Starting a Garden and Taking it to the Next Level
Managing your own garden is a great adventure, but not everyone is born with green thumbs at their side. However, gardening is something that anyone can learn and even the most awkward city-slickers can master through time. The tips below are a great introduction into the subject and cover a variety of tips that will help the beginner and the advanced gardener alike.
If you are having problems with your pots accumulating deposits of salt buildup, there is a simple solution: an equal mixture of rubbing alcohol, water, and white vinegar. Place this combination of liquids within a small spray bottle and apply generously to the entire clay pot. After application, scrub the surface with a tough, plastic brush before letting it sit until dry. This will break the deposits down and prepare your pot for the next plant.
Soap is obviously great for cleaning fingernails after they’ve gotten dirty, but did you know that it also helps prevent them from becoming dirty in the first place. Rubbing your fingertips across a bar of soap before hitting the garden will create a temporary seal between the fingernail and flesh beneath it. If you have experienced the frustration behind digging dirt from beneath your nails, you will appreciate the effectiveness of this solution. Once you are finished in the garden, a nailbrush will easily remove the soap and leave you feeling clean.
It is difficult to remember all of the necessary gardening tools you may need to bring back from each visit, this tip will remove the measure tape from that list of tools, leaving you with one less problem to forget. Find a long-handled tool that you know will use during each trip to the garden, such as the rake or shovel and lay it across a flat surface. Take your measuring tape and run it parallel with the length of the tool you have chosen. After each 1/8th of an inch, mark the handle of your tool with a permanent marker. You can now leave the measuring tape in the house and still measure the distance between new plants.
Constantly check the soil for relative pH levels during regular intervals throughout the season. Certain plants will prefer higher levels while others require the lower end of the spectrum. When you have a certain patch of soil that is high in pH, mark this area and remember its location when you are planting on the following season. You can continually add biodegradable materials that improve the acidity and the surrounding soil should be reserved for those plants that benefit from its existence.
If you didn’t understand a certain tip that was covered above, write it down and keep it stashed away for the day you may need it. Some advice may be very specific and deal with problems that only a few people have encountered, yet the assistance they provide may still come to save the day in the near-future. You may not have been born with a green thumb, but you can learn to grow one with the tips above.