Tips for New Gardeners

Walsh Nursery would like to offer new tips for new gardeners! Thank you

1. You've heard that  you can let your herbs grow all summer and just keep clipping them for fresh herbs. This isn't  isn't true for Cilantro and Dill. They go to seed and lose most of their flavor.  It is true for Basil and Chives.

2. When people try to tell you that you need a compost box or some other contraption- you really don't. Just dump all your vegetable scraps, hair clippings (these keep deer out of your garden too), dryer lint and egg shells in a pile. Throw weed and grass cuttings and leaves on it. Turn it with a shovel every once in a while and water it. You'll have great organic fertilizer.

3. Never set your compost heap on fire. As the organics decompose they release methane gas. You will have an inferno on your hands.

4. Plant lettuce adjacent to the butternut squash that will creep its way over and eventually take over. It's okay because you lettuce will have been harvested by then.

5. Try not to sit containers in full mid-day sun. You may have chosen plants that say they require full sun, but container gardens heat up much more quickly and intensely than in the ground gardens. Most plants will welcome some relief from mid-day sun.

6. If you plant Peppermint it will thrive but it will continue to thrive until it takes over.

7. Forsythia can be cut and stuck into the ground and it will grow impressively.

8.  Some potting mixes come with fertilizer already mixed in. Some don't. Either way, container plant roots can't spread out looking for additional food in the        soil nearby, so you will need to replenish soil nutrients regularly. Good choices are a time released fertilizer mixed in when planting or a water soluble fertilizer every 2-4 weeks.

9. Twilight is the buggiest time in the garden.

10. When you finally find tomato cages and they are reasonably priced, realize that if you try to put them on your tomato plants now -  you will damage some of the stalks and some of the tomatoes will drop on the ground before they ripen.