- 2 weeks ago
Old-fashioned gardening wisdom can save money, cut back on work, and help your soil get richer year after year. Elias shares practical tool-free gardening hacks built from simple things already around the house: newspaper to block weeds, straw for no-dig potatoes, a buried jug for slow root watering, rusty nails for an iron boost, onion skins for a gentle plant tonic, eggshells for calcium, chop-and-drop mulching, overnight seed soaking, cut-and-come-again lettuce, and a beer trap for slugs.
The heart of the lesson is thrift: use what you already have, waste nothing, and let the garden feed itself. These old gardening tips are especially useful for beginners, homesteaders, and anyone looking for organic gardening ideas, vegetable garden shortcuts, and low-cost ways to grow more with less effort.
Created for viewers searching for gardening hacks, no-dig gardening, organic gardening tips, vegetable garden care, and practical homestead advice. A good fit for people who want time-saving garden methods, natural plant feeding, weed control without plastic, and simple backyard gardening ideas that work with everyday scraps.
The heart of the lesson is thrift: use what you already have, waste nothing, and let the garden feed itself. These old gardening tips are especially useful for beginners, homesteaders, and anyone looking for organic gardening ideas, vegetable garden shortcuts, and low-cost ways to grow more with less effort.
Created for viewers searching for gardening hacks, no-dig gardening, organic gardening tips, vegetable garden care, and practical homestead advice. A good fit for people who want time-saving garden methods, natural plant feeding, weed control without plastic, and simple backyard gardening ideas that work with everyday scraps.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Everything a garden needs, it near enough already gives you for free, if you know the old tricks.
00:06Folk today are sold a whole store full to grow a tomato.
00:10The plastic weed cloth, the bottled feeds, the iron tonics, the slug poisons, the seed trays, on and on.
00:19A fortune to grow food that ought to cost near nothing.
00:23But our grandparents grew gardens that would shame ours, and they bought almost none of it.
00:28They used an old newspaper, a rusty nail, an onion skin, a bit of straw, the things already about the
00:36house, and their soil only got richer year on year.
00:41Today I am going to give you ten of those old no-cost tricks, the ones the grandparents used and
00:48the stores would rather you forgot, each one costing you nothing but the knowing.
00:52Do even half of them, and you will spend less and grow more than you ever did buying the fancy
00:59way.
01:00I am Elias, and everything I am about to show you is the plain old way, handed down, nothing modern,
01:08nothing bought.
01:09For the old people had to make do with what was at hand, and in the making do, they found
01:15ways that were not just cheaper, but often plain better than what is sold now.
01:20So let me hand them to you, one by one.
01:24Quick word before I go further.
01:27The old methods my family uses, there is more of it than fits in any one video.
01:32I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
01:37The book is the long version.
01:39If you want it, it is there.
01:42I will not mention it again.
01:44My grandmother never spent a penny she did not have to on her garden, and it was the finest in
01:50the district all the same.
01:52She kept a crock by the door for eggshells, a bundle of old newspapers in the shed, a jar of
01:59rusty nails on the sill, and she would laugh at the notion of buying what the kitchen and the scrap
02:05pail gave for free.
02:07A clever gardener is a thrifty one, Elias, she told me.
02:11The store sells you what your own house already holds.
02:15I have never found her wrong.
02:18So let me hand you the tricks she used that cost her nothing and grew everything.
02:25The first is the newspaper weed barrier, and it beats the bought plastic weed cloth every way there is.
02:32Folks spend good money on rolls of black plastic weed fabric, which chokes the soil and stops it breathing, and
02:40lasts as a nuisance for years.
02:42The old way is far better and free.
02:47You take your old newspapers and you lay them down thick, five to ten sheets deep, right over the ground
02:54where you want no weeds.
02:56Wet them down so they stay put and cover them with a bit of mulch, straw or leaves or grass.
03:03That thick paper blocks the light from the weed seeds below so they cannot sprout.
03:08But being only paper, it still lets the rain soak through to the soil, which the plastic never does.
03:16And here is the best of it.
03:18That in a season, the paper rots down into the soil, feeding it and drawing the earthworms up to work
03:25it loose and rich.
03:27So where plastic cloth chokes and costs, the newspaper smothers your weeds, feeds your soil, and vanishes for free.
03:36Lay down your old papers and let them do the work.
03:41The second is the old way to grow potatoes, under straw with never a shovel.
03:47Instead of the hard digging and hilling, you lay your seed potatoes right on the ground in a sunny spot
03:54and cover them over with a good thick blanket of straw or dry leaves a couple hands deep.
04:01The potatoes grow up right in that straw, and as they grow, you just pile on more straw, never any
04:08soil, never any digging.
