Garden Without Hassle, Or 6 Tricks That Will Make It Easier To Work In The Country. Photo

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 07:13

Not all summer residents have the opportunity to timely perform the necessary work on the garden and vegetable garden. Someone comes to the dacha only for the weekend and even then not always. It happens that you want to spend a vacation at the sea, and not in the beds with a hoe. And different events happen to us (good and not so), which often do not allow us to pay attention to the beds in time. But what can our plants do without us? Many of them may die without timely care, while others will at least not please with the harvest. Fortunately, there are interesting tricks to help keep weeding, watering, and fertilizing to a minimum. And this is a way out not only for weekend summer residents, but also for those who, living in the country almost all summer, prefer to work less and have more rest.

1. Siderata

As the beds are freed from the vegetables and greens that first yielded the crop, immediately take care of the soil on which they grew. And not only to save time in the future. After harvesting, the bed is usually quite loose. Therefore, a lot of energy for digging, as after a couple of months, and even more so - winter, will not be required. It is enough to loosen the ground with a pitchfork and level it. But it is important to collect plant residues so that the spores of pests and diseases do not settle on them. At the same time, in the process of such loosening, it is necessary to remove the weeds along with the roots.

If you do not plan to sow anything else on this site so that the land does not overgrow with weeds, sow, for example, mustard. This versatile green manure will contain weed growth and enrich the soil with nutrients. After mowing the mustard before flowering, leave it on the soil as mulch. During the winter, its plant mass will rot, and you will be surprised that there is no need to dig the earth in the spring.

Sowing green manures is also good in the process of caring for the beds after harvesting in the fall - before winter. Then, in early spring, instead of bare hard ground with actively sprouting weeds, you will be greeted at the dacha by neat beds with delicate green siderata.

2. Black spunbond or film

The next technique will allow in the future to reduce not only weeding, but also watering. Before planting seedlings on the beds, use a black non-woven material with a density of 60 g per m² or film of the same color.

For strawberries, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, cut round holes with a diameter of 10-15 cm in the selected material (the larger the crop, the larger the hole diameter). It is most convenient to do this work before the material is laid on the ground - cutting out circles when the spunbond or film is already on the garden bed is inconvenient.

Cut out the holes and place this synthetic mulch on the garden bed. To prevent the edges of the materials from rising, I, for example, used the following trick. I have an unnecessary narrow rubber hose. Every 30 cm, I hammered into it large nails (10 cm long). Then I positioned such a border around the edge of the selected material, hammered nails directly into the soil, grabbing the edges of the spanbond or film. The bed looks good, and the hose and nails hold the edges of the cover material.

If there is no unnecessary hose, you can cut circles or squares from linoleum so that these blanks are larger than the diameter of the nail head. Then we drive in nails in the same way along the edge of the covering material. By the way, now you can buy dense nonwoven fabric in blue, red, yellow, green colors. This will allow you to additionally decorate the beds.

3. Hydrogel

Hydrogel is another trick that can help you get a garden without the hassle. Before planting the selected crops, the hydrogel must be soaked in water according to the instructions. Then put 1-3 tablespoons of such a substance in each hole, mix with the soil. Subsequently, even in dry summers, plants will be able to absorb water from the hydrogel and will not die without regular watering. During the period of heavy rains, the hydrogel will not allow the roots to rot, as it will absorb excess moisture into itself.

It is more profitable to purchase a large volume hydrogel, for example, 500 or 900 g. When stored in a dry place, it will last for a long time.

4. Helping weeds

Cut grass and weeds are excellent mulch. It is inconvenient to plant carrots, greens, beets, onions, garlic and many other crops using non-woven material or black film. Thus, only seedlings can be planted. What to do with crops?

When the seedlings grow a little, you need to put cut grass or weed tops in the aisles. Dry fresh herbs in the sun for at least a day. Some people use old leaves, needles, sawdust and even paper as a mulching layer.

Potatoes can also be mulched with grass. For example, after mowing with a lawnmower, I sprinkle grass from the collector on both sides of each potato furrow. This technique allows me to do only one hilling of potatoes - at the beginning of the growing season. In the future, the mounds become higher due to the use of grass, which is also a top dressing and retains moisture in the soil.

I periodically spread the mulching layer of cut grass under trees, bushes, retreating from the trunks in a circle of 5 cm. This technique makes it easier to work in the garden, since you do not need to weed the trunks around the trunks, loosen the soil under them. Under such mulch, it remains fluffy anyway. I loosen the trunks only once - in the spring, and then earthworms do it for me, who like to live under such bedding.

5. Thermal actuator

Those who have greenhouses and greenhouses know that in the summer they have to open them every day in the morning and close them in the evening. This luxury can only be afforded by those who constantly live in the country at this time of the year. Those who come here on short visits will be helped out by a thermal actuator. You can buy one that will open the vents or carry out a similar effect on the door.

This mechanism will also help out when late blight begins to rage. If in the first half of summer you can afford not to close the greenhouse at night in the heat, then from the second half of July, when the temperatures vary significantly at night and during the day, this should not be allowed. The thermal drive itself will close the greenhouse or greenhouse in the late afternoon.

6. Drip irrigation

If open ground crops in the absence of a summer resident have a chance not to die and even bear fruit, receiving a portion of moisture in the form of precipitation, then greenhouse plants without regular watering, in the literal sense of the word, will quickly dry out. If you don't want to be “tied” to the greenhouse all summer long, install an automatic irrigation system here. You can make it yourself from the purchased components, or buy a ready-made set.

Flexible tubes are positioned so that the outlet of each is at its own well. Then a specific dropper will moisten a specific plant.

In the greenhouse or nearby, at a height of at least 1 meter from the ground, a barrel with an embedded tap is placed on a support, to which a hose is connected, and then irrigation pipes depart from it. You can open the tap yourself or set up an automatic start of irrigation. To do this, you will need to set on what days watering will be carried out, for how long. Then the system will itself moisten the plants, even if you are a thousand kilometers away from your summer cottage.

It is advisable to install drip irrigation not only in a greenhouse or greenhouse, but also in open-air beds. Because in the case of a long absence and you at the dacha, and rains in the region, you will definitely be left without a crop.