Q. Our cucumbers get all eaten up, and I am too old to dust every week. Any green thumb magic?

A. There is no magic, lotion, motion or potion in gardening, but interplanting sure resembles it. Plant a few radishes in each cucumber mound.

Q. I have heard that you can pinch tomatoes to make them climb, instead of spread out. Where do you pinch?

A. If you’re going to train your tomatoes to grow up a stake, you should pinch out the side shoots that grow out of the crook of the main side stems.

Q. What variety of cucumber won’t give you gas?

A. If you like cucumbers, but they don’t like you, try the ones they call lemon cucumbers.

Q. Where is the best place to grow vegetables?

A. Any place that gets six to eight hours of sun a day and where you can get an eight- to ten-inch depth of soil together—wooden boxes, wastepaper baskets, tubs, cement blocks, wooden frames, on a roof, driveway, or walk.

Q. What kind of dirt do you need for a good garden?

A. To begin with, the word is soil, not dirt. Soil is a productive composition of decayed materials such as leaves, grass clippings, sawdust, weeds, and fallen trees, while dirt is a collection of filth. Any well-drained soil will do nicely. While water should not stand in pockets on top neither should the soil be pure sand, which will not hold any moisture at all.

Q. I live in a new subdivision where heavy clay was used as backfill, and I just can’t get a good garden started. What will really break up the clay?

A. You can dig in fifty pounds of garden gypsum per one thousand square feet in the fall and in the spring. In the fall, cover the soil with a mixture of leaves, grass clippings, ashes, wood chips, builders’ sand and peat moss to a depth of six inches and sprinkle with fifteen pounds of garden food per five hundred square feet. Let this mix sit all winter. In the spring, spade or rototill very well into the clay.

Q. What can you do to make sand hold water?

A. Add everything listed in the previous answer except the sand.

Q. When do you add compost to a garden?

A. In the fall. Let it sit on top ’til spring, when you work it in very well.

Q. If you spade a garden in the fall, do you have to do it again in the spring?

A. I only spade or rototill in the fall if I need the exercise, and I do that before I add my compost or other rakings. I always spade again in the spring; that’s a must. Soil becomes compacted or pushed down from snow and rain. If you just scuff it up with a rake, you don’t give the new seeds and plants a fair start.

Q. When is the best time to dig up your garden?

A. If you have never had a garden in a certain spot before, remove the sod and throw it into your compost pile in the fall. Next put a six-inch-deep layer of leaves, grass clippings, ashes, wood chips, builder’s sand, and peat moss on the cleared area and wait until spring to spade it in. Don’t cultivate a garden until the soil will crumble in your hand after being squeezed firmly.

Q. What good do eggshells and coffee grounds do for garden dirt?

A. It’s soil, and they help to break up heavy soil or day.

Q. We have adobe soil. What can we do for it?

A. Add a six-inch-deep layer of organic material—leaves, grass clippings, ashes, wood chips, builder’s sand, and peat moss—after working in fifty pounds of gypsum per one thousand square feet. Let the layer sit until spring, then work it in very well.

Q. How much and when do you add lime to your garden?

A. You should lime once every three years at a rate of one quart jar per one hundred square feet applied in the fall, or apply two ounces of liquid lime per one hundred square feet in the spring.

Q. Should you add fertilizer to the soil before you plant?

A. I add about a pound of garden food per one hundred square feet in the fall and then feed my garden with a liquid garden food right after I plant in the spring.

Q. Every year my garden has been carried away by root maggots, cutworms, corn borers, and so on. When, how, and with what can I save my garden?

A. Apply Dursban or Diazinon to the soil in the fall according to package directions.

Q. How do you build a raised garden?

A. Make a frame out of 2 X 10 timbers or with cement blocks and fill it with good garden soil. A raised garden can be built right on top of clay, cement, a tarred roof—anywhere you can find with full, open sun that will support the massive weight of all that soil. It’s also a good idea to use a wood preservative available at a paint store to keep the wood from rotting.

Q. What can you grow in a raised garden?

A. Anything you can grow in a regular garden, if you have the room.

Q. What grows best in tubs and big planters?

A. Anything you’d grow in your regular garden, except that close to the house I like to use planters for vegetables that we use in salads. They look nice on a patio—parsley, leaf lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach—and they’re right at hand for picking.

Q. Most of my garden is in the sun, but about 25 percent is in some shade. What can I grow in the shade?

A. Beans and cabbage don’t do too badly in the shade, but you must watch out for insects a little more in shady spots than in the sun. Bugs like a cool spot on a hot day just as you and I do.