Many moons before bags of store-bought soil and glossy seed catalogs were readily available, your great-grandparents toiled the earth with gardening wisdom that had been passed down through generations.
Just a half a decade ago, gardens were places to connect with each other, where families grew nourishing food, healing herbs, and flowers that added beauty to the landscape and also welcomed helpful pollinators. What were their secrets and hacks to a thriving garden?
Let’s look at 12 lost gardening secrets that carry the spirit of a simpler time, and they just may sprinkle a little old-time magic into your backyard.
Rooted in Tradition
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These old-fashioned gardening secrets live on through stories passed down to children, grandchildren, and neighbors – on front porches and over garden fences. One treasure trove of this wisdom is Firefox – Planting by the Signs, a collection of oral histories gathered by the Americana Library. We compiled sage wisdom from these, the voices of elders who learned to read the land, the moon, and the seasons long before gardening was guided by store shelves and smartphone apps.
We also drew insight from The Friends of Hancock’s Resolution historic farm and Nebraska Extension educator Sarah Browning, who helped us understand how these time-tested tricks turned humble plots into abundant gardens. And Alaskan Master Gardener Laura Emerson still practices some of these time-tested techniques with great success today!
1. Passing it Down, One Seed at a Time
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In the past, saving seeds was a necessity. Gardeners couldn’t rely on stores the way we can today. A family remained hopeful they could survive next year with a good supply of this year’s saved seeds. “Heirloom” is the type of old-fashioned seeds they would store for the next growing season, providing all the flavor that is often lost with today’s hybrids.
Mary Carpenter explained that her family saved seeds from year to year because there was no place to buy them. They would allow one row of beans to stay in the garden to seed for the following year. Once the beans dried up, they shelled them and put them in a can. Then they “put a spoonful of soda in’em” and shook the can. Peas could be preserved for the next year’s planting the same way. Lon Dover had a plan for when bugs got into the saved bean seeds. He said that people would put them in a snuff can, leaving enough snuff to cover the seeds.
To save potato seeds, Esco Pitts’ dad dug a hole, added hay or leaves to the bottom, and put some nice-looking potatoes down inside. Then he covered them with more hay, raked dirt on top, and placed a piece of tin over that to keep out water.
2. Tricks with a Shovel
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Long before raised beds and rototillers, gardeners had some clever ideas to turn plain soil into something rich and full of promise. Double-digging is a technique that has faded from common practice, but the effort paid off with well-nourished soil. To double-dig your garden, dig a trench the depth of your shovel and set the dirt off to the side. Then dig again in the same trench to break up the dirt and mix it with organic material. Repeat the process across your garden. When you dig the second trench, the top dirt will fill in your first trench.
A shovel also came in handy after harvest. People buried crops like potatoes and cabbage so they wouldn’t freeze. Florence Brooks said they could dig up a buried cabbage in the coldest days of winter, and it would be just as fresh as when it was first cut.
3. The Dirt on Great Gardens
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Our ancestors recognized that if you take care of the soil, the soil will take care of the plants. Instead of today’s chemical fertilizers, animal manure was collected and aged for use in the garden. They added dried leaves, sawdust, and other organic matter over time until it was time to spread.
Lawton Brooks said they used ashes instead of lime for fertilizer. The ashes were mainly used in the vegetable garden. Every time they cleaned out the fireplace throughout the winter, they would spread the ashes in the garden. Emerson says this technique reduces acidity in the soil and reduces blossom rot on tomatoes. Similarly, Harry Brown’s family burned a pile of organic trash and then mixed it into the dirt with a hoe and shovel to make tomato-ready soil.
4. Old-Time Gardeners Knew the Value of a Hen
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Many families in the past had chickens. These feathered friends were helpful in various ways, from eating garden pests and providing wonderful fertilizer to laying nutritious eggs and being a reliable source of meat.
Gardeners didn’t let the eggshells go to waste, either! The shells were dried and then crushed into powder. They were sprinkled around seedlings and plant stems for added nutrients. Emerson explains that the more ground up they are, the better they can release calcium into the soil.
5. Compost, the Old-Fashioned Way
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Instead of compost piles or bins, people of the past more commonly did trench composting. This method of composting involves digging trenches or holes in the ground and filling them with things you normally compost, like eggshells, peels, and coffee grounds. Then dirt was shoveled over the top.
Trench composting improved the soil all around the trenches or holes. Plants growing nearby would send roots toward the compost to absorb the nutrients. Browning notes that English gardeners still use this method as part of a three-year rotation, with one row for filling a trench, one for growing crops, and the third as a footpath. After three years, all three rows have soil packed with nutrients.
6. Hotbeds – Fired Up and Ready to Grow!
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Picture a simple cold frame – a wooden box with a glass lid – warmed from below with steaming manure and compost. That’s what folks used to call a hotbed, and it worked like magic in early spring! The trusty setup was similar to a greenhouse, but it was often built in the ground for added protection from cold weather.
