Plant Gardens 101

Do you love roses? Luscious rose gardens add a beautiful atmosphere to any home and garden. Even beginners can grow roses with little trouble when learn the basics of maintenance. There are some gorgeous ideas for backyard rose gardening. Although there are many steps to growing a beautiful rose garden, even a beginner can do it. Here you will find some rose gardening tips for the beginner.

- First, choose your spot. Roses love sunlight; therefore, they grow best when getting at least 8 hours of sunshine daily. A full day of sunlight is best; however, morning sun is preferable to afternoon sun.

- Prepare the soil for your roses well. Although, roses are not fragile flowers, they thrive in good draining soil, with a pH level about 6 or 7. Roses flourish in soils rich in organic materials.

- Keep in mind that soil that does not drain well, leave plants open to the vulnerability of disease and roots rot.

- Add organic materials such as compost, peat moss and manure.

- Fertilizers come in various choices between organic and chemical fertilizers.

- Allow the soil to rest a few days as it settles. (more…)

Sometimes bargains don’t turn out to be real bargains in the end. You may think you are saving a few bucks by buying a cheaper version of a product and it really is in fact the cheaper version all right in both durability and materials. This is the exact fitting scenario for outdoor storage sheds. If you are going to buy cheap then you are going to get a cheap version. Really adding a bit more money to the purchase can mean a real bargain because you are going to get many years of service from it such as the cedar or vinyl as opposed to the tin versions.

Here are 7 considerations when buying outdoor sheds:

1. Price vs. Quality in Outdoor Storage Sheds
2. Design of Outdoor Storage Sheds and House Design
3. Outdoor Storage Sheds as Part of the Landscape (more…)

To scratch or dig up the surface of the soil around plants in order to break the crust so water can penetrate, to eliminate weeds, or to conserve moisture by creating a dust mulch.

So your neighbor’s garden is more fruitful, beautiful, and aggressively growing than yours: why do you think? He/she is seemingly not out and working in it anymore than you are, you haven’t seen a hired gardening expert milling about, but you have noticed a sweet smell coming from next door that you don’t seem to recognize. You could get the answer quickly by asking your neighbor what he or she is doing that you’re not, but your pride won’t let you ask. Dollars to donuts, your neighbor is using compost to help enrich the fertility of the growing beds, whether commercially produced, or produced in his back yard as well. You would do well to attempt the same, and the benefits to your garden will be overwhelming! (more…)

Lying on the ground; creeping.

Daisy family
Compositae
Tay-gee’teez. Marigold . A group of about 30 species of annual herbs, all native from N. Mex. to Argentina, not from Africa or France as implied by the common names African Marigold and French Marigold. The name “marigold” is commonly applied to several different kinds of plants in addition to Tagetes . The best known are the Pot Marigold ( Calendula ), the Cape Marigold ( Dimorphotheca ), and the Sea Marigold ( Mesembryanthemum ).

Description
Leaves strong-scented, mostly opposite and usually finely dissected. Flowerheads showy, solitary, or clustered. Below each head is a series of involucral bracts, united into a cuplike base.

How to Grow   (more…)

Any reliable seed house can be depended upon for good seeds; but even so, there is a great risk in seeds. A seed may to all appearances be all right and yet not have within it vitality enough, or power, to produce a hardy plant.

If you save seed from your own plants you are able to choose carefully. Suppose you are saving seed of aster plants. What blossoms shall you decide upon? Now it is not the blossom only which you must consider, but the entire plant. Why? Because a weak, straggly plant may produce one fine blossom. Looking at that one blossom so really beautiful you think of the numberless equally lovely plants you are going to have from the seeds. But just as likely as not the seeds will produce plants like the parent plant.

So in seed selection the entire plant is to be considered. Is it sturdy, strong, well shaped and symmetrical; does it have a goodly number of fine blossoms? These are questions to ask in seed selection. (more…)

Spring is the time of year when we think about creating a vegetable garden, especially with all the emphasis on the damage that long transport distances do to the ecosystem, never mind the fact that we are eating vegetables that are not quite as fresh as they might be! When choosing the location for your vegetable garden forget the old idea that the veg patch must be an ugly spot. If carefully designed, thoughtfully planted and well cared for, it will be feature of your garden, bringing a touch of homeliness that no formal bed could ever create.

Bearing this in mind you should not restrict yourself to any area of the garden just because it is out of sight. In the average modern garden there won’t be much choice as to land anyway. You will need to use what you have available and then do the best that you can with it. There will probably be more choice as to exposure and convenience. All things being equal, try and choose a spot reasonably close to the house with easy access. It may seem that the difference of only a few yards is hardly relevant, but if you are depending largely on snatched spare moments for working in the vegetable garden easy access will be much more important than you might realise. Only when you have made a dozen unnecessary trips for forgotten bits and pieces, or ended up getting wet as you dash in and out will you realise that it would have been much easier to have the veg garden just that little bit closer! (more…)

Forked.

The mature or ripened ovary of a flower, containing one or more seeds.

A substance that contains one or more of the necessary plant nutrients.

A well maintained green lawn can enhance the beauty of any house. However for many people maintaining and keeping the lawn in a proper shape is a tough task indeed. This is because they are not aware of the right way to care for their garden. Are you one of them? Then read on as we share great gardening tips with you!

