You don't have to be a professional, experienced gardener to have a great looking garden. By reading and using the following tips, you can fool anyone into believing you have a green thumb! Plants require attention and care, but a little love and effort, can really make a difference in the health of your garden.
To save space in your garden, try planting your crops in blocks rather than in the traditional rows. Rows end up leaving too much space between plants for needless pathways. Blocks help keep plants tight together without sacrificing production. Small variety kitchen vegetables do best in blocks that are arranged in a wide bed.
Attract butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden. Certain plants are highly attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds due to their nectar. Hummingbirds tend to favor any flower that is shaped like a trumpet, especially if it is pink, red or purple. Examples of these are honeysuckle, fuchsia and monarda. Butterflies like flat, daisy-like flowers, such as chrysanthemums, asters and coneflowers. Choose a sunny position, as both butterflies and hummingbirds appreciate the warmth.
If you have specimen plants which need warmer climate zones than the rest of your garden, you can easily create a suitable space for them within your regular garden! Just create a shelter with a south facing wall which will become a solar collector, absorbing warmth in the day and releasing it at night, thus providing your specimen plants with the perfect environment!
When you do horticulture, make sure that you have a good pair of horticulture gloves. Horticulture is rough on your hands. Thorns and sharp branches can hurt your hands if they are not protected by gloves. Sometimes you cannot see what is in a bush when you stick your hand in there to prune. Wearing a pair of horticulture gloves will make sure that your hands will not be injured.
Buy Diatomaceous earth as an alternative to toxic pesticides or adding predatory insects to your garden. Diatomaceous earth is natural, organic, and non-toxic as well as inexpensive and easy to find. It is a green way to keep pests under control. Sprinkle over the surface of soil and water as normal.
Use foliar feeding to help shocked or struggling plants recover. Plants can consume nutrients through their leaves quicker than through their roots. If they are having trouble getting nutrients through their roots, spray their leaves with liquid food. Be careful not to overfeed them this way. They may need to feed only twice a month.
Gardening can be very relaxing. There are a variety of ways to find peace and relaxation on a personal level. Many find that horticulture is a great method for achieving this. While you do have to invest a little bit of money, the returns on that are huge. The biggest dividend is the emotional satisfaction of planting and growing greens on your own.
Plant seedlings on cloudy days. The cloud cover will help protect your new seedlings from the heat and radiation of the sun. This extra protection gives them a better shot of survival than if they were planted on a hot, sunny day. If your seedlings were being grown out of direct sunlight when you purchased them, be especially careful about exposing them to direct light.
Do not waste your time and energy carrying a hose that is hard to put away. Get a couple or hose reels to keep your hose neat. You can get a stationary hose reel to keep your hose on a wall, but you can also find portable hose reels if you want to carry your hose around your garden.
Start your plants from cuttings to save loads of money! Plants are expensive these days. Many, however, can be started by taking clippings from other plants. All that's required for some is just putting the cut ends in a glass of water. For the more difficult species, just dip the ends in some rooting hormone and push them into some damp sand.
A great organic mulch for acid-loving plants is pine needles. Each fall mulch your acid-lovers with a nice, thick layer of pine needles, which are acidic themselves. The pine needles will decompose and leave their acid in the soil. Your plants will love this extra acid in their roots.
Regulate how often you revitalize your soil based on your planting season. During a very long season it might require you to fertilize the ground more than once. It's important to give your plants the proper nutrients to grow, and remember that as plants grow the nutrients within the soil slowly diminish. Having the correct amount at the correct time will promote your harvest to grow to its maximal size.
Pine can make a great mulch. Some plants are highly acidic, and like soil that is acidic too. Use pine needles to increase the acid level in your soil if you have plants that require higher acid. Spread a few inches of pine needles on your http://www.tribe.net/template/pub%2Coc%2CDetail.vm?plugin=bio&inst=49048294 organic beds so that it will put the acid into your soil.
If you don't have the space to have an actual garden in the ground, it's perfectly acceptable to have an organic garden in containers. There are only a few root vegetables like asparagus that won't grow well in containers, so feel free to explore. Containers are perfect to grow organic tomatoes, green beans, green onions and many other organic vegetables.
When you start your organic garden, start a garden journal at the same time. Make note of when you planted seeds, how successful they were, any pests that you noticed, and what tricks proved to be effective. This information will be very helpful when you plant your garden in the following years.
Try not to walk in your garden unless you absolutely have to in order to care for it. Work from a distance when you can. Walking across the soil compacts it, which makes it harder for roots to penetrate to needed nutrients. If your soil is already packed down, gently aerate it without damaging root structure.
Encourage birds in the garden. Birds not only eat insects and eat grubs on the ground, they transport seeds. Whenever you find an unusual plant in your garden, the seed will have been transported via a bird or some other http://www.digsdigs.com/53-inspiring-rooftop-terrace-design-ideas/ animal. It is beneficial in both ways though: your provide food for birds through plants and water, but they provide an easy way to stay in contact with the animal kingdom. Plants that attract birds include elderberry, mulberry, viburnum and honeysuckle.
While gardening can be a touchy subject, all you need is the proper education on how to make it turn out right. If you want to start a garden in your home, you need only to follow the tips in this article, and soon you'll have a lovely arrangement of plants growing in your yard!
