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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






Planning a vegetable garden

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Here’s some common questions that new gardeners often ask, and the answers too!

Q. I want to start vegetable gardening this year. This is going to be my New Year’s resolution. What are some things I should consider to be successful?

A. Start with keeping a gardening journal. In this journal, you should start with a diagram of the area you are planning to garden. Keep a record with a drawing of what plants you planted where. Also keep track of what varieties of plants that you use. Try to keep records of their yields. That way you will know what was successful and what was not.

Keep a record of the general weather of each week, especially any unusual weather of extreme heat conditions and lack of rain. Keep track of the timing of your planting dates, and the timing of pruning, fertilizing and when the harvest begins.

Second, go out and sample the soil for testing.

You need just a small sample taken about 6 inches in depth taken at several places near the edges and in the middle. Mix these together in a clean bucket, then take out about half of a pint to be sampled. You want just the basic garden sample analysis. They will give you the results and indicate what you will need to build your soil for a good mineral content.

As spring approaches, it will take a little longer to get back results. So as long as the soil is not frozen, take the sample as soon as possible.

Third, send for some seed catalogs. You can look through these and get ideas. But remember the pictures are taken of the best results. Try to find a neighbor who gardens and find out what varieties he grows.

In the beginning, try the All-American varieties. These have been tested all over the United States and have won honors for producing the best yields consistently in all the various locations. Notice which varieties are suggested for what uses. Different tomatoes can be used for fresh salads, for pastes, for juice or for canning.

Fourth, get a copy of the 2007 Old Farmer’s Almanac. For about $6, you will get a lot of information on gardening. Some of the information will work for you and others may not. If you are planning on growing radishes, use their table on when to plant root crops. Otherwise you usually end up with just tops and no edible roots at all. Other information will help you through the winter months. Some gardeners rely on their dates for weeding, harvesting for the best quality, transplanting and pruning.

Fifth, go to the library or book store and find the book “Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew. This is a great reference on how many plants of each vegetable type you will need to plant for the number of people you plan to feed. You have to control your enthusiasm as you do not need to plant hundreds of plants as you may think. Planting too large of an area will wear you out and give you burn-out very quickly. It also has some interesting and unusual planting ideas to keep things simple.

Remember to keep the log going for your records as the old saying goes- ‘Those that don’t study history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. This is especially true with gardening.

If a variety does not work out for you this year with the weather that we have, don’t plant it again next year. Stay with the varieties that give you success. Discard the others. Every year will give you new knowledge.

I got this list of helpful tips from the Belleville News.

New Years Resolutions for Gardeners

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Happy New year everyone! I hope that you all have a fantastic year!

When we thinking of making New Years resolutions it’s usually something about ourselves, such as, to be a better person, to lose weight, to quit smoking and so on, but do we ever resolve to take better care of our gardens? I don’t think so.

Since I wasn’t feeling very well this past year I wasn’t out in my garden as much as I was in past years. Usually I’m out there every day – dead heading, trimming, adding organics to the soil and so on. I really fell off this fall when I didn’t even put my garden to bed for the winter. Yes, this year it is totally without winter protection. It should be interesting to see what happens come Spring time.

So in the New Year, I’ve decided to try to follow these great tips from the Plant Doctors at The American Phytopathological Society – perhaps you will too:

  • Mulch my perennials after the ground freezes to help them overwinter comfortably even though temperatures may fluctuate.
  • When studying plant catalogs, look for pest- and disease-resistant plants, such as mildew-resistant phlox, Fusarium-resistant tomatoes and disease-resistant crabapples that will make my gardening job easier and keep my plants healthier.
  • Send a soil sample to a laboratory to learn what my lime and fertilizer needs are, rather than guessing.
  • Set plants in the ground only at the proper depth-deep planting harms roots and kills plants!
  • Use only the well-drained areas of my garden for plants-unless I purchase some swamp-loving species!
  • Inspect plants carefully before purchasing to find evidence of invaders such as spider mites, scale insects or mealybugs, or root swellings that might mean crown gall disease on plants such as flowering cherries or roses.
  • Spread a circle of mulch around young trees to keep lawn mowers from damaging the bark, leading to canker diseases later on.
  • Use only a few inches depth of mulch and keep it a few inches away from trunks and stems of plants to discourage crown rot.
  • Scout regularly for symptoms in the garden, so that I can pick off the occasional spotted leaf before problems escalate.
  • Irrigate new trees and shrubs the first two years especially during dry weather to help them establish good root systems.
  • Use a soaker hose or some type of irrigation system for the flower beds and vegetable garden that won’t wet the foliage and encourage leaf spots.
  • Obtain a diagnosis when the cause of a problem is unclear or needs identification.
  • Prune only in dry weather, especially when pruning plants prone to fire blight, such as pears, crabapples and hawthorns.
  • Encourage beneficial insects and mites by minimizing use of broad- spectrum insecticides.
  • Join a Master Gardener class to learn more about the fun of growing and maintaining plants.

To the New Year and better gardens for all.

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