Gardening Tips

One of my little tricks is to lay down several sections of newspaper and pike the needles on top. The newspaper allows water to penetrate to the plants but stops weed growth. Note - use black and white newsprint pages only, no color or shiny paper.

 

LOL - my typing wasn't so good - "pile" the needles on top

 

I'm cheap so don't count on me for expensive tips.

Cheap trick on fertilizer - for plants and trees needing nitrogen rich soil, save up your egg shells and when they have dried out, make a power of them using the blender and use that in the soil.

Another cheap trick - if you have goldfish and change the water, use the old water for your garden. Excellent fertilizer. I kept getting bigger fishtanks as the goldfish grew not realizing that they would grow in proportion to the tank size. When I finally had a 2ea 50 gallon tanks, a very expensive filteration system and pumps, and 3 now fully grown carp, I had to change the water weekly since the fish put out so much waste. I was feeding pond pellets. I used to run a siphon hose from the tank through the window to a garden outside. I've had lots of gardens and lots of plants but never any as nice as those.

 

Goldfish are cheap and if they die, instead of the porcelain funeral, bury them in your garden - lessons learned from the native Americans

 

The pond might work. As for the beer, I can think of better things to do with my beer than pour it on plants. I'll take a more direct approach to getting it into my body.

 

I love cheap gardening tips! Here are some more with egg shells (and coffee grounds):

Make sure to rinse egg shells before using them in the garden (I'm not sure why - I was told to do it and I have. Someone might be able to tell us if this is a myth or not).

Place egg shells in a circle on top of the ground surface around tender plant stems such as peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage to deter slugs (we have lots of slugs around here and this really works) and cutworms.
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[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]Put egg shells in the soil (blend like RH suggested) near tomatoes. Calcium is [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]very[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica] useful to tomatoes because the extra calcium will help prevent blossom end rot. [/FONT][/FONT]

Use them with coffee grounds. Egg shells provide calcium to your garden while coffee grounds provide a high content of nitrogen to your garden. Calcium and nitrogen supplements (egg shells and coffee grounds) will help keep your garden soil and plants healthy. ​

 

Unless I need need to make fertilizer, all my coffee ground and egg shells go into my compost pile. Also, when I am raising worms, I use them in the worm farm bed. Talk about good fertilizer - the worm bed is all nutrient when the worm season is over or when you're ready to start a new batch

 

Andy, worm beds or "farms" can be very simple plastic container or tub arrangement. If you would like to make some money from the farm, you can get a little more elaborate. Here's a good link to a "farm" setup. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/envirom/wormfarm.htm

Composting is the same - you can go simple and cheap or elaborate and expensive. I do 2 kinds of composting. I have a 3 bin arrangement a cabinetmaker friend made me as a birthday present one year, It's about 9 ft long, separated into 3 bins, each with slats across the fron which can be removed for turning the compost. I use it because it was a present but my preferred composting method is a pile that I can easily turn. It should get a fair amount of sun since the composting will be enhanced by the elevated temperature on the indise of the pile. It also need some moisture so if it doesn't rain for a while, just wet it down. I also add raw cow and horse manure from the farm up the road. Early and late in the season, I cover the pile with black plastic to enhance the temperature. And NO, a well managed compost pile does not smell bad.

 

I have a friend, a retired school superintendent, who started his farm business raising worms. He eventually expanded the farms to include all garden products, fruits and veggies and a pumpkin patch but the worms got his business started.

I've never done enough to sell - mine have been for fishing and soil amendment only - but I know worm castings sell for around $6 to $7 a lb. so you would have to have quite a number of worm beds to make any decent money. You can also sell the worms themselves.

I've never heard of the rabbit connection but I did a google and found the following link - Rabbits and Vermicomposting

There is a lot of information on the web about worm farming. Pretty interesting.