04:11And at harvest, here is the joy of it, you just pull the straw aside and pick your potatoes up
04:18off the ground by hand,
04:19clean as you please, no digging, no spearing them with the fork.
04:24Now I will be honest with you as always.
04:27This easy straw way gives you a fine, clean crop with almost no work,
04:33though it may run a bit smaller than the deep-hilled way for the very biggest yield.
04:38But for the ease of it, and the clean, digging-free harvest, and the way it leaves the soil loose
04:46and wormy and better each year,
04:48it is a wonderful old method, near forgotten, because it does not suit the big machines.
04:55Grow a bed of them under straw and see.
04:58The third is the buried jug for watering, which waters your plants slow and deep, while you are away or
05:05busy, and costs nothing.
05:07You take an old jug, poke a few small holes low in it, and sink it in the ground up
05:13to its neck, right beside your thirsty plants, and fill it with water.
05:17And that water seeps out slow and steady, down deep at the roots where it is wanted, over days,
05:24so the plant drinks steady and even, and never dries out, even if you are gone a few days.
05:31It is the old free answer to those costly drip systems and timers folk buy.
05:36A holed jug sunk by your tomatoes or your pots keeps them evenly watered for days on end, deep at
05:44the root where it does the most good, and none lost to the sun.
05:49Sink a jug and fill it, and let it tend your watering.
05:53The fourth is the rusty nail for yellowing leaves, an old iron tonic for mere nothing.
06:00When a plant's leaves go pale and yellow, while the veins stay green, it is often hungering for iron, and
06:08folk run and buy a bottled iron feed for it.
06:11The old folk never threw out a rusty nail, for the rust is the very iron the plant wants.
06:17You put a good handful of old rusty nails, or any rusty iron scrap, in a jar of water, and
06:24let it sit a day or two,
06:25till the water has drawn the rust into it, and then you water your yellowing plants with that iron water
06:31every couple weeks.
06:33The plant drinks up that dissolved iron and greens right back up, rebuilding its color.
06:39It is a particular tonic for the iron-hungry ones like roses and hydrangeas.
06:45A jar of water and some old rusty nails, and there is your iron feed for free.
06:51The fifth is onion skin water, a gentle tonic from what you throw away.
06:57When you peel your onions for the pot, save those dry, papery skins, for they hold goodness.
07:03You boil a handful of onion skins in water about ten minutes, let it cool, and use that water on
07:10your plants, at the roots, or sprayed on the leaves.
07:13It gives the plants a mild feeding, and, folk have long held, helps them stand off the molds and mildews
07:20of a damp spell, toughening them a little.
07:23It is a small thing, a pot of onion skin water from peelings bound for the scrap pail, but it
07:29is the old way, wasting nothing, and every little tonic helps a garden along.
07:35Save your onion skins, and brew them a tonic.
07:39The sixth is crushed eggshells, for calcium and to sweeten a sour soil.
07:44Do not throw out your eggshells, for they are near pure calcium, a thing the garden craves, and the old
07:51folks saved every one.
07:53You rinse them, let them dry, and crush them up fine, and work them into your soil or your compost.
07:59They give that calcium slow to the soil, which helps your tomatoes against the blossom end rot, and feeds all
08:07your plants, and they help sweeten a soil gone too sour and acid, and being gritty, they help keep the
08:13soil open and airy besides.
08:16Crushed fine and worked in, your breakfast eggshells feed your garden for free, where folk buy bags of lime and
08:23calcium to do the same.
08:25Save and crush your shells.
08:27The seventh is the chop and drop, the old way to feed the soil with the garden's own leavings.
08:33Folk today clean their gardens too well, pulling out and hauling off every spent plant and stem after harvest, and
08:41in doing so they carry off all that goodness and leave the soil bare to wash away.
08:46The old way is the opposite.
08:48When a plant is done, you chop it down right at the soil and drop it right there where it
08:53grew, leaving the stems and leaves lying on the ground as a cover.
08:57That cover keeps the soil moist and shaded, so you water far less, and as it rots, it feeds the
09:04soil and all its worms and unseen life, returning to the ground exactly what grew from it.
09:11Nature never leaves the soil bare, and neither should you.
09:15Chop your spent plants down and drop them right there, and let the garden feed itself.
09:21The eighth is soaking your hard seeds overnight, a small trick for a much better sprouting.
09:26Some seeds have hard shells, your peas and beans and squash and the like, and dropped dry into the ground,
09:33they sprout slow and unevenly, and some rot before they wake.
09:38So the old folk soaked them first, you put your hard shelled seeds in a bit of warm water and
09:44let them soak eight to twelve hours overnight before planting, and that softens the shell and wakes the seed within,
09:53the same as a spring rain would, so they come up quick and strong and even.
