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). Continue reading →