Green plants need water and nutrients. Right lawn fertilizer is responsible for giving proper nutrients to plants and on the other hand irrigation or nature provides water. However, choosing the right lawn fertilizer is quite difficult.

Lawn fertilizers play a great role for proper growth of plants in the lawn. The application of plant nutrients over the lawn seems quite simple. In fact after sprinkling the fertilizer, you should water it so that it penetrates in the underlying soil. So, application of lawn fertilizer is a painless job but what is tough is determining the specific needs of the lawn. (more…)

The very attractive garden is the wild flower garden. But someone say they have a bad luck with the gardening. You should know that it is not the good luck or bad luck, but it is the understanding and the attention. Each wild flower has the individual personality and characteristic. The plants always desire the environment that they have been accustomed to in the nature. If you take the plants out of their condition, they will sick and die. This is the reason why we should set up the suitable condition for them. You should notice the soil, the place, the condition, the surrounding, the neighbors and the other environments before you choose the wild flower from the nature.

These are the examples:

- If you find the A flower and the B flower are living together, you should put them together in your garden.
- If you find the A flower is living in the open situation, you should growing them in the same place. So if your flowers feel like they are living in their home, they will show the beautiful flower for you. (more…)

Because there is such a wide range of information to be learned on this topic of koi pond and waterfall construction and so much technical information out there, you may decide to seek professional assistance to complete part or all of the water features. Before you proceed, here are 18 extremely important facts you should know…

1. Remember: asking friends or neighbors for recommendations for building a koi pond is always an option, but they are unlikely to have had occasion to conduct business with a water feature professional. It is a very narrow specialty field.

2. Many liner pond people are not only inexperienced, they are working from job to job on a shoe string budget, which results in the illegal practice of mingling funds, using the deposit from one job to finish up the last etc. What is worse, many liner installers are unlicensed. This business attracts these types because it takes very little investment to get started (shovel, rake, garden hose and wheelbarrow) while making tons of money from unsuspecting people. Plus, In many cases a building permit is not required to build an 18 inch deep liner pond. If not installed by a licensed professional, a liner pond can end up being your biggest nightmare. (more…)

The botanical name for milkweed.
Milkweed family
AsclepiadaceaeAs-klee’pi-as. Milkweed . Milky-juiced, rather showy, but sometimes weedy, perennial herbs, including about 200 species, chiefly from the New World, but a few African. The cultivated species are mostly North American. (more…)

You’ve probably noticed that organic foods are becoming very popular. This is because many individuals are learning the benefits of organic foods. At first, it seemed as if ‘organic’ was a word used to describe an exotic type of food, but it is anything but. Some individuals would even steer clear of the organic foods section in their local supermarket because of the fact that these foods were different. But now, organic food is something that is found all over the supermarket. There is a section in produce designated for organic, but you will find these foods scattered all throughout the supermarket.

But what is meant by ‘organic’?

Well, it all starts with the gardening. Organic gardening is different than most methods that are currently used. In other words, the methods are different than the methods that are used to grow the rest of the fruits and vegetables in the produce section. (more…)

Mint family
Labiatae
Sat-you-ree’a. Savory . About 30 species of aromatic herbs or small shrubs, distributed through the temperate regions of the world. The species below is used as an herb. Sometimes spelled Satureia .

Description
Stems usually square. Leaves opposite, ovalish or lance-shaped, the margins sometimes toothed. Flowers pink, white, or purplish, in whorls, in axillary or terminal racemes. Calyx 5-lobed, usually tubular. Corolla a narrow tube opening into 2 lips, upper lip 2-lobed and flat, lower lip 3-lobed and widely flaring. Stamens 4, in pairs.

How to Grow    (more…)

Japanese gardening is a cultural form of gardening that is meant to produce a scene that mimics nature as much as possible by using trees, shrubs, rocks, sand, artificial hills, ponds, and flowing water as art-forms. The Zen and Shinto traditions are both a large part of Japanese gardening and, because of this; the gardens have a contemplative and reflective state of mind. Japanese gardening is much different than the Western style and most would say it is far more meditational and soul soothing.

In Japanese gardening there are three basic methods for scenery. The first of these is reduced scale. Reduced scale is the art of taking an actual scene from nature, mountains, rivers, trees, and all, and reproducing it on a smaller scale. Symbolization involves generalization and abstraction. An example of this would be using white sand to suggest the ocean. Borrowed views refers to artists that would use something like an ocean a forest as a background, but it would end up becoming an important part of the scene. (more…)

A term that refers to the development of seed from an unopened, self-pollinated flower. Some violets, for example, are insect-pollinated in spring but develop cleistogamous buds in summer.

People in the South East have the greenest fingers in the UK, spending the highest amount of money on visits to garden and DIY stores, according to research by Barclays Insurance.

This Saturday will be the busiest day of the year for the country’s amateur gardeners, handymen and home improvers with over 1.2 million people expected to visit their local DIY or garden store, a 50 per cent increase from the average number of shoppers on a normal Saturday. Over £50 million is expected to be spent as gardeners are inspired by the Chelsea Flower Show and the prospect of a long weekend with, hopefully, some fine weather. (more…)