It wasn’t a problem till you got to …
A seed should be planted 4 times as deep as the seed is wide.
Marigolds repel me. They stink. So do gladiolas when the stems are crushed, like with a lawnmower.
Nastursiums will supposedly attract pests, so it you plant Nastursiums nearby, they will draw pests away from your garden. Seems like a risky proposition to me, so I don’t plant them.
Godfrey–It’s nasturtiums. I know it LOOKS wrong.
Okay–this actually works–Tired of squirrels digging up and eating your expensive hybrid tulip bulbs along about mid-February? In the fall, bury them in a couple layers of crushed oyster shell (along with dirt, of course) and throw some more shell on the top. Those cute fuzzy-tailed little bandits will go eat your NEIGHBOR’s tulips.
Also works good for caladium roots/corms–whatever those lumps are that the leaves sprout out of.
How about human female wee? 'Cause I’d go out in the back yard and uh… if I thought it would help. I would like to deter, but not destroy, the deer.
And how do you explain it to your neighbours? Wait until dark and when there’s a good show on TV? 
Dude, I’ve seen the beer-bloated body of a FOUR-inch slug. So there! 
(Seriously, when we lived in VA we had slugs that were almost as long as my foot. Do not go outside barefoot at night when they are about. Eew).
(Sorry, twickster).
Anyway, to get back on track - if you are a fisherman, after cleaning the fish, bury the remains at the roots of your roses. Best natural fertilizer there is.
Powdered milk.
Mix it in the soil when planting your tomatoes to help avoid blossom end rot.
Fold a paper towel into a cup and put in a tablespoon of powdered milk. Add your leftover seeds and put it in a baggie in the fridge to store your seeds.
This year was the first year I’ve had tulip bulbs survive to grow and bloom, instead of just having fat happy squirrels. A friend told me to bury a mothball above each bulb and the squirrels would leave them alone. It works!
Now I found out I have to dig the damn things up because it doesn’t get cold enough in Georgia for them to survive the winter. If I had known that…
Neat trick for food growers: plant corn with beans and/or peas around it. The beans and peas will climb the cornstalks. My brother-in-law does this and it works beautifully (plus makes harvesting more fun, somehow).
Indeed - “planting by the signs”. You can read all about it in Foxfire Volume 1, if you like. My dad is not a superstitious person, but deep down he really believes that if you dig a hole in one phase of the moon you’ll have too much dirt left over, and in another phase you won’t have enough to fill the hole - that’s a related folk thing.
It’s urine of a carnivore (or omnivore - something that might eat a deer).
I tried the beer thing once because I had HUGE icky tiger slugs going after my plants - but you know what? They’re not so good at climbing into trays :smack: .
That was a reply to brownie55, of course.
Here’s the straight dope on slugs+beer and marigold+ pests. For a few years, I was a member of The Marigold Society, and this is part of what I learned. Nematodes are nasty little worms that will mess up a tomato’s roots. However, they just love marigolds. If you plant marigolds next to the tomatoes, the nematodes will ignore the tomatoes to munch the marigolds. For best effect, use only “single” marigolds, not those with a double row of petals. The “mule” marigolds won’t work, either.
To get the slug trap to work, you have to bury the pan of beer, so the ground is level with the top of the pan. Pour in half an inch of beer, and leave it 'til morning. Slugs will crawl in, get drunk, and drown. If you have nothing left in the morning, some dog has lapped up all the beer and slugs. Some anglers claim the beer-marinated slugs make great catfish bait. I dunno about that.
Warding off rabbits: There is a lot of folklore on this. Some gardeners dust their tomatoes with blood meal. Others grow a border around the garden of something the bunnies supposedly don’t like to cross. Onions and marigolds are the two I know of, but I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of any bunny defense except wire fence.
A very icky, disgusting bug repellent: This was in Organic Gardening magazine, but I couldn’t bring myself to try it. The theory is that bugs will avoid the smell of their dead colleagues. Hand-collect all the garden bugs and caterpillars you can find, and mash them into a paste. Stir the paste into a gallon of water, and apply to your plants with a watering can. The author said he had a thrift-shop blender he used for nothing else. :eek:
I actually did this with mice in my garden. I caught two in mousetraps, and left their dead bodies on the edge of the planter for a couple of days to “send a message.”
It seems to have worked.
Though both are heavy feeders (meaning they leach the soil of nutrients), I had great success planting pumpkins at the end of each row of corn in my garden a few years ago.
The pumpkin plants spread out between the rows, and the raccoons don’t like the texture of the pumpkin leaves (to walk on). Saves the corn. Also saves some space.
I can’t recall where I read it, I want to say Organic Gardening back when Mike McGrath was the editor, but every Spring I have my husband go out and “water” the lilacs. (He does so under the cover of darkness!) I don’t know how much it helps, but they are thriving.
Slugs…just ask me about slugs. Having lived the first 29 years of my life in north Seattle (now Shoreline) and other places in the Puget Sound area we had monsterous slugs. I generally go out in both the morning and evening with a pair of scissors I use exclusively to bifurcate the nasty things. I saw a new trap idea (new to me, anyway) in which one cuts a 2 liter plastic soda bottle, buries the bottom half up to the rim, inverts the top half and inserts into the bottom half, adding beer. The funnel effect is supposed to make it impossible for a partially inebriated slug to escape, other animals from drinking the beer, and to slow the dilution of the beer in case of rain. One is supposed to discard dead slugs and nasty beer daily. I may try this in my large flower beds, but I will continue snipping the nasties in half when I find them around my containers and hanging baskets.
Yes, the nasty things will climb the side of the house in order to reach my hanging baskets!
I’ll second that. Don’t wonder about why it works…just follow the guidelines and enjoy the results. Anybody in this neck of the woods that is old enough to have farmed for a living, or grown up in a home that farmed for a living follows this wisdom.
Version I heard was that there’s something about the testosterone in the pee. Sounds like BS (sic) to me, but that’s what I heard.
A lady I cat-sit for actually purchased some sort (wildcat, etc) of urine to use to keep chipmunks out of her garden. So far it doesn’t seem to have been effective.