09:58It costs nothing, takes no effort, just a bowl of water the night before, and it gives your whole planting
10:05a better, faster, more even start.
10:09Soak your hard seeds the night before you sow.
10:13The ninth is regrowing your lettuce and greens, cut and come again, so one plant feeds you many times over.
10:21Folk pull the whole head of lettuce and then must start all over with new seed.
10:26The old thrifty way is to never pull the whole plant, but only to cut or pick the outer leaves
10:33as you need them, leaving the heart and the roots be.
10:37And that plant just keeps pushing out fresh new leaves for you to pick again and again for weeks.
10:44So from the one plant, you get harvest after harvest, instead of one and done.
10:50This works for your leaf lettuces and many a green besides.
10:53Pick the outer leaves and leave it growing, and one sowing feeds you the whole season long.
11:01And the tenth is the old beer trap for slugs, which spares your lettuces and hurts nothing but the slugs.
11:09If slugs are riddling your greens and strawberries overnight, and folk reach for the poison pellets that foul the soil
11:16and endanger the pets and the birds,
11:19there is a far older, kinder way.
11:22You sink a shallow dish down in the ground so its rim sits level with the soil, and pour in
11:28a bit of beer.
11:29The slugs, drawn by the smell of the yeast, which they cannot resist, crawl in and drown, and you tip
11:36them out in the morning and refill it.
11:38It clears your slugs clean, without a speck of poison anywhere near your food or your family.
11:45A shallow dish and a splash of beer, and your slug troubles are over.
11:50And here is one more that costs nothing at all and is worth as much as any,
11:55and it is simply to sit a while in your garden and watch it.
11:59Not working, not watering, just sitting quiet and looking of an evening.
12:04For in that quiet watching you come to know each plant, and you catch the first pale leaf, the first
12:12chewed edge,
12:13the first sign of trouble, while it is still small and easily mended, long before it becomes a ruin.
12:20The old folk knew their gardens plant by plant because they were out among them slow and often,
12:26and that knowing was worth more than any tonic.
12:30So sit and watch your garden, and it will tell you what it needs.
12:34Now let me say a small plain word, not a who-profits sermon, for a garden is no one's scheme.
12:41But look at the whole of what these ten cost.
12:44Old newspaper, straw, a holed jug, rusty nails, onion skins, eggshells, spent plants, a bowl of water, and a splash
12:55of beer.
12:55That is the whole bill, and near all of it was bound for the scrap pail or the fire anyway.
13:02And against that, the store would sell you weed cloth and drip kits and iron tonics and calcium and slug
13:09poison and seed after seed.
13:11A fortune to do worse than the free old ways do.
13:15There is a whole trade built on selling folk what their grandparents got for nothing,
13:20on making them forget that the garden and the kitchen and the scrap pail hold near everything a garden needs.
13:27So folk come to think a good garden must be bought when the old people grew better ones from what
13:32they had to hand.
13:33That thrift, that making do, that wasting of nothing is the deepest garden wisdom there is, and it is near
13:41lost.
13:42So there are ten no-cost old tricks the grandparents used, and the stores would rather you forgot.
13:49Newspaper to smother your weeds and feed your worms.
13:52Straw to grow your potatoes with no digging.
13:55A buried jug to water deep while you are away.
13:59Rusty nails for an iron tonic.
14:01Onion skins for a gentle feed.
14:04Crushed eggshells for calcium and sweeter soil.
14:07Chop and drop to feed the soil its own.
14:09Soaking your hard seeds overnight for a strong start.
14:13Cut and come again to harvest one plant many times.
14:17And a beer trap to clear the slugs without poison.
14:21Do these, and you will grow more, work less, spend near nothing, and your soil will only get richer, just
14:29as the old folks did.
14:31Now I want to hear from you.
14:32Tell me down below which of these old tricks you already knew, and which one you mean to try first,
14:38and any old no-cost trick your own grandparents used that I did not name, for I am always glad
14:46to learn one.
14:47And tell me your county and what you most wish you could stop buying for your garden.
14:55Next time, I want to show you the making of the old plant feeds and teas, the nettle tea, and
15:01the comfrey, and the manure tea,
15:03the free liquid feeds the old folk brewed in a barrel to feed a whole garden rich, for that is
15:10the next great no-cost secret after these.
15:14The old people grew abundance from what the rest of the world threw away, the newspaper, and the eggshell, and
15:21the rusty nail, and the straw,
15:23wasting nothing, and buying almost naught, and their gardens only grew richer for it.
15:30There is a quiet wisdom in that thrift, in seeing that near everything a garden needs is already in your
15:37hand or your scrap pail if you have the old knowing to use it.
15:42The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
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