Developing Different Gardening Habits in Five Tips

July 14th, 2012 Garden

Once you become a creature of habit, it’s extremely hard to change. This holds true for harmful things like drinking and smoking, and even for healthier activities like gardening. Yeah, it might not seem like it, but bad gardening habits can definitely creep in and ruin your hobby. Here are some tips you can check out in order to change up those gardening habits that may be a bit harmful.

A lot of people take too long to dry out their herbs and they end up either losing a lot of flavor or going bad altogether. Don’t throw them in the oven either. You’ll sap out too much moisture too quickly! Instead, try laying your herbs out on newspaper and putting them in the back seat of your car. Close the door to make sure no more moisture enters, and you should have perfectly dried herbs in no time.

The trouble with unlabeled plants is that it might be hard to tell them apart from weeds or from other plants as they first begin to grow. If you’re growing in the garden from seed to full plant, you might mistakenly pluck up your good plants and leave the weeds. This is when it’s a great idea to label your plants. Just get a stone or some other type of marker and set it beside the right plant so that you always remember.

Having twine or some type of string is always a good idea in a garden. However, when you’re out there wearing gloves and fussing around with your garden, it can be hard to get the twine string started. This just complicates things and extends the time you need to spend out there. If you take a clay pot, however, and string the loose end through the hole, you have an attractive, functional twine dispenser that will always work when needed.

Just like with the end of the twine getting lost and costing you time, your scissors or whatever else you’re using to trim your twine can also cause some problems if it wants to jam on you. To get around this, just spray it down with some vegetable oil, canola oil, olive oil, or another type of natural oil. Avoid things like WD-40 and other crude oil-based products. You don’t want that stuff anywhere near your plants.

There’s something about clay that just loves attracting salt. Depending on what types of plants you’re growing in your pots, this might actually be harmful to the plant. At the very least, it’s going to be harmful to your pot. Your pots may eventually crack unless you get rid of the deposits. A quick, natural way to get rid of these deposits is to mix up some water, vinegar and rubbing alcohol together in a spray bottle. Then just hit the pot, leave it set for a few minutes, and wipe it off.

As you can see from the article above, a lot of these bad habits aren’t so serious that you need to instantly change or else suffer garden annihilation. However, these pesky little habits can still be quite annoying, especially if you’re trying to save time out there. Use what you’ve learned here to help create new habits.