1. Bye-bye weeds: Weeds compete with your veggies for nutrients and moisture in the soil. Keep them at bay by using newspaper. Soak sheets of newspaper (about 5-10 pages thick) and line them out between the rows of your veggies. Cover the papers with organic mulch to hide them. You’ve just created an extra strong barrier against weeds.

2. Keep the chompers away: Create a barrier against squash borers who lay their eggs along stems of zuchinni and other squash. Once they hatch, larvae burrows into the stems and begins to eat. You usually don’t know you have a problem until its too late. I used to make a toilet paper roll collar to create a barrier, but that was before Karen Gardner, San Antonio Bexar County Master Gardener and Vegetable Specialist, taught a fall vegetable class and told me about sticky gauze. You know, the kind of self-sticking gauze that you would normally be wrapping around an injured finger. This hack works, y’all! Wrap the gauze from the very base of the stem and as far up as you can go. The gauze will stretch as the plant grows. Tried and true!

3. Pepper explosion: Here’s another hack I learned from Karen Gardner. While it’s recommended to keep your water off of the foliage of most vegetables, peppers are an exception. For some reason spraying their foliage from time to time during warmer weather causes them to explode with fruit. I don’t have the science behind it, but Karen might. I just heard it at one of our Rainbow Gardens seminars and began doing it and for years now I’ve had peppers coming out of my ears.

4. Scissors make the cut: When thinning plants, it’s very easy to disturb the roots of the plants you are trying to leave behind, causing deformed or malformed growth. Avoid this by using scissors instead of pulling the plants up with your fingers. Just point your scissors into the soil and snip just below the soil to remove the plants you want out of the garden. This leaves the remaining plants happily settled in with their roots intact.

5. Take turns: Don’t plant the same vegetable (or a vegetable in the same family) in the same area if it has been less than 24 months since it was planted there. (I go as far as waiting 3 years to plant a tomato in the same area). Follow this protocol and you will have less disease issues…period. So even if you had a great spot for that favorite tomato plant in spring and you are thinking about planting another tomato in that same spot. DON’T! Find somewhere else for them to grow in fall. Same thing goes for other vegetables.

The following are groups of plant families you need to find new homes for if planted in the past 24 months:

• Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant
• Squash, melons, cucumbers, pumpkins
• Cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, mustard, turnips, and collards