The Garden Connection

All seminars will be located at the Cambridge Public Library starting at 6:30 pm.

• On June 11, Amy Johnston, MS, CFPM, UMN Extension Educator, Food Safety will present on Food Preservation. During this seminar, you will learn about safe food handling and sanitation practices to use in your home kitchen when preparing and preserving food. Additionally, you will learn about the six food safety control factors that you can use when preserving food to ensure its safety and quality.
• On August 13, Kara Baldwin will give a Bog Tour at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve.

All seminars will be located at the Cambridge Public Library starting at 10:00 am.

• On June 13, Mary Schier will present on Garden Trends in 2026: Garden Your Way. Mary was the editor and author of Northern Gardener magazine from 2005-2023. She currently shares garden inspiration through mynortherngarden.com and "Your Northern Garden" newsletter. Mary will help you explore how maximalist design and new sustainable products in 2026 let you shape landscapes to fit climate, environment, time, and budget, with personalized, climate-resilient spaces for our northern environment.
• On September 26, Stephanie Thurow will present on Small-Scale Homesteading & the Art of Preservation. Stephanie is a Certified Master Food Preserver and Hennepin County Master Gardener, food preservation instructor, and author of Can It & Ferment It. She is also a co-author of Small-Scale Homesteading. She shares these skills through Minnesota from Scratch. In this session, Stephanie will explore self-sufficiency from urban homesteading to water-bath canning, and will conduct a live, hands-on demonstration on how to make fermented sauerkraut!

Saturday, June 6 at the Pine City Discovery Garden. Registration closes June 4 or when capacity is reached.

Saturday, June 11. Self-guided garden tour featuring ten private residences of Hennepin County Master Gardener volunteer's. Registration required.

There are several techniques talked about in the media that propose to save you time, money and effort in planting and maintaining your gardens. Isanti County Master Gardeners came up with a list of tricks they use in their flower and vegetable gardens that you might find useful.

1. Plant radish seeds in the same row as you plant carrots. The radishes come up sooner and the carrots, with much smaller leaves, come up later. The radish plants mark where the carrots are planted. Harvest the radishes, thin out the carrots.
2. Place cantaloupe and watermelon when they are growing but still small into milk cartons. As the fruit grows, it takes on the shape of the carton.
3. To prevent the task of thinning your rows of vegetables, use seed tape. Make your own seed tape by gluing seeds, spaced correctly apart, onto strips of paper towel. You can use wood glue or make your own with flour and water.
4. Use raised garden beds so that you don’t have to crawl on the ground to work near your plants.
5. Nontraditional garden space - plant inside an old dog pen using hay bales or directly into the ground. Or, Use a large tote (drill holes through the bottom) as your garden bed. Place a stake in each corner and surround the minigarden with chicken wire. Don’t attach the chicken wire to the final stake to allow easy access to your garden. You now have a deer and rabbit-proof garden.
6. Plant potatoes in big pots or large bags. This makes it easy to harvest the potatoes.
7. To make a vertical strawberry patch, drill holes using a hole saw through the sides, bottom, and cover of gallon buckets. Fill buckets with soil and stack 3 buckets on top of each other. Bottom 2 buckets have lids with holes, top bucket no lid. Plant strawberries or other fruit/vegetables in the side holes and also at the top of the top bucket.
8. Check your flower beds for shade in the morning and afternoon. That way you know what plants will get some shade and what will get full sun when you purchase plants for filling in the beds.
9. Use cardboard on top of the soil to prevent weed growth.
10. Use string to make lines for straight vegetable rows.
11. Plan and budget for what to buy so you don’t buy too much.
12. Vertical gardening zucchini and cucumbers between your neighbors house and your’s to act and a blind/barrier.
13. Start seeds by the technique of winter sowing in jugs rather than starting plants from seed under grow lights. It is much easier.
14. Use a cattle panel arch for growing tomatoes.
15. Use red, yellow, and green popsicle sticks to mark your red, yellow, and green pepper plants.
16. Plant tomatoes in a dug out basin. The basin holds water and saves time in watering.
17. Place cardboard down on the ground, then place mulch on top of the cardboard. The cardboard prevents weeds from growing.
18. Use drip tape for watering your vegetable garden. It saves water by just watering the plants you want to water and helps prevent evaporation of the water.
19. Right plant - right place. Make sure you plant your new plants in the spots they will grow best.
20. Use cattle panels for pole beans - no bending!
21. Use soaker hose and timers to keep your plants watered without over-watering.
22. Grapevine tomato/peony/dahlia cages - make a ring of grape vines (form them around a 5 gallon bucket). Cut 4 straight sticks - ½-¾” in diameter and 2’ in height (or longer, depending on how tall you want your cage). Make one end of each stick pointed using a knife or grinder (this end goes in the ground). Drill a small hole through each stick approximately 4” from the top. Place a wire through the drilled holes. Equally space the 4 sticks around the ring of grape vines and wrap the wire around the ring. Pound the sticks into the ground around your tomato/peony/dahlia plant.
23. Use cinnamon on cut stems before planting. It's a natural disinfectant.
24. When you cut the suckers off your tomatoes, remove the lower leaves, dip the cut stem in cinnamon and then plant deep. You will have extra tomatoes.

Katie Hagen, Agricultural & Natural Resources Extension Educator - hagen@umn.edu

Presidents: Mary Januschka & Ken Schroepfer Vice Presidents: Dawn Haas & Jane VanderSchaaf

Secretary: John Nordin Treasurer: Nancy Carlson Treasurer Apprentice: Sandi Knolls

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