Since many of you aspiring gardeners have responded to our previous list of gardening tips and tricks so well, we felt it was only right to give you some more as an encore post. Hope you find them as useful as the previous ones.

1. Vegetable soup for your plants
When you boil vegetables, don’t throw away the remnant boiled water down the drain. This water carries most of the nutrients from the plants and is very beneficial for your garden. Before you use it though, cool it down a bit and then use it as a fertilizer for garden spraying.

2. Seeds in citrus
Use an intact citrus peel for planting your seedlings. It decomposes in the soil and nourishes the plant as it grows, and you can carry it wholly and easily when you replant it in the garden again. However, do remember to poke holes in the bottom for drainage.

3. Cinder block in garden beds
If building a raised garden bed out of wood is too expensive or skilled work for you, opt for cinder blocks. They are a very good way to create compartments and you can easily separate your herbs. Lying down a few blocks side by side creates a narrow bed that will give you a leveled area to start your garden.

4. Use coffee filters for soil erosion
Regular watering can send a lot of your fine soil and potting mix down the drain, so what some gardening professionals do is that they use coffee filters to line the bottoms of the pots. This will hold all the soil inside the pot and only allow the excess water to flow off, keeping your pots clean at the bottom.

5. Egg shell pots
If you are looking for cheap, biodegradable pots to germinate your seeds, consider using intact egg shells when you are growing them indoors. When you need to plant them in the field, just pick up the whole set-up, plant, soil and shell inclusive and plant it in the soil. The calcium in the shell will gradually disintegrate and become absorbable by the plants, giving the plants a boost in growth.

6. Roses in spuds
Trimming and hedging a rose bush to give rise to another one can be a tricky affair and must be learned hands-on from a gardening expert. Once you have mastered the technique of propagating a rose bush, take your trimmed stems and push them into a small potato. This will help the stem to retain moisture while it develops roots.

7. DIY seed tapes
Use biodegradable toilet paper to create your own seed tapes which will make it easy for you to start your garden. You can plant the seeds at equal distances according to the gardening directions on the seed packet.

8. Soda bottle watering system
For plants with deep roots that need to be well watered, bury a 1.5 – 2lt empty soda bottle in the ground beside the seedling. Punch a lot of holes in the walls of the plastic and fill the bottle with water. As the roots grow, they will grow deep in search of water and will cluster around the bottle instead of spreading far. Refill the bottle regularly to make sure they get enough water in dry weather.

Article granted by Christine Smith on behalf of this site