Gardening Tips & Resources

Crop rotation

To keep pests down and increase yields, it is a good idea to divide your plot into four or more sections and group your crops into types- peas, potatoes, roots, cabbage, onions.  Each year, grow a different type of crop on each section.  Pests then have to wait four or more years for their food to reappear on that patch of land.

RHS guidance on crop rotation

Dealing with slugs

Slugs like long grass and rotting vegetation. Keep the grass short and remove piles of weeds to help keep slug numbers down. Hunt them down: preferably during or shortly after rain, or in the evening.

Trap them: use beer to attract them from a wide area, or give them somewhere to hide, such as upturned citrus skins, piles of weeds/damp newspaper or wooden planks, then collect them from the traps and dispose of them using your preferred method. Infect them: water the soil with parasitic nematodes, effective for 4-6 weeks. If all else fails, poison them using Wildlife-friendly ferric phosphate pellets. 

Dealing with drought

Water well on planting, Mulching, weeding, occasional soaking encourages deep root growth and is more affective than daily watering.

Reading and links suggested by members

RHS vegetable planting calendar

Lowenfels, J., & Lewis, W. (2010). Teaming with microbes: The organic gardener’s guide to the soil food web (Rev. ed.). Timber Press.

See also this video on the book above: Teaming with Microbes

Later books by Jeff Lowenfels:

  • Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (2013) – Shifts the focus from the soil organisms to the plant itself, explaining on a cellular level how plants absorb, move, and utilize nutrients.

  • Teaming with Fungi: The Organic Grower’s Guide to Mycorrhizae (2017) – A deep dive into the specific, critical symbiotic relationships between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi.

  • Teaming with Bacteria: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Endophytic Bacteria and the Rhizophagy Cycle (2022) – Covers the cutting-edge science of endophytic bacteria (microbes that actually live inside plant cells) and the rhizophagy cycle, which is the process by which plants actively “eat” bacteria to harvest nitrogen.