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Tips on how to learn more about the plants growing in your garden

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I often receive questions that ask me to explain in detail how to care for specific perennials. While I am working on having a very large index of care information for specific plants it does take time to create this information.

Now, even though I grew up in a family that gardened, I still found myself somewhat bewildered when I moved into my current home and started a garden of my own. I was growing a number of new plants – perennial and annual that I’d never worked with in the past. I too, had tons of questions.

What did I do in order to brush up on my knowledge?

Well, I went searching on the internet to find information on specific plants and gardening techniques. This was a wonderful method of getting information and my list of gardening related bookmark is huge! Unfortunately I also came across information that contradicted other information that I’d found.

That’s when I began buying gardening books. I bought a few good general gardening books, one or two about perennials and annuals, and a few that discussed gardening in my particular area, or at least in my Country. That was one of the best moves that I could have made. Now I’ve got 10+ very helpful gardening books at hand whenever I need to look something up.

Practice, experimentation, talking to other gardeners, and joining garden forums such as the Garden Web also helped quite a bit.

I observed my plants carefully in the first year on my own, taking notes occasionally as to the various plants bloom time, how often it bloomed, when it first started to grow in the spring and so on. I learned a lot just by observing my plants and caring for them as best I could.

Of course nothing pleased me more than when my mother, visiting from our home town and staying with us for a week or so, remarked as she gazed at our garden, “It’s so nice to know that one of our children inherited my green thumb”. What higher compliment could one gardener give another?

If you are just starting your garden, or still in the process of learning about new plants you might want to pick up one or all of the following books:

Perennials for Dummies by Marcia Tatroe ISBN 0764550306;

Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials: 10th Anniversary Revised and Expanded Edition by Ellen Phillips and C. Colston Burrell ISBN: 0875965709;

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques by Tracy Disabato-Aust, Steven M. Still ISBN: 0881924148.

Enjoy your garden!






Use your gardening downtime wisely

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How are you keeping yourself busy this month? Have you been spending time thinking about your garden? Reading gardening magazines and books? If you’re like me you probably have a number of seed and plant related catalogues to read. I think mine started being delivered in the mail from late November onward.

It’s too cold to go outside and do anything in the garden – other than shovel the snow that is.

If you want to have a great garden this season, you’ll find that thinking and planning are the two best things that you can be doing during these cold months. Use your garden downtime well.

If you’re like me you probably took some photos of your garden as the plants grew and filled in last season. You might have even made some notes- move this plant over here – it’s not getting enough sun, or it’s getting too much sun. Divide this plant and replant a cluster of them over here and so on.

Try to remember which of your plants did well and which ones didn’t last year. Have any of them been struggling for a few years? Is it time to move them or replace them?

As you flip through the gardening magazines and catalogues make notes of which plants, flowers and bulbs you’d like to try in your garden. Even if you aren’t purchasing them now, or perhaps you’d rather try them by seed rather than as a seeding – keep track of what you like. Then as the time comes to purchase the plants or seeds you’ll have a nice list that you can go over and pick from as you buy your new plants.

I’ve been using this site to keep track of which plants did well last year. Oddly enough, anytime I wrote about a plant not doing well and threatened to remove it if it didn’t start performing soon, amazingly enough it did start shaping up! Why I have no idea – did I actually give it a bit more attention since I was trying to figure out what it’s problem was, or did my threats work? Either way, I’ll be giving some of my plants some verbal threats next year – just in case.

Here’s a few great gardening books to keep you busy over the winter months:

Perennials for Every Purpose: Choose the Right Plants for Your Conditions, Your Garden, and Your Taste (A Rodale Organic Gardening Book)

This is an excellent book. I’ve got a copy of it and it keeps me busy for hours!

The Big Book of Flower Gardening: A Guide to Growing Beautiful Annuals, Perennials, Bulbs, and Rose

Another excellent book that I own. There are some great gardening tips in this book.

Annuals for Every Purpose: Choose the Right Plants for Your Conditions, Your Garden, and Your Taste (A Rodale Organic Gardening Book)

I don’t have a copy of this book … yet, but it’s on my list!

Helpful gardening tips

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Here’s a a few handy gardening tips that you might find useful, particularly if you are new to gardening:

1. Do your homework. Visit public gardens, read magazines and books.

2. Amend the soil for success. Lighten clay loam soil with compost.

3. Design for surprise: place some curves in your design or interesting nooks that visitors to your garden have to enter to see what magically beautiful plant you have growing there.

4. If you inherit a garden: Wait a season to see what comes up. You may destroy something you want to save. We were lucky to have purchased our house in June. I was able to watch what grew that year and used the following winter to plan out my new garden.

5. Smart plant picks. Purchase plants that are drought tolerant or said to be easy to care for if you don’t want to spend too much time in the garden watering and pruning.

The Well-Designed Mixed Garden: Building Beds and Borders with Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Annuals, and Bulbs

6. Mass appeal. Plant large areas with one flower in one color, such as purple phlox. You can always tell who’s a beginning gardener because they plant one of each plant. masses of three to five or more plants planted together in the garden bed make a much more satisfying display.

7. A wild prairie garden can be work until it gets established. If you want a natural looking garden find out what plants are native to your area and use them abundantly.

8. Japanese-style garden do’s. For dimension, build hills and cover them with moss.

9. Time-saving trick. Plant hosta around the base of trees and you won’t have to trim around them.

10. Get the kids to help. Most kids like helping in the garden. You may still end up doing more work than they do, but it’s a way to spend some quality time with them and also a way to get them outside.

11. Sure-fire critter repeller – build a fence with a gate if you want to keep out skunks, who don’t climb but can dig just fine) and other pets that might frequent your garden. Gates and fences don’t stop all critters but a fence might deter a few of them.

The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals

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