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Don’t you just love it when other gardeners share some of their timesaving tips with you?

Good ideas are like money in the bank: You just can’t get enough. The best thing about a really practical idea is that it costs practically nothing.

Here are some of my favorites, which I’ve picked up from friends and experts. Use them as needed and please take credit for them whenever possible:

• PH, I love you: Got a blue hydrangea but want pink? Try changing your soil pH. Blue is acid. Pink is alkaline. Get blue flowers by adding fresh coffee grounds from your favorite java. Want pink? Add lime according to directions on the bag. Repeat in fall and spring.
• Hoarding sunflowers: Tie cheesecloth (available at grocery stores) over seed heads to prevent birds from eating seeds. When the seeds start falling into the cheesecloth, it’s time for roasting.
• Cheap cloches: Cloches are (expensive) glass domes used to protect delicate seedlings and plants from frost. Try the same thing with the plastic dome lid that comes on packages of roasted chickens at the market. Take the label off the top and make a few more holes to allow air circulation. Place the dome over small, tender plants to protect them from frost.
• Holy rhodies, Batman: Does it look like some scalawag took a hole punch to the edges of your rhododendron leaves in the dark of night? You are witnessing the work of root weevils. Arm yourself with a flashlight and a jar of vegetable oil, and fight back. The flashlight illuminates the beetles when they come out to eat at night; pick them off and plop them in the oil to dispose of the evildoers.
• You make the collar: Save those toilet paper rolls. Slide them over young plants, making sure half of the cardboard goes into the soil. This prevents cutworms (little wiggly white larva) from chewing off the stem of the plant at soil level, while leaving the rest of the plant unharmed.
• Wormy ears: Gardeners are always battling corn earworms. Try the easy, natural method instead of chemicals. When the silk starts to turn brown, put a drop of mineral oil onto the ear husk. That’ll keep them worms out of your ears!
• Slug squirt: Get slugs before they mate during fall rains. Fill a trigger spray bottle with one part ammonia in two parts water. Spray. Most plants take up small amounts of ammonia as nitrogen fertilizer. Caution: Make a very diluted mixture, as it can burn the leaves of tender plants.
• Cagey cats: If you’re spreading poppy seeds or making new, small plantings and have trouble with cats digging up your garden beds, cover the area with chicken wire or holly leaves. This will prevent the cats from using your new planting as a litter box.
• Grass killer: Put a layer of flattened cardboard (slightly overlap the edges of each piece) over the grass or weeds you want to kill. Cover the cardboard with four inches of compost or thick mulch. This will smother the grass and allow you to replant a new garden bed. The cardboard breaks down quickly and the grass underneath becomes compost too.