The Friends of Hancock’s Resolution historic farm says plants were first covered with straw and later with burlap sacks sewn together. Farmers spent the winter months adding pine needles, leaves, and corn stalks to the manure if it wasn’t hot enough. February marked the start of hotbeds for the growing season, and it took dedicated care to get them up and running, ready for seeds by mid-month.
7. No Spoiled Tomatoes Allowed
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Are your seedlings looking leggy? In the past, there was a smart remedy. “Treat ’em mean!” they’d say! Gardeners buried tomato plants deep, right up to the bottom leaves. The buried stem would sprout extra roots, giving the plant a sturdier foundation.
Old-timers were careful to avoid overwatering and overfertilizing tomatoes, too. If they allowed the plants to dry out a bit before rewatering, deeper roots developed. And as Lawton Brooks pointed out, “The dirt needn’t be too rich, but it can’t be poor neither.” Too much nitrogen did more harm than good.
8. Best Buds in the Garden
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Our ancestors paid close attention to their gardens, and their careful observations often made the difference between a struggling plot and a successful garden. They saw which plants worked well together. If they planted beans and corn together, beans grew up cornstalks for support and provided nitrogen to the soil. If lettuce was planted beneath them, both the beans and corn would provide shade.
Beans planted next to potatoes gave back to the soil what the spuds took out, keeping the earth rich and ready for the next crop. Lettuce was also perfect to grow between tomato plants because they received shade from the tomatoes. Mixing carrot and radish seeds together before planting was a clever trick because radishes matured before carrots, leaving space for carrots to grow afterward.
And flowers? They weren’t just for looks. Planting flowers between vegetables was common practice because they attracted pollinators. Nowadays, we call this companion planting.
9. Bug Off!
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Ever notice how often sunflowers appear in old garden photos? Gardeners grew sunflowers because they produced a sap that attracted pests like aphids – which in turn drew helpful ladybugs to the garden. Besides pest protection, sunflowers were a fantastic food source for birds and bees, and they removed toxins from the soil.
To protect roses, gardeners often planted chives nearby. Not only did chives keep bugs away, but they were also flavorful herbs for the kitchen. Another clever trick used to save roses from aphid attack was to hang a hummingbird feeder above the bushes. Hummingbirds loved feasting on aphids before visiting the feeder!
Planting sage as a useful bug repellent has been a practice for ages, too. Sage has a strong, earthy scent that many insects find unpleasant.
10. Stop the Slug and Snail Invasion
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Do you find an annoying number of slugs in your garden after it rains? Here’s some advice from the past! Try placing upside-down, hollowed-out orange rinds around the garden to draw slugs and snails. You might get even more pest protection from those rinds, too, because Emerson notes that the d-Limonene in orange peels breaks down the waxy coating on ants and aphids, which causes them to suffocate.
A shallow container of beer is another tried-and-true method for attracting slugs and snails. I have tried this myself, and yes, it works! Emerson swears by it, just like gardeners did generations ago.
11. Irish Spring and Other Random Useful Things
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Irish Spring soap was commonly used in gardens of the past. People put bars in socks or cheesecloth attached to sticks and stuck them in the ground, or they scattered grated pieces around the garden. This was meant to discourage rabbits and keep deer out.
Pie tins were an age-old trick for keeping birds away. Gardeners would hang them near their plants, where the shiny surfaces and occasional clanging in the breeze helped scare off curious birds.
Want to keep rabbits from eating your flowers, fruits, and veggies? Sprinkle blood meal around your garden. Not only does it deter furry pests – like chipmunks and bunnies – but it makes a good fertilizer, too. If that doesn’t work, try human hair! It was also common to collect hair from brushes and spread it around the garden to discourage rabbits.
12. Planting by the Moon and Zodiac Signs
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Many believed in a set of rules for planting and harvesting by the phases of the moon and zodiac signs. Lon Dover was taught by “the old folks” to avoid planting until the moon was full. Planting everything on the old moon was the safest way to ensure a great crop. The old moon was the time between when the moon was at its fullest until it was at its smallest.
According to the Foxfire interviews, it was best to plant during the “fruitful signs” of Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus, or Cancer. Gardeners avoided the barren signs, which were only good for trimming and deadening. Flowers were planted in Libra, an airy sign signifying beauty, but it also had to coincide with the moon being in its first quarter. Although, if you wanted the seeds, you had to wait until sometime between the second quarter and the full moon.
Lessons from the Past, Roots for the Future
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While life has changed over the years, and we have access to tools and technology that make gardening easier (or at least they’re supposed to!), there’s still a lot to admire in how our great-grandparents tended their gardens.
New isn’t always better. Their patience, intuition, and deep respect for nature gave them remarkable insight, even if they didn’t know the science behind what they observed. They were attuned to the environment in a way that’s worth remembering – and maybe even reclaiming.
