12 Gardening Hacks to Garden Better and Save Money

4 years ago, I'd never successfully raised so much as a head of lettuce. We're on a steep learning curve--but we are learning. Each year, I've done better with my growing, but I could hardly claim to have a green thumb, yet. I've put a lot of work into achieving middling results last summer. Almost none of my seedlings grew. Of the plants I bought and planted, I got a few cucumbers, a decent amount of yams (though digging them out no doubt burned far more calories than I gained from eating them!), my watermelons got buried in overgrown foliage, and though I had a massive abundance of tomatoes, I could never seem to get them right as they were ready for the table. I constantly caught them either still green or overripe and inedible. Thus, the learning continues.

I did quite well with cayenne peppers, pretty well with herbs and other peppers, and okay with long-neck squash. I did great with the pumpkins I didn't even plant but grew wild here, possibly from the planting the previous owner had done.

In continuing to learn, I recently found the video 6 Banned WWII Soil Hacks Corporations Prayed You'd Never Find. It actually gives 12 tips, which I'll summarize here, as I find it much easier to scan a page of text than to listen to 36 minutes, trying to remember everything. However, if you're also working toward better gardening techniques, it's a great channel with good advice and listening to the video will give you more detail about how and why these things work, and numerous studies to back up the information, all of which is quite interesting.

The short history of why these techniques have been largely forgotten by the modern farmer (not banned) is....drum roll...money. Big surprise. These techniques cost nothing and give you a healthier garden than constantly buying fertilizer and all the other modern products. Ergo, these companies lose billions of dollars a year if everyone turns to these.

Because it will become a long read, I'm dividing the hacks into two posts. Here are the first six and please leave comments with your own tips or thoughts on these methods, especially if you've used them and what your results are:

Chop and Drop: 

Cut the plant at the base, cut cover crops and weeds and leave them on the soil as mulch to feed microbes and build organic matter. It also reduces evaporation and erosion, which is needed for healthy soil. Studies have shown that the more mulch, the more you reduce evaporation. More shockingly, mulched soil lost (in one trial) no topsoil at all, while unmulched soil lost 41 tonnes. [A tonne is a metric ton, which equals about 2,204.6 pounds.]

Use Forest Soil: 

Put small amounts of healthy forest soil to your garden to bring in native microbes and fungi. If you're hunting the forest at the right time, you may also find a fun guy. But I doubt it. 

One teaspoon of forest soil contains up to one billion bacteria, several yards of fungal threads and thousands of protozoa--which is good for your soil. 

The Mycorrhizal Handshake: 

Encourage symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi partnerships with plant roots for better nutrient/water uptake. 80% of land plants work with underground fungi called mycorrhizal that more than double the intake of phosphorous, increase nitrogen intake by 67%, and plant biomass by 47%. What does that mean in plain English and practical terms, you may ask. It's another way of improving your soil.

In practical terms, this means: 

• Do not over-till-grow (it destroys fungal threads that cannot quickly re-grow.
• Leave live roots in the ground all year, as the fungi need the living host plant.
• Do not use high-phosphorous synthetic fertilizers because they suppress the mychorrhizal colonization your garden needs.

No-Till Mound Planting: 

Build raised planting mounds rather than tilling, to preserve to soil structure, and stop loss of topsoil.

Tilling shreds fungal threads, exposes carbon to oxygen, thus releasing it as carbon-dioxide.

It breaks apart the aggregates that hold water.

The mound warms faster in the spring than the soil and allows water to drain away from the seed, preventing rot.

Companion Planting for Pest Control:

While I'm trying to stick to the bare-bones advice, it's interesting to note that much of this advice, including marigolds, came directly from the government's Victory Garden pamphlets in WWII designed to help Americans grow as much food as possible on their own in the face of potential shortages.

French Marigolds are the best. Oui, oui! Marigold roots release compounds that hinder root-destroying worms (nematodes to be exact). They repel white flies and beetles. They attract bugs that eat aphids and caterpillars that will otherwise harm your crops.

Put basil near tomatoes to repel aphids and white flies and potentially improve the tomatoes' flavor.

Nasturtiums attract aphids so they leave your other plants alone. Nasturtium is also edible.

Dill and fennel attract helpful insects.

From sources other than the video, here are more flowers that attract beneficial critters such as bees or deter pests, or both.

• Lavender
• Calendula (also medicinal)
• Chrysanthemum 
• Petunia
• Catnip
• Tansy
• Yarrow
• Bee Balm
• Borage
• Mint
• Geranium
• Sweet Alyssum
• Zinnia
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Cosmos

Three Sisters: 

Plant corn, beans and squash together, as each helps the other. An excellent diagram at 19:16 in the video shows one way of doing this: Rose of squash between rows of corn, and beans tucked in between corn and squash.

This is an age-old technique in which the corn provides a 'trellis' for the beans to climb up, the beans provide nitrogen to help the corn, and the squash provides ground cover that helps prevent weeds and retain moisture.

I strongly encourage you to visit the above video for more detail on all of this, but for those who simply need the recommendations or reminders, without trying to find it within the video (as I will as I start to use these tips throughout the spring and summer), here they are, easy to read. 

Watch for PART TWO with six more tips to come. For more gardening and medicinal herbs, use the topic links on the side of this article.

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