Plant Gardens 101

Imagine biting into a perfect ripe strawberry, still warm from the summer sun without having to worry about chemical or pesticide residues. More people are turning to organic gardening for the peace of mind it provides, knowing that their home-grown food is free of potentially dangerous chemicals. By following a few simple guidelines and with little cost, you can have your own organic piece of gardening paradise.

At it’s most basic, organic vegetable gardening is a way to grow plants without the use of chemicals. In practice, what makes organic gardening different is that it uses a variety of natural methods to support the growing needs of plants.

What’s wrong with using chemicals?
Most pesticides that are used to kill insects also kill many beneficial insects and bacteria. Continued use of chemical fertilizers actually reduces soil quality, requiring the use of larger and larger amounts of fertilizer to provide the nutrients that are normally present in the soil. A vicious cycle begins, with more chemicals being added to a soil that is increasingly void of life. (more…)

One of two forms of orchid vegetative growth (the other is sympodial), wherein a single vegetative shoot grows continually upward without branching, such as the central rosette of Phalaenopsis. See also sympodial.

You are welcome to use this article on your website or in your newsletter as long as you reprint it as is, including the contact information at the end. Website URLs must be active links. You are welcome to use this article with an affiliate link, http://www.freeplants.com/resellers.htm

Long before the first daffodils of the year come into bloom, seed catalogs are delivered to our mailboxes to herald the arrival of Spring. A good seed catalog contains so much information, it can sometimes be overwhelming for a novice gardener to decide which seeds to buy for their garden. Today I’ll explain how to interpret catalog descriptions for vegetable, herb and flower seeds.

Let’s start with vegetable and herb seed descriptions, since they’re fairly straightforward. A typical catalog listing for these seeds will look something like this description for lettuce seeds: (more…)

With flower parts arranged into two lips. Mints, rhymes, salvias, and other members of Labiatae, the mint family, have labiate flowers.

Despite the best efforts of landscape planners, sometimes parts of a garden are used for purposes for which they were not originally designed. If you notice tracks or worn patches on a lawn, or, worse, across a flowerbed, it is a sure sign that a hard surface of some sort is needed there for protection, because a pathway is in the process of being created.
However, you may not want a full path, with its hard lines, in that position.

One way around the problem is to insert stepping stones to form a path. The stones can be circular, rectangular, square, or even irregular in shape. You will need enough stones so they are easy to walk on without changing stride – no one enjoys jumping from stone to stone. A distance of 2 ft 6 in from the centre of one stone to the centre of the next will suit the stride of most adults. It is best to place the stones where you want them and to try walking on the stones before committing to laying them in their final position. (more…)

In orchids, a plantlet that develops from a node on the stem or cane.

When you look at any blooming flower, whether it is a tulip or a wildflower, you see the very last step of its evolution. Not all flora pioneer the same way, still. There is a difference between a tulip bulb and a seed that every gardener should know. To learn more, read the next information.

Let’s lead with the vital definition of an ordinary flower bulb. There are many different definitions you can find on farming websites. Here are two akin, but different definitions:

An underground folio bud enwrapped in plump scales or coats.

An underground storeroom organ made up of ample scales wrapped around one another from which plants and foliage are bent.

Let’s yank out the universal rudiments. A tulip bulb is the floor part of a tulip factory. When the bulb is planted in the soil and begins to come to life, roots and shoots beat through the outer roadblock. Roots dig deeper into the soil to assemble watering and nutrients. Shoots grow upward and disturb through the surface of the soil and grow into the green stand that bears a tulip flower. (more…)

A garden that seeks to re-create nature on a small garden-sized scale. Through its maker’s choice and placement of plants, it is meant to suggest the wildness of nature, a sense of motion, and the passage of time. Japanese gardens usually incorporate Shinto or Zen elements as well.

Orchid growers come across many difficult choices when caring for their orchids. Perhaps one of the most difficult is deciding on how much to water the orchid. This is probably the most common mistake novices make.

It is very hard to judge the right time and the right amount of water to give to your orchid. Probably the biggest mistake people make is over watering the orchid. Very rarely do people under water, as with light people tend to over do it.

Different orchids require different amounts of water but what they all have in common is that they don’t like having their roots submerged in water as their roots will rot and die.

Even then, the orchid will require different amounts of water depending on the season. In the summer when it is hot your orchid will require more water than in the winter. (more…)

Gardener’s Dictionary: indefinite
Top Home > Library > Home & Garden > Dictionary for Gardeners

A term used to describe a flower with a great many petals, too many to count, or an inflorescence with too many florets to count.

Gardening has been converted into one of the most popular hobbies, and you probably know a gardener or two that would love a gardening gift for their upcoming special occasion. There are hundreds of gardening gifts to buy for both the beginner and expert gardener, and the great thing about gardening gifts is they can be bought just about anywhere: online, nursery, feed store, farmer’s market, even your local Wal-Mart or grocery store.

If buying a gardening gift for a beginner, an instructional or informational book is always a good idea. Books like this will give tips on how to eliminate gardening nightmares like disease, insects, and weeds. They will tell gardeners which kind of plants thrive in different climates, for more details visit to www.insomnia-battle.com as well as how much sun, water, and nutrients various types of plants require. Books like this can be purchased at nurseries, online, or at your local bookstore. If your gardening friend is a “computer nerd”, a gardening information CD might be a better gardening gift for them than a book. (more…)

A peculiar form of flower that appears to have a second flower growing from its center. Examples include some primroses, certain Kurume azaleas, and some forms of Canterbury bells.

For container gardening ideas, scan the internet, the library or a bookstore. The challenge is to come up with a lovely container garden plan. There are a widespread collection of containers available for your container garden. These range in size from small-scale house-plant pots to sizeable boxes and planters. Equally varied are the materials from which they are made. These include wood, glass, clay, aluminum, bamboo, straw, plastic, fiberglass, terra cotta, tin, cast iron, zinc, copper, and brass, each with select advantages and disadvantages. What you choose will depend on availability, price, background, and attraction not to mention the characteristics of the gardening pots.

Here are some container gardening ideas. In addition to run-of-the-mill circular pots and tubs, there are modern and ultra-modern forms such as square, rectangular, triangular, hexagonal, and octagonal. Also eligible are old iron kitchen pots, kettles, pails, jugs, casks, vases, crocks, jam tubs, barrels and nail kegs, Japanese fish tubs, aged sinks, bathtubs, bamboo soy tubs. There are novelty containers such as driftwood, wheelbarrows, donkey carts, spinning wheels and boxes attached to a roadside mail container. There are also bird cages, decorative well heads, animal figures, and Strawberry jars. Woven baskets may be used to conceal unattractive containers. Even tar paper pots, handled by garden centers and florists are worthy if painted or veiled to upgrade their exterior. Any of these can be used in your container gardening ideas. (more…)

Smooth, having no hairs or fuzz

One really easy way to save money and go green is to switch to organic gardening. If organic gardening sounds like something way out of your league, let me explain to you how easy it really is.

By organic gardening, you grow your garden without synthetic products, i.e. fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides. Instead, in organic gardening, your gardening products should come from organic matter (decaying plant and animal waste) and other plant based products. For example, using compost as a fertilizer is a great start or adding ground-rock mineral supplements. You can make your own compost, and minerals are fairly inexpensive.

Organic gardening involves working in cooperation with nature. The first step to organic gardening is to choose plants that are adaptable to the climate that you live in. If you have a happy plant that is used to the weather conditions of your region, you will find that you will have a much healthier plant. Plants that are stressed because they are not use to your conditions are more likely to attract pest. (more…)

A sudden burst of bloom, usually of flowers or fruit.