My grandmother’s garden could feed half the church and three households, and I spent my childhood in it thinking I was just carrying buckets. She narrated everything she did out there, and I nodded along the way kids do, hearing without listening.
Then she was gone. The first spring I planted my garden on my own, her voice returned, row by row. All those small sayings and peculiar habits of hers were suddenly instructions I wished I had written down.
I have spent years since trying to recover them, testing them against my own soil and my own failures. Here are twenty-three of her garden secrets, and I can say from experience that every one of them works.
She Planted by the Moon
The almanac lived on a nail by the back door, and planting days were chosen like wedding dates. Root crops went in during the dark of the moon, and everything above ground went in as it waxed. I rolled my eyes at it for thirty years. Then I tried it one season, and my root cellar has never been so full, so I no longer argue with the moon.
Eggshells Went in the Tomato Holes
Each tomato seedling got planted on top of a handful of crushed eggshells, saved all winter in a coffee can. She said tomatoes are hungry for what eggshells have, and science eventually agreed with her about the calcium. Her tomatoes never got that black rot on the bottom that mine got for years. Now I crush shells all winter like a woman possessed.
Coffee Grounds Fed the Roses
Her morning percolator had a ritual of emptying its coffee grounds at the rose bushes. Those roses made a full time job of blooming. The soil was fertilized and aphids were even offended by the coffee grounds. I can’t verify the aphid claim, but since that day I have never put coffee grounds in the trash.
She Saved Seeds in Marked Envelopes
At the end of every season, the best of the crop went into little seed envelopes, which she labeled by hand. There were beans from the most productive vine, zinnias from the most brilliant row of flowers. Her garden was inherited from the previous year. I have two of her labeled seed envelopes, and yes, the seeds still grew.
Marigolds Stood Guard Over Everything
Marigolds lined every vegetable bed along the border. I loved the color contrast of gold and orange against the bed. She said the smell masks the bugs, and the roots fight against nematodes, so she treated them like her security detail. The other half of the garden was flowers, so it was all thought out. My garden has been maintaining the same look since, and bugs do get confused.
She Watered at Dawn, Never at Noon
Watering early in the morning, before the sun had anything to say, was her way. She claimed noon watering just steamed plants and wasted the well. Evening watering would result in mildew spending the night. There was a fifty year window for her that she never missed; and that was dawn.
Banana Peels Under the Rose Bushes
Banana peels got buried in a shallow trench around the roses, like small offerings. Potassium, she would say, tapping the ground with her trowel. The roses answered with blooms the size of teacups. My compost bin gets most scraps now, but the peels still go to the roses, out of loyalty.
She Talked to the Plants and Did Not Care Who Heard
She spoke to her garden as though she were talking to colleagues or teenagers. Neighbors heard her over the back fence as she named her row of beans. Whether the plants listened is between them and her. But my own garden does better the more time I spend muttering in it, so make of that what you will.
Epsom Salt for the Peppers
She said Epsom salt kept her peppers and tomatoes green and produced plenty of fruit. So every month, a spoonful got dissolved in her own watering can, just for the peppers and tomatoes. Her pepper plants sagged with produce while the neighbors wondered what they were doing wrong. It costs almost nothing, which was always half the beauty of her methods.
She Never Pulled a Volunteer
When volunteers sprouted, like when a sunflower or tomato popped up, she treated these plants like her houseguests. Volunteers, she said, are the garden telling you what wants to grow there. Some of her best producers were plants that chose their own spot. I have learned to weed around the surprises, and they repay me every year.
The Compost Pile Behind the Shed
Everything organic in this house went to the pile behind the shed. This included scraps, leaves, coffee and a lot more. She used to turn that with a fork every weekend. Years ago, she called this “black gold.” Her soil was chocolate cake brown. We never used commercial fertilizers on the garden, and it never needed to be.
She Pinched the Basil Like a Surgeon
Every time she walked by the basil, she always picked the leaves from just above two branches. She described how it doubles when you pinch it and how it won’t continue growing if it’s allowed to flower. Her basil grew into little bushes while mine bolted into skinny towers, until I finally began to follow her instructions.
The Beans Climbed the Corn
She grew pole beans at the base of the corn and let the stalks do the trellis work. The beans fed the soil, the corn held the beans, and the squash below shaded out the weeds. She learned it from her own grandmother and called it planting in threes. It is the oldest companion trick on the continent, and it ran her garden like clockwork.
She Let One Lettuce Go to Seed
At the end of lettuce season, there was one lone head that bolted and scattered. In spring, lettuce grew where it wanted to on its schedule, which she called the garden reseeding its own pantry. It looked like neglect and was actually a plan, which describes about half of her methods.
Rain Barrel Water Beat the Hose
The barrel under the downspout was her preferred watering source, and the hose was the backup. Rainwater, she said, is what plants are built for, and the well water just visits. The temperature and chemistry seemed to agree with her seedlings. Her rain barrel was like a village well with watering cans lined up to get water.
The Rhubarb Patch Never Moved
Houses got painted and beds got rearranged, but the rhubarb patch stayed exactly where her own mother had planted it. Rhubarb hates moving, she said, and so do I, so we understand each other. That patch outlived three dogs and two presidents. There is a lesson in there about leaving well enough alone, and I think about it more than I expected to.
Newspaper Went Under the Mulch
Prior to spreading the mulch, wet newspaper went down three sheets thick around every plant. This stopped weeds from starting and attracted worms. By fall, the newspaper had fully degraded. It was free, causing me to view most weed cloth sellers with a lot of skepticism. I have convinced every gardener that has ever laughed at me for doing this.
She Rotated Everything but the Asparagus
The tomatoes never spent a night in the same bed twice, and the beans went wherever the heavy feeders had been. She said rotation keeps the soil honest and the diseases guessing. Only asparagus had the right to stay in the beds all the time, as asparagus earns tenure. Her notebook of what grew where was the closest thing she kept to a diary.
Cuttings Rooted in Jelly Jars on the Windowsill
Half of her houseplants and most of her shrubs began their lives as cuttings from friends, relatives, and, allegedly, one hotel lobby. Her kitchen’s window sill was once a nursery full of jelly jars full of roots growing in water. She never went out of her way to buy something that she could easily root, and she gifted more plants than most nurseries sell. Every start she gave you came with instructions and a blessing.
Every Harvest Went Over the Fence
There was no untouched basket of tomatoes. The zucchini even had a delivery route. She grew extra on purpose to help neighbors in need, as her garden was her ministry. Neighbors who never spoke to anyone spoke to her, usually holding a bag of her green beans. I did not understand that the garden was really about people until I had my own fence to hand things over.
Nothing Got Sprayed, Everything Got Picked
Her pest control strategy utilized a soap bucket and was somewhat lethal. She hand-picked hornworms, threw beetles into the suds, and left everything else to the birds. Poison, she explained, does not know when to stop. Her garden stayed full of bees and toads and ladybugs, which turned out to be the actual secret.
She Fed the Birds That Ate Her Bugs
The bird feeder by the garden was a staffing system, not a decoration. Chickadees and wrens came for the seed, but stuck around for the caterpillars. She managed the system like a farm manager with a suet payroll. The garden had the least amount of pests compared to any sprayed plot in town, and the morning shift performed its job while singing.
She Sat With the Garden Every Evening
After supper, she strolled the rows with a cup of coffee, not working, just looking. That is when she noticed the first beetle, the wilted leaf, the bed that needed water tomorrow. Problems got caught at the size of a fingernail instead of the size of a season. It took me years to learn that the sitting was not rest, it was the most important work of the day.
