Random Useful Tips

This will be an ongoing list of hopefully helpful bits of info as I think of them. It goes without saying that growing techniques and gardens are as multitudinous and individually unique as the people who create them. There is not one right way. If it resonates with you, test it out!



--Improve compost by keeping a chamber pot for your kids and/or yourself. Empty the pee onto the compost pile for heat-adding nitrogen. To increase microbial activity and diversity of compost, empty your used dishwater onto the pile. You can even throw on a bucket of pond water now and again if you have access, to really diversify.

--Don't be afraid of straw or wood mulch to cover your beds. Garden centers and many avid gardeners, in my experience, discourage the use of straw because it can contain grain seeds--I suppose there may be a slight risk of spreading viral grain diseases, I don't know--If grain seeds sprout they are very apparent and usually in small numbers. (They look like thick grass.) Just pull them out if you don't want them.

I have been told that there has been a school of thought around for a while that believed decaying wood to be bad for your vegetables. However, now the science that once warned against wood has discovered that decaying wood adds extremely beneficial microbial, nutritional, and fungal elements to soil. Both wood and straw mulch help retain moisture and add these helpful microbes, nutrients and fungi as they decay. (Thanks Becka!) Try thinking of your soil in your garden as a forest floor: A place where layers of organic debris grow and die, stuff falls from trees, creatures die and everything decomposes, creating a rich nutrient self-sustaining bed for little seedlings.

--For FREE MULCH, contact one or more local Arborists in early spring and request a truck-load of wood-chip mulch. Do it as soon as you see their trucks and chippers out and about. You may have to wait a month or two, since the mulch is given to their tree-trimming customers first. Keep in mind that this mulch is irregular in size and contains leaves and some sticks. But for free, it does the job. It seems that the leaf content actually helps it decompose faster--like a self-composter. We had a truck load piled in our driveway for several days and we could see the heat coming out of it!

--I recently got a tree planting tip from a master gardener at the Farmer's Market. When you are planting trees make sure that any roots that have begun to grow in a circular manner around the bottom of the pot are cut so that every single root hangs straight down. If any roots are left growing in that circular motion, the tree could live for 15 years, then die suddenly without ever knowing why.