Pap and Ben (my nephew) digging potatoes
We’re inching closer and closer to warm weather and real planting time. The last few days have been so nice and warm. There’s a been a little rain and some strong March winds, but the days have truly felt like spring of the year. A big difference from the freezing weather we had only a week ago.
Growing a garden always makes me think of Pap and miss the wisdom and guidance he freely shared with The Deer Hunter and me.
It also makes me think of other folks who’ve shared gardening wisdom with me over the years.
One spring back when I first started writing on Blind Pig and The Acorn I asked folks to share gardening advice with me so that I could document it for myself and others.
Here’s a bit of what folks shared.
Pap
- Add a little 10-10-10 fertilizer to the row as you plant potatoes.
- Grand-pap said a crooked row would grow more corn than a straight one.
- Cucumber and squash do well if you plant them in a mound and give them plenty of room to grow.
- Tomatoes do better if you change the location you plant them each year.
- Best way to plant a garden—let the grandkids do it!
Francis
- Mother said when the field was plowed and ready that was sign enough to plant.
Uncle Henry & Aunt Sue
- Add chicken manure to enrich soil.
- Rows work just as well for squash and cucumbers as mounds.
- Add leaves to garden in the fall to enrich the soil.
- Tomatoes do well planted through the leaves.
- Use compost on garden or just plant in the compost.
- Candy corn was their favorite but they also liked ambrosia.
- Tried how sweet it is variety of corn but don’t know how it tasted because the cows ate it.
- Place banana peels around roses for more blooms.
Mark
- For pumpkins plant in a hill of cow manure—the kind that is in the yellow bag and is cooked or something to prevent all the weed/grass/flower seeds from germinating.
- If you get the squash vine borer bugs you have to literally perform surgery on the plant. Slice open the stem where they are, squish them all, then push the sliced stem into the dirt, it doesn’t kill the plant.
Miss Cindy
- My grandmother planted flowers around the garden to keep the bugs away. I think it was marigolds.
Hope you’ll leave a comment and share your gardening tips!
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I was told to put epsom salt & crushed, dry egg shells around mater plants. Wish I could remember why, but I do it and my mater plants flourish, with lots of reseeders haha
I absolutely love every post you do! You are a National Treasure!
Jay-you are so kind. Thank you 🙂
Thanks for all of the great gardening advice. I am stocking up on marigolds tomorrow!!!!
How Sweet It Is is a very sweet corn but I’ll go with Silver Queen. Does anyone plant the old field corn Hastings Prolific? Good eating!!!
Lenora-thank you! I’ve never heard of that Corn but maybe someone else has 🙂
According to my father-in-law, bees fly in a zigzag pattern. That’s why you plant corn in lots of short rows.
Lots of good gardening tips! Thank you for sharing!
After my comment this morning, I had to go somewhere about 25 miles away. That is almost next door when you live in a rural area! Of all things, I passed a large field where transfer trucks were bringing in chicken manure to fertilize it. I have also been taught that more short rows are better than one long row in a garden especially if planting corn. As for different things being planted together, have any of you read about companion gardening of planting something called three sisters?
The 3 sisters I know about are the Native American plantings of corn, beans and squash. Is that what you are referring to?
I don’t remember where I heard it, but — “the best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.”
“Grand-pap said a crooked row would grow more corn than a straight one.”
That one might have a basis in science. Corn has to be pollinated by its neighbors. Crooked rows, if they have plants closer together, are more likely to pollinate.
My Pa taught me that you don’t plant long rows of corn but short rows and more of ’em.
interesting tips
I learned that a potted Rose bush grows beautifully when you give it lots of water and every other week give it a tablespoon of Epsom salts “magnesium” and loads of sunshine. Those Roses will bloom plenty with rich green leaves the most beautiful you ever did see. The roses bloomed 6-inch round flowers and would have won First prize at any County Fair or Carnival. The bush was named Queen Elizabeth and the most beautiful Pink Roses were harvested all summer long. Throw your old tomatoes out the kitchen window onto the mound of dirt out there in the yard. Next summer you will have a mound of cherry tomatoes so sweet and red. I enjoyed the part about the variety of corn. “HOW SWEET IT IS” never got to taste it for the cows got to it first. LOL> Crazy. Keep them in their pen and they won’t be eating your gardens. Have a Blessed day Tipper.
