Garden thoughts, pictures, ideas and quotes.
Showing posts with label gardening tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening tips. Show all posts
It's Officially Summer
1. Do routine maintenance, check all of last years hoses, and sprinkler systems. If you live in a very dry and hot climate, you may want to consider a soaker hose for your garden plants.
2. Most people consider mulching best for winterizing the garden but, it also works well for keeping plants cool and moist during the summer.
3. If you had lots of problems with plants wilting and you are looking to add new plants make sure they are right for your summer climate.
Some drought resistant plants to consider:
- Juniper shrubs- greenery
- Acaicia- greenery
- Afgan Pine- greenery
- African Daisy- there are a lot of colors and varieties available. Produces beautiful and colorful masses of flowers. Excellent for rock gardens, containers, and some ground cover.
- Agastache- tall spike like plants. Good for containers, attracts butterflies and hummingbirds, and lends itself to the cottage garden look.
- Angelonia- easy to grow drought tolerant perennial. Tall spike like snap dragon.
- Anise Hyssop- attracts butterflies and hummingbirds. Tall spike, good for borders and containers.
- Autum Sage- attracts butterflies, great accent plant.
- Begonia- great for containers.
- Black-Eyed Susan- great for attracting butterflies, and good for containers.
- Blanket flowers- colorful
Small Space Solutions: Container Gardening
If you live in an apartment you may to be able to have a full size garden, but you can still have a really nice garden substitute and one of the best solutions for this, is to grow plants in
containers. You can create some really pretty arrangements with a little time and effort, never know you may even like growing your little beauties in containers.
Fall Gardening Tips
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| Mums by Pen3ya |
Whimsical Bicycle Plant Stand
Nostalgic styling blooms to life when you add your favorite plant to this whimsical stand! Wrought iron curlicues form the shape of an old-fashioned bicycle.
Weight 3.4 lbs. Iron. Plant not included. Some Assembly Required 20 3/4" x 10" x 14 1/8" high; plant basket: 10" diameter.
Contact me for details
Our Cherry Blossom Candle Chandelier
Free shipping for a limited time!
We have a new stock of Chandeliers back in for a limited time with free shipping.
Swooping metal curlicues and colorful cherry blossoms combine to create a casual chandelier of unique and heartwarming beauty. Weight 1.5 lbs. Iron. Taper candles not included. 14" x 13 x 16 1/4" high; 30" high with a chain.
I apologize this item is no longer available.
How to Start an Indoor Vegetable Garden
No Backyard? Try Planting Vegetable Gardens Indoors!
Nothing beats the fresh wholesome taste of vegetables
freshly picked from your own garden. Planting vegetable gardens can be a
challenge if you don’t have a backyard, but you can still grow vegetables indoors.
Just follow a few simple garden-smart guidelines.
Choose Appropriate Vegetables
Different plants have different requirements
and with indoor gardens the major restrictions tend to be available space and
available light. If you want to grow fruit bearing plants, these will require
large amounts of sunlight. Salad greens like lettuce, miniature cabbages, Swiss
chard, and spinach require less light and do quite well indoors so do small vegetables like peppers and cherry tomatoes.
When You Feel Overwhelmed
When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps
almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little,
suddenly the work will finish itself.
–Isak Dinesen
–Isak Dinesen
When you have a task or job that seems overwhelming, try tackling it in small portions and you will notice the task that seemed so big and daunting at first is not so big after-all. Stay focused. Set realistic goals with deadlines. Ask for help if needed and remember to stay positive.
Hobby Greenhouse
A Hobby Greenhouse Will Get You Growing!
For people who would like to do more gardening but live
in a short growing season area, a hobby greenhouse is the answer. A hobby greenhouse is not large enough to
produce vegetables or flowers on a commercial basis. It will, however, give you a place for a
tomato plant or two and some fresh greens even if you live in the northern
regions. Greenhouse enthusiasts even
have their own association, called the Hobby Greenhouse Association, which
publishes a quarterly magazine. The
organization also sponsors events and helps individuals connect to get help
with the aspect of gardening that they are interested in, whether it's growing
cacti or saving seeds.
If you are in the market for a hobby greenhouse, there
are several types on the market. The
smallest type is not large enough to walk into and must be accessed from the
outside. It resembles an old-fashioned
phone booth made all of glass and outfitted with shelves. This type is designed to fit as many plants
as possible in as small a place as possible.
The shelves are made of glass to allow as much light as possible to
reach plants on the lower shelves.
Another inexpensive version of this sort of hobby greenhouse is shelving
covered with a zippered tent of clear plastic.
This sort of arrangement is great for the small-scale hobby gardener
wanting
place to keep her flowers or houseplant starts.
There are a variety of designs of hobby greenhouse that
are large enough to walk into but made entirely of clear glass or plastic. They are often about the same size as a small
storage building. Some independent
builders have started making these to sell locally. Among national brands, one of the nicest is
called the "Solar Prism." It
is called this because of its unique construction. This hobby greenhouse is made of a single
piece of durable clear plastic which is designed to work like tiny prisms side
by side. They trap the rays of the sun
and shoot them back into the greenhouse at all angles. For this reason, these little greenhouses are
said to glow when the weather is cloudy.
Better hobby greenhouses are equipped with automatic
sensors that open vents which allow ventilation and keep the interior
temperatures from getting too high.
These are a great labor saver, but can get expensive. Another benefit sometimes found in nicer
greenhouses is a built in irrigation or misting system. Members of the Hobby Greenhouse Association,
or HGA, have invented many interesting designs of greenhouses.
