10 Outrageously Smart Gardening Tips (#5 is Really Clever!)

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Summertime is here, which means it’s time for that summer vegetable or flower garden. Whether you haven’t started your garden because you don’t think you have enough time, or if you are a down-home farm girl or guy at heart, we have a few tips for that garden that you might have never dreamed before.

If you love getting your hands dirty, or if you want a pretty garden without getting dirt on your boots, we have a little something for everyone.

1. Super Easy Flower Garden

If you want big, beautiful flowers, but have no interest in digging in the dirt, pulling weeds and waiting weeks for seeds to sprout, try a secret used by Disneyland and many other locations. Bury some plastic pots in the ground (you only have to get dirty once, we swear!) so they are at ground level. Now buy some beautiful potted flowers that are the same size. Simply drop your flowers into the pots in the ground and BOOM! Instant flower garden! This also works with larger pots.

If you have a very large pot, you can bury one large, two medium or four small plants or flowers (depending on the size of the original pot). If the flowers die, or if you want to change the flowers to go with the season or holiday (How cute would it be to have a walkway lined with mums in the fall, poinsettias in the winter, tulips in the spring and carnations in the summer?) you only need to pull up the flowers and pot, then drop in a new pot filled with flowers! It doesn’t get much easier than this.

2. Keep the Cat Out

Don’t you just hate it when you spend all day in the garden pulling weeds, putting down mulch, applying fertilizer and then some cat comes along and says, “Wow. Nice litterbox.” You can put a stop to this by simply burying some plastic forks, tines pointed up, all around your garden. A poke in the butt is NOT what a cat has in mind, so they should make tracks pretty fast. This also works with small dogs.

If you don’t like the look of the forks, try putting some sheets of aluminum foil down in places where the kitty likes to go. Secure it with some rocks on the corners. Cats do not like that crinkle sound when they walk on the foil, and since there is no way they can “dig,” they would rather find a new potty stop.

3. Stop Invasive Plants

If you love some plants, such as ivy or cypress, but don’t want them to take over your garden, this is a genius way to stop them. Take a plastic pot and cut off the bottom where the drain holes normally are. Put the pot in the ground, and then put your plant in this pot. This limits the roots of the invasive plant so you can keep them under control. Read also about ways to kill weeds without RoundUp.

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