Maintaining Your Garden: Watering, Weeding, and Pest Control Tips
This is part of our series retelling Backyard Farming: Growing Vegetables and Herbs by Kim Pezza (ISBN: 978-1-57826-460-5).
So you’ve got your garden planted. Seeds are in the ground. Now what? This is the chapter where Pezza gets into the daily grind of keeping a garden alive. And honestly, this is where most beginners either level up or give up. Maintenance isn’t glamorous, but it’s the whole game.
Watering: More Nuance Than You’d Think
The basic rule is simple. Your garden needs about 1 to 2 inches of water per week. But how you deliver that water matters a lot.
Soaker hoses are Pezza’s favorite, and I get why. They’re porous hoses that release water slowly along their entire length, right at ground level. The water goes straight to the roots instead of spraying everywhere. And here’s a fun tip from the book: you can make your own soaker hose from an old leaky garden hose. Just poke some more holes in it and lay it along your rows. That’s the kind of practical advice I love.
Sprinklers work fine for some plants, but not all. Tomatoes, for example, prefer to be watered from below. Getting their leaves wet can encourage disease. So if you’re using a sprinkler, know which plants are okay with it and which aren’t.
Container gardens need extra attention because they dry out way faster than in-ground beds. Pezza suggests the pencil test: stick a pencil into the soil. If it comes out clean, the soil is too dry. If it comes out with soil clinging to it, you’re good. Simple and effective.
For times when you can’t be there to water, the book mentions a couple of self-watering hacks. You can fill a sandwich bag with water and poke a tiny hole in it, placing it near the base of a plant. Or use glass watering globes that slowly release water as the soil dries. These won’t replace real watering, but they buy you a day or two.
One more thing: water early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Watering in the heat of midday means half your water evaporates before it even reaches the roots.
Weeding: The Never-Ending Battle
Pezza calls weeding the biggest garden chore, and she’s not wrong. Weeds compete with your plants for water, nutrients, and sunlight. Left unchecked, they win.
The best defense is mulching. The book covers several methods:
Newspaper mulch is surprisingly effective. Lay down 5 to 6 pages thick, cover with a thin layer of soil, and it blocks weeds for up to 2 years. It decomposes naturally and adds organic matter to your soil. This is one of those tricks that sounds too simple to work, but it does.
Garden cloth is a fabric you lay over the soil and pin down. Cut holes where your plants go. It lasts 1 to 3 years and keeps weeds out pretty well.
Black plastic is another option. It holds heat and moisture, which some plants love. But you need to run irrigation underneath it since rain can’t get through. And Pezza emphasizes: it must be black, not clear. Clear plastic creates a greenhouse effect and actually encourages weed growth underneath.
Straw or cut grass works too, but comes with a trade-off. It can introduce new weed seeds into your garden. So you might solve one problem and create another.
Here’s the thing about raised beds and containers: they naturally have fewer weed problems. But don’t assume they’re weed-free. Weed seeds travel by wind, and they will find your garden eventually.
Pest Control: Creative Solutions
This section of the book is where Pezza gets creative, and I’m here for it.
For larger animals like rabbits and deer, the basics apply. Fencing is your first line of defense. Bird netting keeps birds out of berry bushes and fruit trees. But then it gets more interesting.
Hot-pepper wax sprayed on plants deters animals that nibble. Predator urine (yes, you can buy this) scares off smaller critters. And my favorite suggestion: a sacrificial garden. Plant a patch of lettuce away from your main garden specifically to distract animals. Let them eat that while your real crops stay safe. That’s strategy.
For insects, Pezza recommends wrapping newspaper collars around seedling stems to block cutworms. Companion planting uses certain plants to repel bugs naturally. If you have chickens, let them loose in the garden and they’ll eat insects all day. And for slugs and snails, the classic beer pan trick works: fill a shallow dish with beer, set it near your plants, and the slugs crawl in and drown.
Frost and Cold Protection
Season extension is a big deal if you live somewhere with cold winters.
Garden blankets or even old bed sheets draped over plants can protect against light frost. But never use plastic directly on plants. It conducts cold and will actually damage them more.
Cold frames are basically glass-topped boxes that sit over your plants, creating a mini greenhouse. Hoop houses and tunnels do the same thing on a larger scale, using bent PVC pipes covered with plastic sheeting.
Our Take
This chapter is the reality check. Gardening isn’t just planting and harvesting. There’s a lot of daily and weekly work in between. But Pezza keeps it manageable by offering multiple approaches for each problem. Don’t have a soaker hose? Use an old leaky one. Don’t want to buy fancy pest control? Try beer and newspaper.
That resourcefulness is what makes this book useful for real people with real budgets. You don’t need to spend a fortune to maintain a productive garden. You just need to show up consistently and pay attention.