If gardening is your hobby, greenhouse growing will
interest you. With a greenhouse, you can
have the earliest tomatoes and salad greens all year. You can also start seedlings for the main
garden early in the spring when outdoor temperatures would kill them. A hobby greenhouse can be a good investment.
Are You Getting Enough Sunshine?
Getting enough Sunshine
I cannot
over emphasize how important this is!
As explained earlier, the amount of natural sunlight that enters your eyes has
a drastic effect on your temperature body rhythm.
·
When
we're exposed to high intensity light, our body temperature increases, and
melatonin levels rapidly decrease.
·
Exposure
to natural sunlight also delays the temperature drop. This allows you to stay
awake and alert for longer periods of time.
·
Lack
of sunlight results in higher melatonin levels, this leads to lower body
temperature levels, feeling very sleepy, and tired through out the day.
Lack of
sunlight will create a flat-line effect in your body temperature, because it
will not get a chance to rise high enough, your body temperature won't fall low
enough during the night either. If your body temperature is flat-lined, this
could cause major sleeping problems, and it will be very difficult for you to
sleep deeply for long periods of time. A lot of people who complain about “poor
sleep” usually don't get enough sunlight.
Consider how
for the most part of our evolution we were always outside during the day, it
seemed that nature intended us to be this way, then suddenly over the past 100
years we drastically changed our exposure to natural sunlight. Most of us
hardly get any sun today at all! We drive to work in a car, we wear sunglasses,
we work in offices, what kind of effect do you think this has on our sleep
clock?
How much Sunshine is Enough?
This is
probably the most important factor discussed in this whole book and the concept
of sleep therapy. The amount of sunlight that enters your eyes has a great
impact on your sleep rhythm.
- Exposure to high intensity light increases our body temperature. Rise in our body temperature decreases out melatonin levels.
- When exposed to natural sunlight, our body delays the temperature drop, thus allowing us to be awake and aware for longer times.
- Lack of enough natural sunlight results in more melatonin level leading to lower temperature levels, sleepiness and tiredness.
Not going out
in the sun creates a flat line effect on our body temperature rhythms. Our body
temperature will not rise high enough during the day and as a result will not
fall enough during the night. This will result in sleep problems and you will
be deprived of deep sleep most of the time. Most of us who complain of lack of
sleep simply do not get enough sunlight.
Going back in
time, man has always been an outdoor animal, out in the sunlight all through
the day and sheltered at night only because of the cold. This continued for so
many million years and suddenly we are looking at changing sleeping habits and
avoiding sunlight by cars, sunglasses, sheltered offices in the past 100 years.
Is it so easy to change a million year legacy in 100 years. Your sleep clock
will not change so fast.
Container Gardening Tips for Newbies
Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a
busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. You can easily accentuate the
welcoming look of a deck or patio with colorful pots of annuals, or fill your
window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials.
Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a
smaller space with a single specimen, you'll be delighted with this simple way
to create a garden.
Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color
scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another.
Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is
variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the
leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to
low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or
have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.
Experiment with creative containers. You might have an
old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you'd rather make
something really modern with timber or tiles.
If you decide to buy your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look
wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don't want your plants to dry out, so
paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware
stores.
Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside
with water-based paints for good effect.
When purchasing pots, don't forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips,
this will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting.
Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers.
This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.
If you have steps leading up to your front door, an
attractive pot plant on each one will delight your visitors. Indoors, pots of
plants or flowers help to create a cozy and welcoming atmosphere.
Decide ahead of time where you want your pots to be
positioned, then buy plants that suit the situation. There is no point buying
sun lovers for a shady position, for they will not do well. Some plants also
have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.
If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group
of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two
similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look
rather boring.
Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary
the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are
similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots
of the same type and color will work even pots in different sizes of the same
color and types are also very effective. Using old ladders to place the pots on
will also add beauty.
With a creative mind and some determination, you will
soon have a container garden that will be the envy of friends and strangers
alike.
Plants Can Make us Happier
If
we fill our time taking care of plants we can get rid of stress, it is a
scientifically proved thing. Taking care of our green friends (the ones with
leaves not Martians!) we will discover new hidden sides of our personality and will
get to know better how to love and care for others, firstly because a plant
that we won’t care for will die for sure.
Accepting
a plant we are assuming a new responsibility, we are adopting a breathing
being. This way, we learn just what it means to pay attention to those around
you.
We
have to concentrate over needs that are exterior to our ego. We become aware of
the needs of another being: we know how much water the plant needs, how much
light it gets, the intervals it needs to receive water again, and slowly we
will transfer these cares and abilities in our social relations. We become more
and more aware of others. Visual contact with a beautiful plant makes us
realize our own beauty.
Studies
show more and more that taking care of plants can be the most efficient method
to improve the physical and emotional general condition. They have a serene
effect, they can reduce stress and relax muscles and therefore improve the mood
people taking care of them are in.
Different
studies have demonstrated that the existence of plants reduce mental
exhaustion. When we are overwhelmed with work, we just have to look up for a
couple of minutes to a plant and we’ll instantly feel more relaxed. In
conclusion, plants fascinate and attract people, they break boredom and
monotony generated by forced attention. The oxygen generated by plants creates
a feeling of mental agility.
Some big plants placed on the right spot will help us insulate ourselves from annoying surrounding noises. The technique is the same as the one of hanging paintings in an empty room to minimize the echo effects. The thick leaves will absorb a part of the noises, including the sound of the phone, Xerox, printer or coffee maker, making these sounds a little bit friendlier.
In today’s fast-paced
society, everyone is looking to improve their lives mentally, physically and
also spiritually.
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