Patrick White, your favorite fan. and you said “YOU WISH”
Love that precious picture! I enjoy hearing about all the different things folks do to try to protect their gardens. I have noticed through the years I see a lot of marigolds planted in gardens and was told they really do keep insects away and I also remember daddy using 10-10-10- fertilizer. It takes a lot of work to grow a good garden and how well I remember enjoying the bounty of food it produced.
Loved Pap’s take on gardening. It was all what I had done after growing up in a family that planted huge gardens with the exception of one. The grandkids never were much on gardening no matter how hard I tried. My little grandson had his own little onion patch for green onions for the reunion. All went well, but the only other interest he ever took again was when I got him a little bug catcher to catch the bugs and such and place them in a cute little bug house. He wanted to adopt and name them, so that was probably a failure too. Love your gardening ventures and especially that it seems a family affair.
I planted marigolds on both sides of each row of beans last year and didn’t get any bugs until the end of the season. I’ll do it again this year!
Another thing that works for both bean and potato bugs is to alternate a row of beans with a row of potatoes; bean bugs don’t like potatoes and potato bugs don’t like beans. It didn’t keep all of them out, but it sure cut the numbers way down!
My neighbor’s chickens and ducks have been free ranging in our garden over the fall and winter; I’ll be interested to see if they also cut down on the number of bugs we have this year.
My tip? I’d say listen to others and don’t trust deer or any critters for that matter near your plants. . Listen to Tipper cause proof is in her garden every year! She surely puts out a fine one!!! I read all the tips and they’re welcome-believe that! Btw, that Ben sure is cute with the biggest happy cutest face ever and loving every minute with his loving Pap!!! Kids know who loves them and Ben is aglow enjoying his little adorable self! It made my day so THANKYOU for the “sunshine”…
We live on 8 acres of my husband’s family’s farm in Berks county, southeastern PA. We allow a neighboring farmer to plant crops on 7 of our acres. For the most part our land is open, in full sun. We have a huge deer problem. Apparently Berks county deer can’t read because they eat everything, even stuff labeled deer resistant or deer proof. We’ve had to totally fence in our veggie garden. We did plant marigolds around our tomatoes last year and we did try cutting them like you showed on your video. We had a good yield and the insects didn’t seem to be as much of a problem. We plan to try the cow pen panels this year for climbing plants. Our growing season is behind yours and I can’t wait to get out in the garden.
I have heard of most of the things mentioned and saw them in practice. Recently some of the large scale farmers in my area have started using transfer truck loads of chicken manure for fertilizer on their large fields. 10-10-10 fertilizer has been an old favorite for many years in my area. The problem with chicken, cow, or even horse manure is without plenty of water it will burn the plants up and if it is straight out of the barn, it can be like sowing grass seed. One piece of wisdom from Daddy was there is no point in trying to rush a garden, until the soil gets right meaning temperature nothing will come up or grow. Outside of shooting them, I not been able to come up with a good solution to the Deer problem. The wildlife department issues permits to kill the Deer out of season to the farmers that farm for their living.
“Cucumber and squash do well if you plant them in a mound and give them plenty of room to grow.”
We made mounds for our sweet potato plants, and they always seemed to do pretty well.
I do not remember us ever making mounds for cucumber and squash, but I expect that also worked out pretty well.
