Gardening Tips

• Try not to get crazy about insects chewing on your plants. If you fret about every little thing, gardening will not be a fun activity. Remember, bugs need to eat too.
• Do not use pesticides – poisons are not fun. They often kill beneficial insects along with the unwanted ones.
• Practice companion planting, e.g. onions and garlic around carrots and other root crops.
• Attract beneficial insects by planting flowers around your vegetable plot. Fennel and dill both attract a beneficial wasp that preys on aphids.
• Become observant. Check for aphids and rub them out with your hand or blast them with the hose.
• Look for cabbage butterfly larvae under the leaves and pick them off. A few holes is not a problem, as it usually the outer leaves that are affected.
• Slugs can be trapped with beer or kept away from vulnerable plants with eggshells.
• Save seed pods of flowers that you would like to propagate.
• Take cuttings of bedding plants like geraniums, fuchsias and heliotrope. Do the same with shrubs and bush fruits, too.
• Prune summer flowering heathers, and give hedges a final trim.
• Pull up tomato plants by the end of the month and ripen indoors any unripened tomatoes.
• Sow winter vegetables (lettuce, swiss chard and kale).
• Order new fruit trees and bushes and prepare soil by digging in compost and manure.
• Remove yellow leaves from water plants. Remove, clean and store water pump.
• Plant rye grass as a cover crop for your vegetable garden to restore nitrogen to the soil.

• If your domestic use pesticide has both the poison symbol (skull & crossbones) and a pest control product (pcp) number on its label, it can be dropped off at one of two local depots at no charge: Wastech at 1200 United Blvd, Coquitlam (604-517-6556) or Edmonds Return-it Depot at 7496 Edmonds St, Burnaby (604-527- 0466)
• If you have a small amount of pesticide without its original label, it can be put in the garbage if treated as follows. If liquid, pour it on some cat litter or sawdust until it is completely absorbed. Let it dry completely and then triple bag it and put it in your normal household garbage. If it is a dry pesticide, triple bag it and put it into the garbage. To triple bag something, you put it in a garbage bag and securely seal that bag, repeat with a second garbage bag and again with a third bag. Each bag must be securely closed. Do not put liquid pesticides directly into the garbage.
• Large amounts of pesticide must be handled by hazardous waste personnel (Tervita Corporation, 1-800-667-0444).

Read our full article on Planting Bare Root Roses here.

• Be careful with manure or a high-nitrogen fertilizer when preparing the soil for tomatoes as it will promote lots of leaves and produce few tomatoes.
• Put a teaspoon of Epsom salts in the bottom of the planting hole, this appears to make them more productive and consistent in size and shape.
• Taking most of the foliage off the plants in the first week of August helps to ripen them faster.
• Just after the tomatoes ripen, water them well with slightly salty water. It will improve the flavour.
• Groom indeterminate tomatoes by pinching “suckers” regularly so that the plant will put its energy into making fruit instead of leaves. Keep tomatoes well watered (avoid wetting the leaves!) and fed. If they’re in the ground feed with compost tea, fish emulsion or kelp every two weeks while they’re in active growth. Tomatoes in containers require weekly feeding in order to have good results.
• Do you have any tips for growing Tomatoes? Please share!

• Peas, spinach and radishes can be started ahead of the last frost date, but most seedlings and seeds go out after the last frost date, which in Vancouver is usually March 28, although it has been as early as Feb. 25 and as late as April 10.
• Don't grow too much. The No. 1 mistake beginner gardeners make is to sow too much seed and grow more than they can look after. Sow less and save the rest for another time.
• Keep it simple. Set yourself up for success by growing easy vegetables: radishes, spinach, lettuce, bush beans, broad beans, potatoes, spinach, beets, chard and kohlrabi.
  As well, consider gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and komatsuna (mustard spinach). Mescluns (mixed salad greens) do well in containers.
• Your veggie patch needs at least six hours of sunshine. Make sure you have fertile, loamy, well-drained soil that is more alkaline than acidic.
• Don’t grow the same vegetables in the same location two years running. This will help reduce pests and diseases.
• Growing a wide range of vegetables promotes a healthier, more balanced environment where pests and diseases are less likely to get out of control.
• Peas like being next to carrots and dislike being next to onions and garlic. Companion planting seems to work. Grow carrots near tomatoes, rosemary next to sage, radishes next to lettuce, peas and carrots, bush beans with celery and beets, corn with pumpkins and beans.

• Do you have any tips to share? Send them in here!