Help For The Garden

Here is a tip that may help some of you fellow gardeners:
Chop one small onion with two medium cloves of garlic.Blend on high in the blender, then strain the pulp through cheesecloth or panty hose. Pour the liquid into a hand-held mist sprayer, and spray your flowers at the first sign of aphid infestation.
Aphids are a big problem in the garden. They are tiny little soft-bodied bugs that situate themselves on your plants, and suck the juice out of them. Not only is this hazardous to your plants, but they carry diseases as well. It looks like it has rained and splashed dirt up on your plants, only what looks like dirt is actually very tiny bugs. But these little tiny bugs can do a LOT of damage in a very short time. They cluster on the stems and undersides of leaves mostly, but can be just about anywhere when they get real bad. When aphids are present, they produce a fluid called honeydew, which draws ants. Ants LOVE honeydew, and will do everything they can to protect them from harm, to keep their supply of honeydew from vanishing. If you see a lot of ants in your garden, look for aphids, chances are you will find them.
It is a good idea to check your garden every day for signs of pests and diseases. It doesn't take long at all for either one to wipe out your crops. Believe me, I have learned this the hard way.
I have tried to garden for about five years now, and have found that it is harder than it looks. I have seen gardens all over, where it looked like people just threw seeds into the ground and viola! plants burst from the ground and vegatables grew with leaps and bounds.....bountifully! For some reason it never worked this way for me. I'd dig. And dig. And dig some more. And plant. And weed. And weed. And weed. And put up trellises. And weed. And put down mulch. And anything else I could think of to grow plants that produced food. And along would come the bugs. Of every kind, bringing all their friends and relatives with them. And diseases; dear lord, I never knew so many things could go wrong with plants! I finally figured out several things that made a tremendous difference in plant health:
1. You have to have adequate sunlight for plants to grow well. When the books say 6-8 hours of sunlight a day, it doesn't mean that you can plant in the woods and expect a garden to do well. You can plant in the woods if you want to, but you are going to have problems. If a plant is not healthy, it cannot protect itself from disease, poor growth, bugs, etc.
2. You have to feed plants. In order for them to be healthy, they have to have food. If they cannot get what nutrients they need from the earth, then you have to supply them if you expect to reap a harvest. A lot of the time the quality of the soil is poor, sometimes what was planted before in the same area leached all of the particular nutrients that this plant happens to need, and therefore nothing is there for the plant to eat. Remember: if a plant is not healthy........
3. Worms are very good for gardens.
4. Dogs are NOT good for gardens.
5. Hoping a problem will resolve with no intervention on my part does not mean that the problem will fix itself.
6. 7-year-olds do a pretty good job of watering if you show them what to do, ( and promise to pay them).
7. You can get 4-year-olds to pull the hose for their brother if you give LOTS of encouragement.(And promise to pay them as well).
8. It's wonderful to have a garden buddy to talk to ( and help shovel manure). How many times do you have to shovel that stuff anyway? You gather it up, unload it from the trailer, turn the compost heap several times, shovel it into the garden, rake it out, etc. And it isn't the most pleasant thing in the world to deal with.............
9.It helps to be strong.
10. Mosquitoes love blood. Mine, especially.
11. If you have music to listen to, you can get a lot more done, but it can't be slow, mournful stuff, it has to make you want to MOVE!
12. Surely all this activity will result in the loss of SOME weight!
13. You can string lights around the garden fence and work at night when it is not so hot.
14. Nothing tastes as good as water when you are bone-dry.
15. You cannot expect water pressure to be good when your hose is 200 feet long and going uphill.
16. Bugs are very sneaky and they play hide-and-seek very well.
17. I hate mosquitoes.
18. Rocks grow and reproduce.
19. Son-in-laws can run the tiller if you look helpless enough.
20. I'm told that if you shoot off firecrackers, it will drive off the mosquitoes. ( I'll let you know how that one works. )