Mad Planter Gardening Tips

Lucky us, the Mad Planter has shared some of his tips for success in the garden! Read on for his top tips.

Start small! You don’t need a big space to grow lots of delicious vegetables. My garden is small, but, golly, does it produce! I’ll be planting pea seeds around St. Patrick’s Day if the soil can be tilled (not too wet, doesn’t clump). Once the peas are done, I’ll plant beans from seeds or plants. Last year I had three crops of beans!

Fence in the vegetable garden. Those veggies are for you, not the deer and woodchucks! Plant what you like to eat! Obviously I love beans.

Weed! Weeds can get very tall, so I use a hoe to eliminate small weeds.

Mulch! I love to plant but am not crazy about weeding. Mulching with black plastic, straw, grass clippings or bark chips will keep the weeds down and water in.

And speaking of water, plants need about 1 to 2 inches of water a week. Don’t tease the leaves! Shallow watering only moistens the top layer of the soil and discourages the roots from growing down.

Fertilize! I love to eat, don’t you?!? Well, plants need to eat, too, and what they need is fertilizer. I like to use a granular fertilizer for the plants in the ground. I grow eggplant in containers by my pool, which is fenced in. The bigger the container the better – who wants to water several times a day? Goes to show, veggies like tomatoes and peppers can be grown in containers if you don’t have the space for a garden.

As you can see from my hat, I love flowers! I have a cutting garden with lots of flowers for the bees and butterflies, but not deer. Zinnias, salvia, dwarf marigolds, lantana and cosmos, are just a few of the flowers that deer don’t like. I have loads of containers around the house, and I just love how petunias and begonias grow, so those are sprayed with a deer repellent. It works!

I hope that you’ll be mad about gardening, too. There’s nothing like fresh veggies and beautiful flowers.