If I may offer Shirley’s gardening tips free of charge. ( all have worked like a charm for me, but may end up in your compost pile in terms of usefulness for yourself.) :
- Marigolds (or any flower, spice, whatever) are not that effective. As one poster pointed out, the rabbits eat them. Rabbits are evil creatures. They eat anything. Just like deer And Mice.
This chapter is entitled: Learn from their mistakes:
My neighbors tried this method, trying to be earth friendly and organic and all that. But the problem was the woodchucks and rabbits ate what they wanted and whatever it was they( the neighbors) were using for weed control ( Cayenne?) didn’t do shit because if you don’t use something as a weed and phsycial barrier (newspaper/weed paper, mulch, etc and a fence) and you don’t want to be out in the garden ever other day weeding, you will be up to your armpits within three weeks with weeds, as my neighbors were. By 4th of July, you couldn’t see where the garden was. Of which, naturally, I mocked them.
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Long before you plant your garden, put up a fence. The rabbits and other vermin who want a snack at the all you can eat salad bar you will have will check it out and see that
there is nothing there, we must go elsewhere.
( It’s worked great for me and I live in the sticks. There is a 10 acre field of weeds -read: varmit condo and recreation world - next to us and the critters and weeds are at least 50x worse than anything the average burb homeowner will encounter in their lives, trust me. I would love to live in a subdivision.)
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Forget the lion poop & piss in your garden.Do you really want to ask the local Lion Tamer for a bucket of Simba’s crap? I didn’t think so. After you do your fence, if you have a dog, just spread some of the hair from the dogs brush around the perimeter of the fence. Dog poop works too, if you are so inclined, but I wasn’t. My dog constantly sniffed and layed around the outside of the garden, thus keeping the bravest bunnies at a distance after the fact from her scent, not her ferocity.
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If you don’t have a dog, then tie some old aluminum pie pans or put some whirlygigs around the garden. Keeps away birds too. ( Pie pans work great and are a cheap alternative. Also, they help bring in static electricity into your garden which helps green them up, per Jerry Baker.)
I am going to share with you the most important thing you will need to know about a garden, and it is through a little test:
WHAT is the most important feature about a house?.
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The foundation.If your foundation is done half assed, everything else in the house
( windows, walls, roofing…) will suffer.
Ok, that in mind.
1)Put up your fence.
2)Till the soil. ( Maybe this one first if you have a big rototiller or tractor.)
3)Pick out your weed barrier. ( mulch, weed paper, etc.) I like newspaper because it is cheap ( read: free, I get it off the neighbors and family.) and at the end of the growing season, you can till it into the soil to rot and compost. I used two fat Sunday Sections thick this year and next year, I plan on at least four. It decomposes quickly.
After I put down the paper ( using the hose to wet it down to keep it from blowing away) and after I planted seed, I used straw ( not hay, hay has weeds in it) on top of that ( to help keep the paper down and moisture in). I had a 30x50 garden for my first time effort and it took about 9 bales of straw to cover it completely. I thought I bit off more than I could chew, but apparently I have a big mouth.
I also set up a permanent sprinkler that covered every inch of the garden ( atop an old plastic table) so all I had to do was turn on the faucet in the AM ( night waterings can rot the roots and shock the plants) as easy as pie, rather than trudging out to the garden dragging the hose and setting up every day. (It’s about 30 yards away from my house.)
I will tell you this, in my first time effort for a real veggie garden, it took me about a week to do the foundation work of the rows, mulch and straw then seeding. ( I only bought tomato plants)(Bear in mind I have a toddler and my time was limited to short duration in the garden every day before hubby would get home. And after he was, I was too pooped to putz in the garden.)
All the preparation was worth it, despite my neighbors mocking me ( as I mocked them. We are a mockery of houses here.) The only weeds I got ( I swear to God) were after a veggie had finished producing and I would yank the plant from the garden for the compost bin. There was where the weeds perked up, and that was mid august. By the time the corn came in ( on Delta, on time 
) I just tilled everything under with a shovel ( a pain) and it didn’t matter.
Also, after you till ( spring time tilling), you may want to use a commercial product like Preen to help keep the weeds from setting in. There are more stringent products out there, but preen BEFORE the WEEDS set in, works very well and has fertilizers. In the fall tilling, use a harsher product like Round Up to kill all the weeds. (wear gloves and a mask, the stuff is noxious.)
Gardening is a humbling experience. It is best to start smaller than you want and then get bigger and adventurous from year to year.
Plant only what you will use/eat. I bought, stupidly, 10 tomato plants. I probably needed two. I was giving away about twenty big fat tomatos daily once they started to ripen. ( Although, I must say, what I didn’t use from my garden, I did trade for things: I got a couple of kids videos in exchange for a bag of tomatoes, corn and squash. Not a bad deal.
You can get your seeds for free by saving them from your produce that you buy from the store and drying them out on paper towels and putting them in airtight containers. ( Baby food jars are excellent.) Just remember to mark what is what, because in about a week, you won’t remember. Look at a package of store bought seeds for planting instructions at the store for how to plant your stolen seeds. If you plant them incorrectly you probably won’t get squat at all, except frustration. FOLLOW THE PLANTING INSTRUCTIONS RELIGIOUSLY. Think of it as washing a new red sock with white work shirts. One little thing could ruin an entire batch. Got it? Good!
Seeds, btw, from the store, have a shelf life of about 6-8 years. Keep them in a cool place ( Mine are in the butter thingy in the door of the fridge) I’ve had 8 year old sunflower seeds work like a charm. There is a way to test to see if the seeds are still good. It’s painless. Put a couple of seeds in a wet paper towel, fold it up and put it in a jar or baggie in your fridge. In a couple of days ( 3-12) you should see sprouts. If no, the seeds are poopy.
Also, soaking your seeds in warm water
( until they swell up) before planting, will help them germinate faster.
I did this seed stealing with one veggie this summer ( the rest were store bought seeds) and it was spagetti squash. THAT squash was incredibly prolific and HUGE and I only fertilized twice. The store bought seed for corn produced OK results, but I had a few mutant purple ears of corn that had kernals that looked like grapes.)
Total out of pocket expense for the garden for 1999: Less than $100, but that includes the fence, fertilizer, weed be gone products, seeds and straw. Next year, the cost of the fence won’t be in it and since I compost, the fertilizer cost will be virtually none.
Good luck, be patient and happy gardening.
