Gardening can bring a lot of personal rewards, but it can also be considerably challenging. However, there are some ways that the best in the business have gotten the better of the challenge. Look at the seven tips in this article if you want to make your time a little bit easier.
Clean all of your clay pots out with alcohol and vinegar before you get started. This will protect your plants against pesky pests that might want to crawl inside and eat, and will keep some of the infections that can hurt your plants from taking hold of them.
Before you start working, seal your fingernails off with a bar of soap. This will keep the soil from getting under your nails as easily, which will cut down on your cleanup time at the end of your gardening session.
When you get out the string trimmer, spray some vegetable oil on the string before you start cutting. This will make your string slide more easily through the plants when you cut them, saving you some time. The harder your string has to work, the more likely it is to snap — which means that it will run out sooner, and you’ll have to stop and replace the spool more often. It will also take you longer to finish the job.
Instead of getting out your measuring tape to figure out the dimensions of your garden, use a long handled tool as a standard. Measure it once, and then remember the length. Then you can just use it instead of having to grab the tape.
Use clay pots to line out your garden twine. The holes in the bottom will help you send it along more easily than if you play it out a few inches at a time by hand. You won’t have to stop as often to restart and figure out where you are if it keeps running out through the holes.
Clay pots retain the warmth from the sun through the night. If you have young plants, you can place them in clay pots (with plenty of soil) early in the planting period. Also, if you have plants in the ground that you are worried about, you can cover them with clay pots and then put plastic sheeting over the tops of those. That will keep frost from getting to your new seedlings.
Just like it guided your string, a clay pot can also guide your hose. When you run it through, the clay pot will give you enough of a backing to pull the hose along, keeping it from getting tangled while allowing you to place the hose where you want it. You don’t want to run it through your new seedlings, as the hose can disrupt or even injure the new plants.
Gardening can be quite a challenge — but it can also deliver a lot of rewards. Use these seven tips as you get started, and you won’t undo a lot of the good you did when you started your garden.