Garden Tips and Tour
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” – Margaret Atwood
Our garden survived the unexpected April snow storm and is starting to thrive again. We lost several plants to frost but overall nature is amazingly resilient.
Here’s a pictorial tour of the garden this week!
Shelling peas
Purple Kale
Beets
Carrots
Mustard greens
Pots planted with flower and veggie seeds…
Rhubarb
Zucchini
The first round of zucchini seedlings (planted from seed) were decimated by the birds or squirrels…I’m not sure which critter is the villain but pulling seedlings out of the ground seems to be a fun pastime for them. They also like to “rearrange plant labels.” So Rude!!!
Creative Solutions
If you have birds, squirrels, rabbits, or other animals that are eating your plants, here are a few tips for protecting them.
Protect Plants from Critters
Tip One:
I highly recommend small animal playpens. I found these on Amazon and continue to add to our collection as needed.
They are powder coated and you can configure them in different sizes and shapes to fit your garden bed or individual plants.
I have some in our garden and also in our flower beds. They support peonies blooms from heavy rain and also protect young plants from rabbits and deer!
The panels come with corner brackets but they wear out after time and fall off. I recommend using black zip ties and leave the brackets in the box or use them in conjunction with zip ties.
I found these wire cloches at the Round Top Antique Fair. I purchased five of them for $25. They work great and now I wish I had more of them!
The cloches are perfect for individual plants and a good deterrent for bad bird behavior. And…they are easy to move around the garden as needed.
Tip Two:
A cloche can also indicate where you plant seeds…I found these wire baskets at Dollar Tree and they work beautifully when turned upside down!
You can hold them in place with floral U pins like this.
When the plants grow out of the small wire baskets…you can exchange them for a larger basket.
These are waste baskets…also found at Dollar Tree. Our local stores were out of black baskets so I purchased white and painted them black.
I love how they look in the garden…they are inexpensive…and very mobile!
You may also like these rectangle shape baskets. They are gold in color but can be painted black.
Tip Three:
This tip is probably best for Indoor gardening, house plants, or seed starts.
Have you seen this?
Expanding soil…I was curious to see if it really worked.
I put the soil block in a plastic tub and added water as instructed on the package.
It immediately soaked up all the water and expanded.
I added more water and after a few minutes is was saturated.
I worked the soil with my hands and then poured the excess water away.
I’m not sure it expanded 10 times but it was a nice amount of soil.
I used it to top off a few house plants that needed a refresh.
I would definitely buy this again…especially for small planting projects or winter seed sowing!
Happy Gardening!
If you have tips you would like to share…please leave a comment below!
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” – Audrey Hepburn
Cast Iron Garden Wall Hook
$12.00
