeable person and not having to learn by trial and error…especially when it comes to vegetable gardening!
I am so privileged to live next door to a true backyard vegetable gardening guru. My mentor is in his seventies, and has literally been doing this his entire life. In other words, I am being taught by a true expert!
And here’s the really good news…I’m going to share with you some of my neighbor’s most beneficial gardening tips! His advice and tutelage has transformed my pitiful excuse for a garden into a lush and flourishing backyard garden with so much produce that I often give a good bit of it away.
Mr. Neighbor’s Gardening Tips:
- Before planting anything in your garden area, lay down black weed matting and do land clearing. Instead of spending a lot of money on fancy shmancy hooks to secure the matting onto the ground, make your own hooks! Simply use some wire cutters to cut metal coat hangers into pieces four inches long, bend the pieces into a U shape, and push them through the weed matting into the ground.
I made my clothes hanger hook, and now I’m pushing it through the weed mat to secure it to the ground.
- Tomatoes: Once they are about eight inches tall, begin “suckering” them. Suckering is removing small stems that begin to grow in the fork of two main branches. You will just pinch them right out. (This doesn’t hurt the plant) Doing so will ensure that the central stem grows strong and thick. Continue suckering the tomato plant until it is relatively mature.
This is a small “sucker” leaf. You want to pull out any of these that grow at the fork of two main stems.
- Make your own chemical-free pesticide. Fill an empty spray bottle with water and five to six drops of Dawn soap. Spray over all vegetable plants/herbs every ten days.
- Use Miracle Grow every ten days on all vegetables/herbs. This makes a world of difference!!
- Make sure that your vegetables, especially tomatoes, get at least eight hours of sunlight each day. In order for this to happen, we had to cut out a few limbs of our dogwood trees with the help of tree services. They recommended we call them for some tree trimming or tree stump removal every so often to keep the tree healthier and looking nicer, and I think we might just do that.
- When your plants have grown tall and it comes time to tie them to stakes, tie them with strips of pantyhose. Pantyhose contains an ingredient that the stem of a tomato plant “likes”. They also expand with the growth of your plant, avoiding constriction.
- Only a few vegetables are really happy to be grown in pots: peppers, cucumbers, onions, and chives. Everything else will do better to be planted in the ground. Make sure that your landscape design also lets your plants grow and doesn’t constrict them.
Chives do really well in pots! Just keep trimming and eating them, and they’ll grow all summer long!
- When planting from seeds, soak them in water one to two hours before planting.
- Also when planting from seeds, never pack the ground hard on top of them. Make a small hole in the dirt with your finger, drop in the seed, and then gently sprinkle dirt back on top of the hole.
- And last but not least, follow Mr. Neighbor’s strange but proven method of Moon Gardening! I wrote about this in a previous blog, so check it out if you’re interested.
I hope this helps all of you fellow backyard farmers out there! It has been so fun teaching my sons about “living off the land”. And of course, it is so rewarding to bring inside a harvest from your own backyard!
