My father, in between maintaining a grueling pickleball schedule and winning a silver kayaking medal in the Ohio Senior Olympics (Jason: “Wait, there’s actually one person over sixty-five who can beat him?”), manages to grow a pretty bangin’ garden. His zucchini look like zeppelins; his cabbages inspire envy. And if you lay a gardening quandary on Farmer Dwight, he’s quick to come up with a homespun solution. Here, straight from his lips, are some answers to your most pressing vegetable questions:

One: Hungry Critters. This one is the bane of just about every gardener I know, including Jason earlier this season. Farmer Dwight’s first recommendation is to build a better fence. But if you’re in a community garden and you don’t have that luxury, here’s another answer: HAIR! “Barbers just have bags of that stuff lying around,” Farmer Dwight says. So you go to your nearest barber, obtain a bag of hair clippings, and scatter them around the vegetables while trying not to feel like too much of a serial killer. This works because animals don’t like the human scent. Some say that putting little pieces of Irish Spring soap in the garden achieves the same effect, but soap is harder to style into a bouffant.

Hair will work great for little animals, but the small print is that you might need to get even sneakier for deer (who scoff at your hair, collecting it and reassembling it into jaunty wigs that they wear while taunting you). To keep them away from the sweet corn, Farmer Dwight suggests vigorously mixing equal parts water and raw egg and spraying it on the leaves. “Smells awful!” he says gleefully. Of course, you have to live with awful-smelling corn, but what do you care? You’re going to shuck it eventually anyway.

Two: Tomato Black Spot. Have you ever reached to pick a beautiful-looking tomato, turned it over and been repulsed by the nasty black splotches on the bottom? Egads! The black spot! How very Treasure Island. To get rid of the problem, Farmer Dwight suggests putting Epsom salts in the ground along with the tomato seedlings. That ship has already sailed this season, but fear not, there’s more. You can also use an organic fertilizer called Tomato Tone. He says that sprinkling a little around the base of the plants every two weeks will keep the black spot at bay.

Three: Cucumber Fungus. Nothing says summer like cucumbers and squashes, but vegetables that grow on vines are particularly susceptible to fungus. If you see yellow leaves that are cramping your cucumber plant’s style, here’s what you do: mix equal parts milk and water with a teaspoon or so of baking soda and just a splash of dish soap. Season to taste. Kidding! Take the solution and spray it on your vines. The dish soap will help keep it on the leaves, and the other ingredients will take care of your fungal issue.

Have a tough gardening problem that you want to run by Farmer Dwight? Send it to us at submissions at pitchknives.com.