How to Groom your Garden

Garden Tips

37 Garden / Lawn and Indoor Plants tips, hints, and tricks

Natural Insecticide

Add onions and garlic to a jar of water, let it stand for a week, and spray plants with it.

Inexpensive Frogs

Cut plastic mesh baskets that strawberries and other fruits are packed in at the grocery store, to fit into the bottom of vases for use as frogs to hold cut flowers.

Wide Flower Vase

If your vase is too wide for flowers, use clear tape across the mouth to make a smaller opening for your arrangement.

Rose Holder

When cutting thorny rose stems, hold onto the stem with a spring clothespin.

Protect Bushes

Invert bushel baskets over small bushes during cold weather to protect them. Anchor with old-fashion wood clothespins, shoved over the wire handles of the baskets.

Tomato Ties

Cut old stockings lengthwise to make ties for tomato plants. These will not cut into the stalk, and are very strong.

Painted Flower Pots

Invert flower pots over a large tin can when painting them. They can easily be turned and left until the paint dries.

Vegetable Carrier

Replace the bottom of a wooden box with chicken wire and place your freshly-picked vegetables in it. Spray the vegetables with a hose, and dirt and bugs will be washed out, without dirtying your kitchen sink.

Flower Display

If your vase is too deep for your cut flowers, crush a paper towel and put in the bottom of the vase. This will also hold moisture.

Preserving Flowers

Spray cut flowers with hair spray to make them last longer

Tinting Flowers

Mix some food coloring in warm water and put flower stems in the solution. Stems will absorb the color and tint the flowers.

Removing Poison Ivy

Mix a gallon of soapy water and 3 pounds of salt and spray the area.

Grow Parsley

Wet a clean sponge and sprinkle with parsley. Place near a window and you will soon have a large clump of foliage.

Rabbit Plague

Dust the cheapest talcum power you can find around the base of your vegetable plants outside and it will quickly rid you of rabbit and flea beetle pests.

Sowing Seeds

Use a salt shaker to sow seeds in your garden--it will distribute the seeds more evenly.

Watering Seedlings

Push a drinking straw into the soil and funnel water into it to avoid disturbing new seedlings.

Lawn Tips

Let new grass grow to at least 2 1/2 inches high before mowing. Never mow any grass to less than 1 1/2 inches.

Watering the Lawn

Light watering of your lawn causes grass to turn up and become shallow. Always thoroughly drench your lawn.

Killing Weeds

Pour boiling salt water on grass or weeds growing between sections of sidewalk

Preventing Weeds

Sprinkle salt or cheap motor oil between brinks in a walk to prevent grass and weeds from growing.

Rejuvenated Flowers

Wilted flowers will miraculously revive in very hot water.

Speeding Blooms on Roses

Add a lump of sugar to the water to make rosebuds open up.

Long-Lived Flowers

Prolong the life of fresh cut flowers by adding 2 tablespoons of white vinegar ad 2 teaspoons of cane sugar to a quart of water.

Window Boxes

To keep rain from splattering dirt on your windows, put a layer of gravel on top of your window boxes

Marigold Odor

Add a teaspoon of sugar to the water in vases of marigolds to remove their strong smell

Watering Plants

Plants may fail if the water is too cold or hot-use room temperature water.

Over Watering

Delay watering if topsoil feels moist. A major cause of houseplant deaths is overwatering

Egg Water

Use the water in which eggs have been boiled to water plants-a good source of minerals

Water With Club Soda

Water plants with stale club soda - remaining chemicals add vinegar and color to plants

Watering Tip

Plants in hanging baskets can easily be watered by putting ice cubes on top of the soil and allowing them to melt

Melted Snow

Snow contains wonderful minerals for plants - allow some to melt and water with it

Fern Tonic

Water ferns once a week with weak tea a good tonic

Watering While on Vacation

For extended absences, put plants in the bathtub on thickly folded newspapers in a few inches of water. Water will be absorbed through the bottom of the pots.

Mending Plants

Small splints made of toothpicks and tape often save broken stems

Glossy Leaves

Swab plant leaves with a few drops of glyercine on a cloth for a glossy shine

Sick Plants

A tablespoon of castor oil chased by water brings sick plants out of their slump

Mini Trellis

Bend a wire coat hanger into a loop to make a small trellis for potted ivy-push the ends into the soil.