Plant Gardens 101

Spending time outdoors without being buzzed and bitten by flying insects can be a challenge, but purple martins can help by consuming hundreds of flying insects a day. Here’s how to attract purple martins to your backyard. (Note: Purple martins nest throughout the eastern U.S., but winter in Central and South America. If you live outside of their nesting range, providing a martin house typically will not attract purple martins to your backyard.)

Backyard Apartment Communities: Martins are Colony Nesters

The purple martin is a large blue-black swallow whose plumage shines an iridescent purple. It snaps up insects while airborne, and rarely sits still except when incubating eggs or roosting at night. Unlike many songbirds that pair up and defend a specific territory from birds of the same species, purple martins traditionally nest in colonies, and U.S. populations are dependent upon humans for a home–the purple martin bird house. You can buy purple martin homes from specialty bird watching shops, nurseries, and garden supply stores within the birds’ range. Martin homes are typically designed with two or three stories with each containing several nesting units. Martin houses are designed for easy assembly and cleaning at the end of the nesting season. (more…)

Even the most seasoned gardeners will have a question about their garden once in a while, and you can bet that beginners will be full of questions. Gardening magazines can help with questions that arise involving nearly every aspect of gardening. Not only will gardening magazines give instructions on gardening, they also provide readers with the latest news in the gardening world.

Gardening magazine subscribers are privy to all of the latest information regarding things such as new gardening tools, fertilizers, and pesticides that are introduced to the market. For example, there are always new programs and clubs for gardeners to join, or perhaps a local gardening class that is available. When new tools are produced, such as a new kind of blower or vacuum, or new kinds of lawn mowers or tillers that are available, a gardening magazine is the best place to get all of the information. Not only will these magazines tell you about these products, they will also give you options on where to find them and for the lowest costs.

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Compost made by allowing organic matter to decompose naturally at air temperature, over a period of months or years. Cold compost is easy to produce, but it typically contains seeds of weeds or garden plants that germinate when the compost is worked into the soil or spread as a mulch, and it may also harbor disease organisms.

If you are like many people around the world you want a summer garden to bring a little life to your lawn during those oh so hot summer months. Most of us however, would prefer a garden that doesn’t require constant care and attention. This is where proper planning comes into place for creating the summer garden of your dreams.

There are several things you need to ask yourself when planning your summer garden. Each of these things will to some extent determine the type of summer garden your lawn will accommodate. First of all, how much space on your lawn do you wish your summer garden to occupy and in general terms how big is that space. Most of us live in homes that have woefully inadequate lawn space these days. For this reason it is important to have a realistic vision as to how much of that prime real estate you are willing to commit to your summer garden. (more…)