A custom that we must do regularly in the garden is the maintenance walk and it consists of walking through your entire garden looking at all the crops to see the pests it may have, the lack of pruning, the weeds that we can remove, if things are missing to collect… We will give you some tips for this walk in today’s article.
Contents
Weather
The walk should be done at a time of day when you have a few hours of free time so you don’t rush and do it right. This should be during the day when there is enough light to see and not at dawn or at night. The regularity with which we walk in the garden depends on the season. In winter it won’t be necessary to do it as often but in spring and summer it will be because there will be more pests and more crops to do.
If you have little time, you should check the garden at least once a week to check everything. We can also make an exception and take a night walk to see possible pests that eat certain crops like snails.
extra help
If you have children, this can be a good task to do as a family. Harvesting fruits and vegetables, looking for insects, helping to carry tools or baskets for harvesting, water… Even if sometimes we prefer solitude to rest and enjoy the garden.
Scheduling tasks
We can take a quick look to know which tools we should use and thus not be fully loaded. we can even plan our vegetable garden for the new season. Or if you prefer surprises, go directly to the next step.
Tools
The main focus is to do light maintenance, so we’re not interested in carrying a lot of weight in the tools. Some that I recommend are as follows.
- Bucket or basket to add weeds, fallen fruit that has rotted, dry branches or to carry the rest of the tools.
- Small shovel to help us harvest certain vegetables such as onions or beets.
- A tool for weeding grass. Although I still prefer to start it manually from root as it will take longer to exit.
- Secateurs. Depending on the time of year, you can also bring other pruning tools such as the greenhouse or the parrot’s beak.
- Notebook or Garden Journal to take notes on the things we have waiting to do. Or the interview we can do next week.
- Fine rope to support tomatoes for example and some bamboo or rattan stakes.
- Small sprayer with potassium soap in case an aphid is found.
- Sulfur powder if you have fungi like powdery mildew.
- Shower or hose.
- We also have the possibility of transporting a wheelbarrow with all the material, so we do not have to make several trips and it will not weigh so much.
- Mobile or cell phone.
Harvest containers
To harvest we can carry a basket With a rattan handle, it is easy to carry and takes up a lot of space. Another option is large grocery bags or a bucket. For more delicate things like cherry tomatoes or strawberries, you can put them in a plastic tray to prevent them from getting crushed with the other vegetables.
Going out for the maintenance walk
We start walking from a point that is easy for us to recognize and we will look at the crops, do the necessary tasks and take note of the tasks that we will do at another time. It could be some tasks that we can perform:
- Harvest the vegetables that we are going to use for the day or that grow too much.
- Pick up fallen fruit.
- Flowers whose head is already dead.
- Supporting plants that need it: Tomatoes, peas, eggplant.
- Pull weeds or cut flowers to prevent seeds from spreading.
- Spray the aphids that we see because in a few hours many more will be generated.
- Water a few plants that have not been well watered and are wilting.
- Check for damage from rodents or other mammals.
- Observe crops carefully for pests or diseases.
- Take pictures of those pests or diseases that we don’t know about to send them to the La Huertina de Toni forum.
- Take note of any necessary repairs such as any failure of the irrigation system.
- We can make a checklist to make sure we have completed the tasks.
Followed
We must be constant and continue to take regular walks in the garden because it will get much better and we will get better results. In my case, I usually use Instagram to find out when I planted certain crops or to find out later how much they grew. It’s kind of a visual diary since I’m a bit messy with the paper. An example, take a photo when I planted the sweet potatoes so that after 6 months I will know when I planted them and when I harvested them.
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