Insect Spray
Here’s an easy, safe, inexpensive, and all natural way to get rid of your unwanted insects: Insecticidal Soap. Here’s the recipe…into a quart spray bottle add:
§ 1 tablespoon of shaved soap (not detergent), something like Ivory Soap
§ 1 Teaspoon of vegetable oil (not olive or canola)
§ Fill the bottle with water.
Place the cap on the bottle, shake, and allow to sit for at least one day.
Shake before using, and spray on, and around the insects and insect damage. You can also spray to prevent damage before insects arrive. You must rreapply the spray after a rain.
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Fertilizers
There are a variety of fertilizers from rotted manures to compost to chemicals. One advantage of natural fertilizers such as compost is that you can’t over fertilize: the plants will only use what they need. Just apply compost and forget about it.
If you use chemical fertilizers, you should always follow the directions. But there's another consideration: what fertilizer to get?
Fertilizers have numbers “10-10-10” or “50-0-0”. What do they mean?
The first number is the ratio of nitrogen content, the second is phosphorous, and the third, potassium, or sometimes shown as “N-P-K”.
What does that mean to you? Think of them as “Leaves, Flowers, Roots”. The higher the first number, the greener the foliage. A high second number stimulates the bloom, and a high third number helps root development.
Remember "leaves, flowers, roots”. All the mystery is gone, and you look like a gardening guru.
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Harvesting Water
An inexpensive way to provide water for your plants is to collect it yourself.
This photo is just
about as simple and cheap as it gets.
What you have is a barrel and a downspout. The water gets to the plants by “dip & carry”. No barrel? Use a clean plastic garbage can.
One caution: mosquitoes! To prevent breeding, add a part of a “mosquito donut” to the water. The donut contains a safe biological larvicide, Bacillus thuringiensis which kills the larval mosquitoes. Donuts are available at hardware, seed, and big box home improvement stores.
Water with this larvicide will kill larval insects on your plants. This is a great way to get rid of bad insects such as cabbage loopers.
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Weeds are a fact of life when gardening. You just remove them, and each year there are fewer than the year before, but you never entirely get rid of them. But there is something you can do to help 
eliminate weeds or lawn from creeping into your vegetable garden: put a path around it. We brought our snow shovel here from New York and use it to scrape a path around the garden. We throw the dirt removed into the garden and put mulch on the path.
We stumbled onto this by accident, and now every garden we put in has a path around it. When weeds or lawn start to encroach, we just spray with an herbicide or with vinegar. The weeds are removed easily and never reach the garden. An added benefit is that after a rain, you can stand on the path and reach some of the veggies without tramping around in the mud. The photo above is of a small seasonal garden with a perimeter path.
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Red dye in the hummingbird syrup is simply not good for them. Red dye is not good for us, and we're a lot bigger than a hummingbird! Here's a recipe for syrup that the hummers like and is better for them.
The ratio is 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. So, to make a little more than a quart of syrup (the sugar adds some volume), into a sauce pan place:
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 cups (32 oz.) water
While stirring, bring the mixture to a boil. As soon as it starts to boil, remove from heat and allow to cool.
That's it. It's really not too much effort for the well being of these little critters. This video clip shows the hummingbirds enjoying their syrup.
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