I love spending hours on Pinterest every week.  One theme that comes up a lot are tips.

Painting tips

Cooking tips

Decorating tips

It got me thinking.  Hey, I GOT TIPS.

Tip one, if you don’t garden or like to garden, use the back arrow right about now.

Here are some of my gardening tips for you.  These are the only ones I could think of today.  Let’s try not to be blown away by my creativity and genius.  It’s still early in the season.

 I Clean in Spring

If you’re like me, you’re way too busy in the fall to be cleaning up your garden.  Priorities people.  So I leave it until the spring time.  I’m itching to enjoy the weather anyways so it’s fine with me.  Until I have to deal with these beasts.  No fear though.  I grab my electric hedge clippers and I’ve got those suckers down in no time.

First, I tie a string around the whole thing.  I tie it pretty snug.  Next using my electric hedge clippers, I cut along the bottom.  Voila.  Now the whole thing can be taken away and it’s already bundled for you.

Rabbits are A**holes

If there’s one thing that really annoys me, it’s paying $10 for a plant just to feed thumper (s) lunch.  For the past few years I have been trying to figure out how I can get the coyotes to come to my yard to take care of them.  It only worked once.   And even then they left many parts laying around.  Messy eaters, those coyotes are.

So I put up my next defense, barriers.   I have learned that there are a few plants that rabbits will eat no matter what you do.  I stopped planting them years ago.  Sorry, daisy, liatris and dianthus.  I have also learned that rabbits will sometimes just eat the new growth in the spring but once the plants grow some, they leave them alone.  The baby stage, let’s say.  So, like any good mother I’ve come up with many ways to protect my babies until they are big enough to fend for themselves.

From Left I’m protecting:

1) Fragrant Bouquet Hosta shoots

2) Coral Bells, Frosted Violet

3) Coral Bells, Purple palace

You can see here how I used natural materials as a barrier.  I do all my garden clean up in the spring.  As I cut down the debris, I’ll use branches to lay over neighboring flowers that the rabbits tend to eat as they grow out of the ground.  The branches allow air, sun, and water to get through while being just annoying enough to the rabbits that they don’t bother even trying.

From Left:

1) Coral Bells, Creme brulee

2) Phlox

3) Coral Bells, Creme brulee

Sense a trend here?  Yeah. Me too.  Rabbits love the spring coral bells but as soon as they’re fully leafed out, they don’t bother them.  In these photos, I am using other methods of protecting my plants.  In the left, you might have to look closely, but I use bird netting.  I have a row of 10 coral bells that I cut a length of the netting and lay it over the whole row.   In the 2nd photo I have a thicker netting in the background and I used a trellis over a plant in front.  In the last photo, I actually used the frame of a hanging basket from last year over the plant.  That plant is almost fully leafed out and then I can remove the barrier.

What the Mulch

Last year I ordered 9 yards of loose mulch.  You probably have no idea what that means, but people?  It’s a lot.  Some people use a wheel barrel to move it all and I have done that too.  I have a sloped backyard so it gets awkward to handle a wheel barrel back there.  I use this instead:

Yes, that’s a snow sled.  I get about a good 4 shovel fulls onto that and just slide my sled all over the yard.  I have also used it for bags of mulch.  Using the sleds also allows the kids to help.  As they should.

But that’s not the only thing I use the sleds for.  I buy a lot of flowers every year.  Once I get them home, I have a mix of pots large and small, flats, and single flowers.  I plant on all 4 sides of my house.  Flowers not only need to be carried to their final destination but they also need to be watered in the interim time until they get to their home.

Not only do the flower filled sleds work perfectly for getting them around the yard, if I don’t get to planting them that day?  I just fill the sled up with an inch or two of water and they can sit there until I am ready to plant them.

So there.  Those are my tips.   Now, get gardening.

_________________________________

I tweet gardening at @HoeInTheGarden during this time of year.  Just like me but with more Hoes and Dirt.