Blankets and Newspaper

After a week or two after planting the vegetables I followed the old teaching from my father. I "pulled to" which means pulling dirt to the base of the plant (usually up the base about two inches or so). This helps for a couple of reasons. It supports the stalk of the young plant and helps the plant retain water, especially during the hot summer months. I was always taught that this is a vital step to any vegetable garden's success.

I had AJ help me with this project. We spent an hour on our hands and knees playing in the dirt. AJ loves getting dirty in the garden and is very protective of the plants (as she is with everything). The other day she was talking to the baby tomatoes like she talks to her baby sisters. I told her why we were "pulling to" and she said, "oh...it's like little blankets for our plants. It keeps them warm and makes them feel safe". Well, I guess she was right it was like a little blanket. All the plants had a little blanket wrapped around them and AJ could sleep in peace tonight knowing that the little pepper plants were not scared.

The next day it was time to battle another great foe of any garden, weeds. As far as I knew I only had two choices; I could have spent loads of money on landscape fabric or I could spend each day weeding the entire thing. None of those options sounded appealing. I asked dad for his advice and he suggested newspaper. Newspaper?? Dad said that it does a good job of choking out the weeds and at the end of the season I can till the newspaper into the ground. I got together a bunch of old newspapers and AJ and I set out on the great task of covering the garden. Her job was to gather rocks (about the size of a quarter) to lay on the corners to keep it from blowing away. We covered the entire thing in about twenty minutes. A month into my garden and the newspaper has worked great! Some weeds have begun to grow through the newspaper so I may need to redo these areas within the next few weeks. It's not perfect but it's better than the alternatives.