New Garden Site, let Others Do the Work

Have you selected a new garden site, and now you want to prepare it? You can spade it, but that’s hard work. Try covering it with black plastic. In one month, and often less, all plant life under the plastic will die, and the soil will have a delightfully soft, moist quality. For a much more thorough job, put a hog or two in the area. Pigs will prepare the area more completely than a rototiller. They will eat all the weeds and their roots and will turn over the soil — and fertilize it.

Row Markers — Look, Ma, No Strings!

A picket fence on a hoe? I glanced at the weird contraption lying on the ground next to Ray Lambert’s garden. “That’s my row marker,” he chuckled. “My grandfather had a homemade row marker. I used features of his and added my own ideas.”

Lb the blade of an old garden hoe, he attached horizontally a three-foot length of 1″ x 2″ lumber. On either end, he centered a one-foot length of lumber, pointed on each end like a picket fence, perpendicular to the first piece. Protruding from the underside, at one foot intervals, are two more pointed pieces, each six inches long.

Ray combines elements of wide row, raised-bed, and square-bed methods in his garden. He can use the side of the row marker with three-foot spacing to lay out a three-foot-wide row, or to mark the location of two rows of strawberry plants three feet apart.

He can flip the marker over and pull it carefully down the center of a raised bed to mark out one-foot spacing, then pull it across the bed at right angles to the first set of marks to make a grid. If he needs six-inch spacing, he can move the marker over for a second pull which is halfway between the first marks.

His versatile and efficient tool eliminates tedious measuring and stretching of strings.

“I made this set of garden stakes that also can be used for measuring,” explains one gardener. If you’re too lazy to put the pegs in the stakes at the proper distances for your garden, just mark on the stakes with an indelible pencil. Once built, your stakes and your twine are always right there, ready for use.

Use a little lime to mark each row before making the furrow— especially good for lime-lovers like lettuce, beets, and spinach.

Drop a few radish seeds in each row as you plant. They will germinate quickly to remind you that something else is planted there. Because they mature so quickly, they serve as a thinning device, since they leave space for the main crop as they are harvested.

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