07 Best Gardening Techniques: What Has Worked and What Hasn’t

I’ve tried my fair share of garden tips, tricks, strategies, and gardening techniques. Anyone who has been a member of a community garden knows that most everyone who gardens has a collection of tips and techniques that they use or that they want to try.

Many of the ideas I heard back then worked well, some others sounded good but just didn’t work out for one reason or another. These days lots of information is available on the internet in many formats, but how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? What really works and what sounds good but doesn’t work as promised?

There are a few ways you might verify your information. You could try to find out if anyone online is saying that the idea or technique you are considering is rubbish and why. Or you can cross-verify new information you encounter with sources that you have found to be trustworthy. Or you could try the technique yourself, or communicate with someone who has tried it.

This last option is what I want to do here. I’ve brainstormed some of the more interesting and (in some cases) useful gardening techniques I have personally tried over the years.

​As an aside, I should say that there is no guarantee that if something worked for me that it will work for you in your circumstances. The same can be said for what hasn’t worked, I’m not saying these technique has never worked for anyone anywhere. These things often depend on your particular gardening situation. I’m just sharing what has worked for me ( general gardening tips in the words) and my thoughts on these techniques.

1- It works! – Fall Leaves Mixed With Coffee Grinds For Compost

The basic idea is to empty out the bags of leaves on the lawn, run a lawnmower over them to mulch them up into small pieces, then pile them up in a composter, mixed with a source of nitrogen.

I used coffee grounds as my nitrogen source and chicken wire to make big, crude containers for the compost. I mixed the leaves and coffee grounds together. When the first snow fell I remember being fascinated to see that snow on the compost melted. Steam was coming off the pile and when I put my hand in it was smoking hot. By the time springtime rolled around the interior of the pile looked like black soil. I mixed it once, left if for a few more weeks and the whole batch was completely composted and ready to use.

I use this compost extensively in my garden and around my fruit trees with excellent results. I have been able to transform my garden area from rock hard clay to dark, black crumbly soil by adding this compost to it over the years.

I have found that this is a practical, effective, virtually free way of making substantial quantities of high quality, uncontaminated compost.

2- It doesn’t work – Composting Kitchen Scraps

I put this one in the ‘doesn’t work’ category because in my experience, piling kitchen scraps into a composter has never made useable compost.

Piling kitchen scraps tends to make a cold compost that takes a long time to break down. A very long time. And unfortunately, after the long wait, there is basically nothing left to be used in the garden. Kitchen scraps tend to make either a soupy mess, or if you wait long enough, they will compost down to basically nothing.

So in one limited sense, this does kind of work, because your kitchen scraps will eventually compost down and you don’t throw them in the garbage, but if your goal is to make some useable compost, in my experience composting kitchen scraps does not work. (click next)