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Flower Gardening Tips

It’s that time of the year. Clean up the yard after a long winter, get all of your lawn and garden tools in order and begin planning your garden for the coming year. If you are like most families this usually means turning over last year’s flower beds and getting them ready for the new year of flower gardening along with plotting some new beds and getting them ready as well.

Most homes have a number of flower beds/flower gardens surrounding them, but they may not be in the right areas, or they may be too small for your gardening needs, or maybe there just aren’t enough of them to suit your tastes. Not to worry, building a flower bed is an easy project and depending on the size of the bed can be accomplished in an afternoon. Follow the steps below to get started.

Flower Gardening – Step One:

Start by digging a small hole to determine what type of soil conditions you are going to be facing. Soil that is too sandy or maybe has a high clay content will cause problems for new plants. This is the time to make that determination and plan to treat the soil with an amendment that will help you achieve a higher quality soil in the bed. Your local nursery flower garden have some suggestions for your particular flower garden problem.

Flower Gardening – Step Two:

Most new flower beds start as grass covered areas of your lawn making it difficult to eliminate future weed growth. You can either treat the area with a non-selective herbicide and then wait a few days before digging or you can mow the grass short, dig it up and then wait a few days for the annual seeds to germinate and then turn it over again. Both of these processes will eliminate most future problems from the grass, giving your flower garden an opportunity to thrive.

Flower Gardening – Step Three:

It is necessary to turn the soil over to a depth of at least 18 inches so many gardeners elect to rent or buy a tiller for this back breaking work. As you work keep an eye out for any large pieces of sod that turn up and throw them out. After you are done turning over the ground rake and hoe it until it is smooth.

Flower Gardening – Step Four:

With the bed nearly complete except for the plantings it is a good time to add the edging. It isn’t a necessity but it does present a neater appearance and can help keep grass and weeds form invading your flower bed.

These basic steps will provide you with quality soil for planting and a great new flower garden to enhance the quality of your landscape.

May 20, 2017 Gardening, , , , , , Read more >

5 Easy Steps of Building a No-Dig Garden

5 Easy Steps of Building a No-Dig Garden

This no-dig garden bed is a good way to grow plants organically and it can save you time and effort. It is suitable for a vegetable garden in particular. As the name says, there is no digging involved and, so long as your ingredients are weed free, no weeds.

When you yourself have a frame for a raised garden you are halfway there. Otherwise you can buy or build one to your needs. Don’t be put off by this requirement.

Timber, bricks, heavy plastic or a large container can replace timber – use your imagination and whatever is easy to come by. Basically all you want is something to contain the growing medium. I once saw an old bath tub being used.

There are numerous different “recipes” for the growing medium for no dig gardening. This one is an alternative to the lasagna gardening method and it uses similar ingredients, as follows:

  • newspaper
    • pea straw, lucerne hay, or straw,
    • blood and bone and well-rotted animal manure
    • compost e.g. mushroom or any good quality compost
    • weed-free garden loam. I have used potting mix as an alternative.

no dig

Step 1

Prepare the site for the garden. Level it if necessary. If it’s weedy you can ignore the annual weeds but dig out as many perennials (e.g. docks, dandelions) as possible.

Step 2

Build your container if you don’t already have one and set it up in a sunny place (at least 5 hours of sun a day). If you place it on lawn or existing garden you may wish to employ a weed mat as the base. If so, biodegradable material is best for your soil.

Step 3

Now make a 50mm (2 in) layer of wet newspaper. Some sources suggest using corrugated cardboard from packing cartons (staples and packing tape removed).

Step 4

Add a layer of pea straw or lucerne hay. This alongside the paper should reach about a third of the way up the structure. Sprinkle with blood and bone and cover with the well-rotted manure.

Step 5

Mix the compost and loam. Use one-third compost and two-thirds loam, or a greater quantity of compost if you wish. Use this to fill the garden bed. This will compact in several days so have some extra compost or mix to top up. I water the bed lightly before topping up.

no dig plots

Notes:

If you should be using potting mix containing fertilizer instead of loam and compost you can omit the blood and bone and manure.

If you don’t like using blood and bone, look around garden stores or online for an organic fertilizer. Seaweed meal would probably do as well. There are several other natural materials as well, easily obtainable and suitable for organic gardening.

This article was written to assist you build your own no dig, weed free garden as easily and cheaply as possible. Built correctly it will improve your organic or biological gardening experience. You can grow flowers in it but it is fantastic for growing vegetables.

 

 

May 10, 2017 Gardening, , , Read more >

4 Organic Ways of Destroying Pests in Your Garden

Have you actually wondered how to hold bugs and pests from the backyard? At this time you want to really have the whole plant with wonderful benefits, what can become more irritating than disappearing food? There are plenty of easy techniques to meat up safety all on your own backyard without charging you lots of money. Defend your expense of time and income by creating or rising a safety barrier. Outlined listed here are just a couple of methods you have the ability to defend your tasty fruits and vegetables.

Increased bedroom

1: Increased bedrooms undoubtedly certainly are a good start to getting your rising area. With the style of the increased bedrooms you should produce the bedrooms (10ft by 10ft) or larger therefore you may go about in them.

Utilising the correct amount of railroad link heap these about 3ft large to help you construct extensions across the border that the wall may be developed far from and have space to go across the perimeter. Making a start for an entrance to be invest is vital combined with the level of fence. A Six base large wall could hold out many creatures, if your increased sleep was 3ft large and the wall was 3ft large as properly to make over-all level 6ft down the ground.

Developing crops

2: If there is not increased bedrooms and just have a repair of area for the backyard you may find choices as well. If the area is greater than 20ft by 20ft and you have such as for instance an acre of crops developing a wall may be instead expensive.

A remedy for this can be planting evergreen woods that develop year about and heavy to encompass your crops. Sure they take time to develop but you are able to generally get 4ft kinds to start then allow them get 30ft tall. Putting splendor to your area, evergreens can hold out bigger creatures and interested people. Planting the woods shut enough together can produce a near stable barrier.

ants

Tougher animals

3: Adding a range wall is one in-expensive way to hold out some points but, you must work several additional lengths to hold out tougher animals. Therefore an effective way maybe not to possess to do one thousand lengths is to do 3 lengths 2ft aside and develop vines through the lengths and ultimately you might have an excellent vine wall that is wonderful and functional.

Vines develop instead fast therefore in the most effective environment they’re usually whole within annually, in harder environment you should pick a heartier vine seed to endure the cold. Make sure to select the most effective species before going to all or any or any the duty to having the backyard place prepared for vines.

Greenhouse

4: A greenhouse you’d believe is just a quite smart answer but think it or maybe not starving creatures can separate in to many greenhouses. If your greenhouse is manufactured out of plastic or glass, you are susceptible for releases or breaking shards of glass.

Plexi-glass edges undoubtedly certainly are a inexpensive answer alongside bordering your greenhouse with anything stable therefore susceptible edges aren’t met with creatures. Stable wall or organic one can beautify your greenhouse and also give you yet another program to cultivate points on and around.

There are plenty of informative techniques to stop view and utilization of your backyard or crops applying organic points about you. Phrase of your respective character in your backyard could be the utter many satisfying trait of your respective backyard besides the meals certainly; trellises, lattice, cable, timber, shrubs, large thin woods, or whatsoever innovative way to shield your dinner is just a planned strategy for almost any gardener or farmer.

May 8, 2017 Gardening, , , Read more >