It is Mother’s Day weekend, which means it is officially garden planting weekend! You would feel the excitement this week at our local urban farm supply store, as people loaded up with plants, purchased their spring chicks and hauled giant bags of dirt. As you all are out planting, wanted to do a quick post on some planting tricks I have found super helpful in my garden! Also, take a look at the previous post on soil amending if you want to know more about composting, soil ph or fertilizer.

1.Draw your garden plan

This is so helpful, and makes it easy to place things where you want them. It is also good to have as a reference as you make changes on planting day. It’s totally natural and ok to change up your plan as you plant. Drawing something and seeing it in the ground are totally different things. Check out my garden plans here.

2. Grow vegetables you will enjoy eating

I try to pick vegetables because they are staples or will bring something new and exciting to my cooking. There are always a few things that make it in because they are just plain fun to grow as well. For example, I am growing cone-head cabbage this year, because it is going to be fun to watch cone-shaped cabbage grown in the garden, and I want to learn to make sauerkraut. Take a look at my vegetable posts to get ideas for what to grow in your garden!

3. Hoe & Ruler in One

Here is a real Pinterest-worthy hack for ya! Scotch™ Tape actually has masking tape that looks like a ruler! I have applied this tape plus Scotch™ Shipping Tape to the full length of my garden hoe. You could also use a fabric measuring tape instead of the Scotch masking tape if you have an extra one! My garden hoe is exactly the width of my garden beds (4ft), so I can lay the hoe down at each row, and use the inch dashes for seed placement. I also use the hoe to measure how far apart each garden row should be, laying it long-ways in the bed. You can see my doing this in this video.

4. Digging Troughs or Moats

Digging troughs can be a great way to mark the end of a section and beginning of the next, and create mini water retention in your garden. I use this for rows of things I have seeded, to show where this seed row is. I also use moats around certain plants to focus water retention around a plant. I usually dig a small moat around each of my tomato plants to help concentrate the water around the base of the plants, and absorb deep into the roots (photo to come - planting tomatoes today!)

5. Whooo's in Your Garden?

Bring a friendly owl to your garden! Nothing is worse than planting new plants and watching them get eaten by bunnies, squirrels and birds. A fake owl can help scare them away. This has worked every time in my beds. We have two owls, one in each bed, named Erol and Hermes (yep, HP nerds all the way).