A few days ago on an online group I’m part of, someone asked about people’s life hacks.

I thought about it for a while and realised that I spend so much time in the garden, that my ‘life’ hacks are mostly garden hacks.

So here is a list of 10 of my many garden hacks:

1. Cut up empty milk bottles to use as plant tags.
2. Give your chickens the run of the vegetable garden during winter—they’ll keep pests and weeds down and make springtime garden prep easier.
3. Recycle old cotton sheets and clothes, and raffia baskets as biodegradable plant ties.
4. When picking carrots, water well about an hour beforehand—the soft soil will make the carrots easier to pull.
5. When thinning carrots, remove the largest plants first—the small ones will grow, and you’ll be able to eat your thinnings.
6. Instead of tossing empty juice bottles in the recycling bin, fill them with water and line them up in the greenhouse—they’ll store heat during the day and release it at night. Paint them black for even more heat absorption.
7. Fill plant pots with cement to use as weights for things like bird nets and row covers. Give them wire handles threaded with a short section of irrigation pipe so they’re easy to move around.
8. Whenever you cook something, like pasta, that is boiled and drained, save the boiling water and pour it on weeds to kill them instead of sending it down the drain.
9. Plant summer lettuces in the shade of tall crops like corn to keep them from bolting too quickly.
10. Plant rangy crops like pumpkins next to early crops like brassicas—by the time the pumpkins grow large, the brassicas are gone and the pumpkins have space to sprawl.