In the Garden: Tips and Tricks

At the root of some of the best gardening advice is the simple idea: Get the most out of what you got. Hennepin County Master Gardener Betty Lentz shares three tricks she uses to either maximize the space in her garden or to get multiple uses out of things she finds around her house and yard. 1.) Interplanting There are two ways to work interplanting in your garden. The idea is to take two crops that have different growing schedules (for example, a cool season crop and a warm season crop) and either plant them close together or plant them in the same row. Betty Lentz plants her lettuce close to her peppers and tomatoes. Lettuce is a cool crop -- they'll be done by July. "The [peppers and tomatoes] are really starting now to come into their own," says Lentz. "By August they will be, the tomatoes will be over the top of the cages and they'll be taking up all that space." 2.) Using newspapers as mulch Lying at the base of her tomato plants are a layer of brown, wet newspapers. She says newspapers do the job of mulching, which is to keep the weeds down and to preserve the moisture in the soil when the temperature gets hot. Also, she says it helps stop the spread of disease. Tomato diseases are in the soil, so if you can keep the soil from splashing up and contacting the leaves on your tomato, you can cut down on your tomato diseases. "Make sure it's a calm day when you do it," says Lentz. "Get your newspaper good and wet and plant your plants that you're going to be doing immediately. Otherwise, if it's a hot, windy day you'll have newspaper all over." 3.) Working yard waste into your soil In the fall, when Betty vacuums up her leaves, she dumps most of them in the garden. After she cleans out her garden for the season, she puts a layer of chopped up leaves on top of her garden. By next spring, the leaves start to decompose. She then tills that into the soil. "It's really important to keep putting organic matter into your soil and that's one easy way of doing it," says Lentz, "and you don't have to haul your leaves away." Betty says it's also good to consult reputable gardening websites for help and ideas, too. U of M Extension: www.extension.umn.edu/gardeninfo/ Hennepin Co. Master Gardeners: www.hennepinmastergardeners.org/ Renee Banot http://twelve.tv/ http://www.facebook.com/12localnews http://twitter.com/12LocalNews