TIL that planting marigolds next to my tomatoes actually worked and I feel like a fool
My neighbor Rosa in Tucson kept telling me to plant marigolds around my tomato beds to keep nematodes away, and I smiled and nodded for two years while secretly thinking it was folk nonsense. This spring I finally did it because I had a $3 packet of seeds and nothing to lose, and my tomato plants came out with zero root knots while the ones in my other bed got wrecked. So now I want to know, what other old garden tricks did you write off as silly until you tried them yourself?
Man, I gotta disagree on the marigolds being some magic bullet. Those little guys do release stuff that messes with nematodes, sure, but they only really work if you plant them thick and let them grow a while before the tomatoes go in. A few scattered plants around the edge? That's mostly luck and a good growing season, not the flowers doing the heavy lifting.