Try These Garden Tips From Our Readers!
As the growing season winds down, there’s still plenty to do in the garden, from saving the last of the tomato crop to getting spring bulbs in the ground. These reader-tested tips make fall chores quicker and easier, and a few of them reuse things you probably already have around the house.
Repurpose knitting needles in the garden
If you have more knitting needles than you need, or you stumble into old ones at a garage sale like Jessie did, reuse them in the garden. With a permanent marker, write the name of the plant on a used wine cork, then pierce the cork with the needle. The other end goes into the ground a couple inches deep like you see above, depending on the size of the needle, and makes a weatherproof and economical marker.
—Tip submitted by Jessie King, ME
Help tomatoes ripen before the first frost
Those green tomatoes hanging from your plants at summer’s end probably aren’t going to be ripening before the first frost—not without some assistance.
In her cool Maine climate, Karen harvests entire branches of green tomatoes a few weeks before the projected first frost. She cuts the vines just above the crown of the plant, takes them to her shed and hangs them upside down from screws in the rafters. With a row of windows on the southwest side of the shed offering warmth and ample room for airflow between the vines, the tomatoes continue to ripen on the vine and she harvests them into fall.
—Tip submitted by Karen Rollings, ME
Trim frozen stems of hostas and tomatoes
If you hate cleaning up mushy stems of frostbitten hosta and tomatoes, but don’t want to pull them out until you absolutely have to, try Trisha’s tip: She heads to the garden with her pruners first thing in the morning after a frost and cuts them back before they thaw and while they’re still frozen and brittle. It makes the task quick and easy.
—Tip submitted by Trisha Burdick, MN
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Avoid uprooting a dormant plant
When your garden is bursting, sometimes you accidentally uproot a dormant plant. So at planting time, Jeanne cuts a 2-inch-thick rim off of the plant’s plastic pot and secures it around the crown of the plant with landscape pins, sometimes cutting a slit in the rim to make space for larger plants. The rim sits on top of the soil — it’s hidden while the plant is growing but is easy to see when the plant is dormant.
Jeanne finds this most helpful for spring bulbs and the prairie smoke (Geum trifolium) above, but it’s also handy for marking small fall-planted perennials so you don’t forget where you put them by spring.
—Tip submitted by Jeanne Vaver, IL
Pre-mix flower bulbs before planting in fall
Make fall bulb planting easier—and your spring show last longer by premixing your bulbs according to bloom time. Barbara mixes early-, mid- and late-blooming spring bulbs into paper bags and labels each bag according to the garden bed she plans to plant in. Then planting is a breeze: Just grab your premixed bag, head to the spot and dig them in!
—Tip submitted by Barbara Athanas, WA
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Photos courtesy of the contributors