We have so many deer problems but they never touch the marigolds and zinnias. They even eat my Meyer Lemon! – but left the blue ageratum ‘weeds’ and spiderwort that are so pretty. So, I transplanted all the blue ageratum to surround the lemon, sprinkle marigolds and zinnias throughout my garden and just learned nasturtium is also a deer repellent. Many things that repel deer, also repel rabbits. So now my garden is filled with nasturtium also and is so pretty. I love being in my garden just resting. I’ve begun writing words from my Bible that describe “being good” onto plant markers and sticking them throughout my garden. Now when I sit and enjoy His work of flowers, bees, and food, I also enjoy resting in his word – seeing all the goodly plant markers.
So last year I planted basil with my tomatoes. I was told it helps to keep the bugs away and make the tomatoes taste better. It seemed to work. This year I doing that as well as planting marigolds throughout since they are a good companion plant for just about everything I plant in the garden. Also I’m putting our potatoes in containers. Last year I spent $60 on seed potatoes from Maine and it was a total waste of money. The potatoes did great, it was the voles that ate up almost all of my potatoes! I also need to electrify the fencing around our raspberry and black berry bushes to keep the deer away from them as they eat the leaves, vines and berries.
Good morning Tipper,
Started spraying my fruit trees with neem oil yesterday.
The more I garden the more I realize how much I don’t know.
Just a few things I have been taught and proven to myself are:
Seeds are not gonna germinate until the soil is warm enough for that particular seed. Seed can be damaged by cool wet soil.
Never over water or over fertilize, it’s easy to do.
Flowers attract pollinators. Marigolds repel unwanted insects.
Most importantly thank God not just for the harvest but also for the time spent gardening.
Put garlic around your garden to keep snakes out.
Well, either I’m just slow or it’s true that gardening is a lifelong education. I agree with Mr. Bass, my garden helps keep me humble. If I had the list of everything I’ve done wrong … Here is an example, something I forget to do – if you buy garden plants check and double check any labels and even then they may not be right. Some folks put things back in the wrong place and there must be gremlins somewhere who switch labels around.
I love to hear wisdom from our ‘kin’. Most of the time it is words of gold. My MIL says to plant peanuts in the ‘dark nite’ of April. I assumed it meant between full and 1st quarter of the moon. That is the way most peanut growers grow as I have been told. I am still learning from your words of wisdom and another You Tuber by the name of Hollis. Your Almanac is a big help also. Question…when is your Cookbook coming out. I do use the one you already have and am looking forward to the next one. Have a Blessed day and please say Hello to Granny. God Bless
Glenda-So glad you are enjoying the calendar! The cookbook will be out in May and I’ll be sure to let you know when I start selling it 🙂
Good Morning Tipper! When I have a garden, I plant marigolds in various areas sprinkled throughout the garden and around its perimeter. I heard the marigolds keep the bugs away, I don’t know how true that is, I just know it didn’t seem like I had a lot of bugs, but I did have a few. I had a follow up doctors appointment yesterday. On my drive there, I was amazed at how quickly everything is blooming. The farther south I went, the more budding leaves filled the trees. In the parking lot at the doctor’s, I noticed some flying insects on my windshield. I thought ”wow! Everything is out early this year.” Then it donned on me – April is next week! I am still wondering where January went. I loved rereading the garden wisdom in this post. I remember reading it way back when you first posted it. That seems like just yesterday! Where did 2008 go?? Probably the same place January of this year went – into the vast land of our memories.
Donna. : )
Donna,
My wife’s Grandmother always set out marigolds around her garden to repel insects. Every time I smelled the odor they emitted, I thought, I can understand why they would repel an insect.
I did not know or had forgotten that marigolds are used in various kinds of medical remedies.
Here’s an article on the odor and use of marigolds to repel insects.
Marigolds – What Do Marigolds Keep Away – Seriously Flowers
Marigolds have a toxic substance in their roots that works in tandem with the flower’s very odorous smell to keep away garden pests. Nematodes and several types of beetles are repelled by the smell of marigolds, which is why many gardeners choose to plant them around vegetable gardens.