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Thin leafed poor blooming azaleas?

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How did your Azaleas, and Rhododendrons do this year? Did they bloom well? Is the foliage lush and full?

If you azaleas didn’t seem to do as well this year as they have in the past, or if the leaf coverage is rather thin you might want to be proactive and take some measure to help them get healthy so they’ll bloom well next season.

Apply azalea fertilizer in the spring. You might want to give your plants one light dose before they begin to bloom, perhaps just as they come out of dormancy, and another dose shortly after they’ve finished blooming. Fertilizing will encourage better growth and the plant should get fuller looking.

Lightly pruning blooming branches and bringing the flowers indoors or lightly prune immediately after the blooming season ends.

You’ll be cutting off some of the new growth, but when pruning takes place near the beginning of the season it actually encourages new growth. By pruning, fertilizing and watering regularly throughout the season your azaleas should be stronger the following year.

You might even want to thin some of the older branches after the blooms fade in order to shape the tree for the following year. It make take a few years to prune your azalea into a nice shape that shows off it’s fullness as you do not want to prune too much off at once.






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 garden?

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Are you planning to beginning gardening this spring? Perhaps you are already a gardener but you plan on adding a new garden bed this season.

Do you know everything you need to know about preparing for a new garden bed? I’ve found some tips that will help you make your garden grow.

Anyone planning to begin a garden or set up a new garden bed should:

1. Plan your garden on paper before you begin. I did this back in the winter of 2002. I had measured my yards dimensions that fall, and I even took some pictures so I could easily remember what plants were already in the garden and how it was set up at the time. Then I began planning on paper using my measurements to map out the garden beds, and patio area.

2. Be sure that your new garden site is –

  • a. In full sun for at least eight hours each day, unless you have a shady yard of course.
  • b. Relatively level, but not in a low spot where cold air settles.
  • c. Well-drained, be sure to notice if the area stays wet for a period of time in the Spring as well even if it’s dry the rest of the season as this can affect your success with plants.
  • d. Close to a water source
  • e. Not near trees. Tree roots can interfere with plant growth and often trees steal the available water from the plants you’re trying to grow.

3. Know your current soil conditions. The soil in my area is a mix of both sand and clay! I amended our soil with triple mix (a mix of manure, peat and top soil). I also decided to create raised beds so that my plants would grow in a foot of my newly amended soil. The plants would also have good drainage and the soil would warm up earlier in the spring due to the raised beds.

Your own soil might need to be amended with lime or peat moss, manure or compost in order to improve it’s texture, and PH. Consider having your soil tested so that you can be sure that it’s PH levels are appropriate for the type of plants you’d like to grow.

4. When you begin your garden don’t go overboard. Plan a garden that you can maintain easily. If you over do the garden by making it too large or by attempting to grow plants with high levels of difficulty you might end up very disappointed. Keep in mind how much time you have for watering, weeding and maintaining the garden when you choose your plants.

5. If you are growing vegetables try to grow species that do well in your area. Tomatoes are a great plant to grow as they are fairly easy and produce an abundant amount of delicious tomatoes.

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