Great Green Book of Garden Secrets

Once upon a time, I was an avid gardener with a lush and verdent eden in my backyard. This coupled with the fact that I came from a long line of farmers/gardeners inspired my grandmother to send me this book several years ago. The gardening wisdom of Master Gardener Jerry Baker comes across like those schmaltzy As Seen on TV products, but my grandmother and her husband swore by his tips and remedies, which was always good enough for me.

These days my family lives on a larger property with too much clay soil, not enough shade, and dogs. Additionally, our region is still trying to recover from drought, and I no longer have the long, lazy days of being an at-home mom that are perfect for quality gardening time. Keeping up has proven especially daunting the past few summers. So . . . the bottom line is that our yard looks like crap, and I try not to think about what the neighbors must say behind our backs.

Yesterday turned out to be a great day for yard work, perhaps the best one all summer. I pulled weeds. The man mowed. I amended the soil in the evening, and then used one of Jerry Baker's tonics to top it off. Mixing any one of Baker's tonics is kitchen chemistry that always seems to inspire curious comments from my kids and their friends. These concotions use ingredients like sweet cola, beer, ammonia, molasses, instant tea, dish soap, whisky, and tobacco juice. As odd as any of his mixtures seem, they usually produce positive results, though I haven't figured out whether the results are real or placebo effect.

Here is the tonic I used yesterday:

All-Season Clean-Up Tonic

1 cup of Palmolive dish soap,
1 cup of Listerine, and
1 cup of chewing tobacco tea*
Mix all of the ingredients in a bucket, and pour into your 20 gallon hose-end sprayer. Apply to everything in your yard to the point or run-off every 3 weeks, in the morning, throughout the growing season.

Mix all of the ingredients in your 20 gallon hose-end sprayer, filling the balance of the sprayer jar with warm water. Apply to your entire yard to the point of run-off every 2 weeks, in the evening, to discourage insects and prevent disease.

*Chewing Tobacco Tea

* To make tobacco tea, place half a handful of chewing tobacco in an old nylon stocking and soak it in a gallon of hot water until the mixture is dark brown.

(Yes, I puchased chewing tobacco for the first time in my life yesterday too!)