Garden advice, tips & tricks for the home gardener

In the south, we pickle everything, including watermelon rind. The only drawback to pickling watermelon rind is when the entire watermelon is not eaten in one sitting and you need to save the watermelon rind over the course of a few days.
To save the watermelon rind for pickling under these circumstances, just wrap the watermelon rind in tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until you have enough rind to start the pickling process. Wrap the rind air tight and it will keep for up to one week in your refrigerator.
Do not freeze the watermelon rind. The water content in the rind will form ice crystals and ruin the rid for pickling.

Peeling a tomato may seem harder than herding a bunch of cats into a tow sack, but it’s not, if you know a trick or two.
To easily and successfully peel a tomato, you will need a pot of boiling water and a bowl of ice water.
Bring a pot of water to a full boil, then turn off the heat. Cut a small X into the bottom of the tomato. Place the tomato on a slotted spoon and dip into the boiling water for 30 seconds, keeping the tomato on the slotted spoon.
At the end of 30 seconds, lift the tomato out of the boiling water and immediately plunge the tomato into the ice water for 30 seconds.
Now you’re ready to peel the tomato. Start at the X you cut on the bottom of the tomato, place your paring knife under one corner of the X and lift. 1/4 of the tomato peel will easily release, then continue in this manner on the 3 remaining corners of the X and you’ll have a cleanly peeled tomato.

Sounds simple enough; pick up the houseplant pot and bring it indoors. There’s a little more to it than that, if you want your houseplant to live through the winter indoors.
If you have kept your houseplant outdoors during the summer, to suddenly bring it indoors and changes it’s climate will shock the houseplant, often causing the plant to drop all it’s leaves.
Temper your houseplants to avoid shock by bringing them only at night for a couple of weeks when the temperatures begin to drop, but still remain above 55 degrees. Set the houseplants back outdoors during the daytime, but for less and less time each day.
This adjustment period from outdoors to indoors should keep your houseplants thriving all winter.

October is a great time to dig new flower beds or vegetable garden plots for next year. If you plow or till up the ground now, it will destroy weed roots and destroy weed seeds before they can germinate.
Add plenty of organic matter to the soil like compost or well rotted cow manure when you dig up the garden beds and leave the soil rough so it will have good drainage throughout the winter months.
Plant a cover crop like rye grass or clover on the newly tilled garden beds to prevent soil erosion and turn it into the soil next spring as green manure.