Quick Garden Tips

This is a collection of quick garden tips that don’t warrant a whole web page by themselves. Check back as other tips get added.

Leave a steak knife in the garden

Tough stemmed vegetables should be cut off with a knife when harvesting to prevent damaging the plant. An inexpensive serrated steak knife is a handy thing to leave in the garden.  If you happen to be visiting your garden and find peppers, squash, eggplant, or other tough stemmed vegetables ready to harvest, it is nice not having to go back to the house to get one.

Find one with a plastic handle and a stainless blade to handle the elements.  Pick one with at least two rivets in the handle to secure the blade. The cheap ones without rivets break easily.  I found a great one at a charity thrift shop for less than $1.

I drilled a hole in the handle near the end so it can hang it off a wire hook on one of my squash supports. This makes it easy to get to but keeps it out of the way, especially if there are young kids in the area.  I live in the country and there are no kids around.  If there are kids who might get into your garden you may not want to leave it there or find some way to keep it out of sight.

Quick and inexpensive green onions

If you like green onions, an inexpensive way to grow them is to buy discounted onion sets mid-summer.  Onions for bulbs should be planted as early in the spring as possible.  By mid-summer the garden centers will be discounting the unsold ones.  

Plant a dozen or so sets close together every week or two and keep well-watered. They will be ready to harvest in a few weeks.  Don’t wait too long or they will start to form small bulbs.  If you do wait too long, the 1” or so bulbs are nice to add in with mixed cooked vegetables. 

You can also save some sets for early fall planting and leave them to overwinter in the garden. They will produce green onions in the early spring, and be one of your first harvests of the year.