Top Gardening Hacks for Beginners

If you are a beginner in gardening, you will realize that there are so many tricks that you can use to make you a more efficient garden owner. The following are some of the top best tricks and tips that you can do on your own without any relevant training or skills.

Scrapbook for a garden portfolio

Just as you would make a photo album, you can create an amazing garden portfolio using a scrapbook. In the scrapbook, you will simply have plant tags. Some of the information you will include are:

•  The place where they were bought
• Location of the plants in the garden
• Sketches and photos of the plants

Have a shovel that does not stick

Are you tired of using a shovel that keeps on sticking mud? The use of lubricant made from Teflon or silicone is all that you need to apply. This way, soil or mud will fall off instead of sticking on the shovel.

Reduce the weight of the pots

 

 The pots and planters tend to be heavy because they are filled with soil. Instead, you only to fill part of the pot with the soil, whilst the rest is filled with vermiculite, packing nuts and peat moss. You will be amazed at just how light the planters and pots will become. Now you will be able to move them around.

Avoid spilling your plants whilst transporting

 

It is not uncommon to see messed up plants when they are being moved in a car from one location to the next. If you are ferrying them in your car, have a plastic tarp and a small ladder in place. The rungs of the ladder create slots or spaces for the plants so that they do not get messed up in transit.

How to spruce up your rain gauge

 

Do you sometimes strain to read the readings on your garden rain gauge?  Food colouring added to it before the next rain will combine with the food colour so that you can clearly see the water level for easy reading.

Use plastic containers to stop aggressive plants

 

The underground roots of some plants like the gooseneck grow too quickly such that in no time, they fill up the garden space. The plastic container is cut at the bottom so that they only go downwards instead of sideways.

Guiding roots with fingers

 

If the roots in your pot start forming tight circles because they have outgrown the limited pot space, guide them outward with your fingers so that they can continue growing. The root ball can also be cut up with a knife such that you end up with vertical cuts. The plants will thus not be deprived of nutrients owing to the constriction of the roots.

Easy potting

 

Wheeling your garden plants has never been so easy with a wheelbarrow at hand. You will only need to modify it by adding plywood on the backend. This creates a flat base for placing the plants or the soil. Wood cleats will also come handy in this undertaking. 

Netting the bulbs

 

Just when you see your flowers and other plants bulb, some obnoxious pests eat the delicate bulbs. One hack is to cover the bulbs with a net. 

You will only need to remove the net in the nest season such as spring when they will spring up. Alternatively, you can just cut holes on the cloth so that the plants can grow out of them.

The tools that we use in the garden are just as important. Maintenance is the way to go and especially if you want them to last long. The digging tools for instance should always be rinsed. All you need to do is to make a pit stop at the garden hose.

 Once they have dried, you can spruce them clean by further brushing them. Talking about the gardenhose reel, ensure that it is rolled up and stored away for safety reasons. Neglecting it could meant that it gets run over by a mower or gets kinked.

In conclusion, turn around your garden with such simple hacks and you will soon have a clean, efficient and healthy garden.