Gardening Hacks Part 2

In 2021, saw 18.3 million new households take to gardening, largely as a result of the scamdemic. The increase was especially strong in growing fruits and vegetables. From 2019 to 2023, that number grew from 33% to 67% of households reporting growing some or all of their fruits and vegetables.

My husband and I are among those new numbers. In 2021 we moved to acreage exactly to be able to be more self-sufficient. It started with learning as I had never grown a head of lettuce before. My gardening has gotten a little better each year, but I'm still on a steep learning curve. While having read much about planting and caring for plants, I have now branched into the care of the soil and how important that is for growing great vegetables. Here are six methods of improving your soil.

See PART ONE for the first six ideas for improving your soil--free or for the cost of a few seeds. This will also link you to the video from which I got these ideas. The video has exponentially more detail, including many of the studies that back up these methods, and hard statistics on just how great the improvement of yield should be. For most of us, it's difficult to have 36 minutes to watch a video and scribble notes, so I've put the notes here for myself to review as often as needed, and for you. But the video is well worth watching and the channel is well worth subscribing to if you're on the same journey.

Save Seeds from Your Own Plants:

This was one I found especially interesting. The seeds grown on your soil adapt to your soil. By saving seeds from what grew on your land, you not only save the time and expense of buying seeds the next spring, you get seeds better adapted to your own land and climate. You're creating seeds that naturally adapt their genetics to where their 'parent' grew.

• Choose your strongest plants. 
• Save their seeds. 
• Dry the seeds in shade. 
• Save them in glass jars.

They'll improve even more with the second and third generations of seeds from your plants grown on your land. Seven generations create meaningful adaptation.

The studies highlighted in the video on this section are particularly interesting. [Start at 26:19 for the section on seed saving.

Compost Tea Brewing: 

Soak compost in water for 24 hours, then pour on plants within 4-6 hours. This makes compost tea for beneficial microbes. Good for roots. It can help suppress diseases. 

This one is a little more controversial, however, with some studies finding no difference between compost 'tea' and plain old water. 

Your plants will love drinking this tea. I guarantee you will not. So don't.

Cover Crop Living Mulch: 

Bare soil is losing moisture, structure, and beneficial organisms. Cover crops are the way to solve this.

After you've brought in your fall harvest, scatter seeds in your garden: Some of the best cover crops that enrich your soil are:

• crimson clover -- adds nitrogen to the soil
• winter rye -- its roots reach down, creating necessary channels for water and air
• hairy vetch -- adds nitrogen to the soil

In spring, chop & drop them: Cut back and leave the cuttings on the ground to mulch and protect, as in PART ONE.

Green Manure Nitrogen Banking:

What is green manure? No, it's not manure from sick sheep. It means growing plants in order to kill them and use them to replenish the soil. Plant legumes, crimson clover, field peas, fava beans, or hairy vetch. Cut them down at peak bloom and work them into the soil.

In addition to the benefit to your soil and plants, you'll also be feeding pollinators--which are in turn good for your garden.

Synthetic fertilizers feed the plant directly, at a cost to other things. Green manure feeds the soil, keeping it healthy in order to grow your plants.

Sheet Composting/Lasagna Gardening:

Put cardboard directly on the ground where you will plant. Now layer green material, kitchen scraps, grass clippings, coffee grounds, brown material like dead leaves, straw, shredded paper, wood chips. Make each layer a few inches thick, water it and leave it for a bit. The critters in the ground create rich soil out of this.

Succession Planting and Continuous Harvest:

This could double your harvest. Instead of planting spring and fall, plant every other week. By the time the first plant bolts, the third is producing food. By the time the third is producing, you're into your fall planting.

Bonus tip from the Victory Gardens manuals: build a 'cold frame.' This is nothing more than a wooden frame with a glass top over it, which can extend your planting season by a few weeks.

A variation on this is 'relay planting' which intersperses fast growing crops with slower-growing crops so that the faster-growing ones are ready to harvest before the slower-growing crops really begin to grow and need the space.

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