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Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardening. Show all posts

Add Value to Your Home with an Outdoor Living Space














According to American Institute of Architects adding an outdoor living space is in high demand by people looking to purchase a home. So adding an out door living space would definitely increase the value of your home.

While going over the article I noted there were features that were the most requested. Comfortable seating, kitchens, bars, and fireplaces all made top of the list, along with decor that shows your personality.

Check out this article at Southeastsun.com for more details.

Check out HGTV outdoor designs pages for more ideas on your ooutdoor space.
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Update Your Garden This Fall

Traditionally people never think of Fall as a time for adding to the garden. Most people only think of clean up and preparing the garden for Winter, but I'm here to share with you some secrets to make use of Fall Weather.


  • Freshen up your garden by cleaning out dead or dying plants. Turn over your soil, check the PH and make any necessary changes to the soil.
  • Prune trees and shrubs. It's better done now when its cooler.
  • Add mulch, mulch not only protects during winter but adding mulch also adds vital nutrients to your garden as it breaks down. Keep mulch 3 to 4 inches deep and keep it away from the plant leaves, stems, and base to prevent disease.
  • Separate full and thick perennials and use this to fill in sparse areas of your garden.
Fall is the ideal time for garden work because of the cooler temperatures and is less stressful on transplanted plants and also not as much water is needed as opposed to the Summer months.
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Using Day Lillies in Your Garden

Day Lillies can be beautiful when in bloom, but most of the time they are are just green foliage. 

The best way to get the most of using them in your garden is to plant them with a long blooming annual, like Sweet Alyssum, Begonias, Petunias, Snap dragons or another colorful annual or perennial.



Photo:Courtesy of Lowes


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How to Create a Butterfly Garden

To create the kind of environment that they find attractive, you will also need to introduce some kind of water source to your garden. Birdbaths work great for this and you can find relatively inexpensive models for under $20. A birdbath will look attractive and keep the butterflies up off the ground, away from stray cats or mischievous puppies. It also adds a little touch of decor. A shallow dish on a post or hung in a tree will also meet this requirement.

Keep in mind it can take until the following season for your garden to come together like the pictures you see of butterfly gardens. Some of the gardens shown have been growing for a few years and are considered established gardens.



 Butterflies are attracted to those flowers that have nectar rather than pollen, like Honeysuckle, Milkweed, Summer Lilac, Valerian, Daisies, Purple Cone-flower, Garden phlox (Phlox paniculata),  Yellow Sage, Day lilies, Pentas, Lantana (Lantana camara), Lavender (Lavendula)
Marigold,  Butterfly bush and Butterfly weed.



Garden plan

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Gardening Tips For Small Yards

If you have a tiny yard and would like a simple but well-maintained garden, you only need two things - determination and know-how.  Here are some tips on how to keep your garden by the yard looking spruced up and glamorous.

1. Deadheading
Keep your border free from wilted flowers and dried leaves. Deadheading or removing dead flower heads will encourage the plants to produce more blooms longer. Many perennials and some annuals benefit from having spent blooms removed

3. Pinch out tops.
Certain plants - especially foliage plants like Coleus - respond with a spurt of growth when their tops are pinched out. Pinching out makes the plant much bushier because more blooms are produced. Fuchsias are prone to becoming leggy unless they are pinched out.
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Backyard Ideas : HGTV Gardens

Backyard Ideas : HGTV Gardens
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Asian Inspired Landscape

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Beautiful Boho Garden Ideas from Romany Soup

Found this pretty garden idea from Flicker by Romany Soup
She has such warm and inviting decorating ideas.
This is such a pretty view from a window.
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Beautiful Retreat

The clay pots gave this patio an Tuscan Old World feel

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Desktop Gardening

Who would have believed that you could plan and order your whole garden from your desktop just a few years ago?

It makes it so easy to get exactly what you like for your garden by logging on to the Internet Garden stores and being able to choose your plants according to color, size, type, season and more.
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Mulch

Soil is a main food supply for your plants but sometimes plants need a little more help and that can be in the form of fertilizer or mulch.

Mulch is great for plants, simply because you are turning something that would normally be thrown out as waste into a food supply and a very effective one at that.
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Garden Lighting

Garden Lighting is a great way to make use of your garden at night and to add an impressive display for outdoor living. Most garden lighting is very affordable these days and many of the products that are on the market can be installed quite easily by the home gardener.

You can light areas where you will be sitting, or outdoor dining areas, or you might just want the lighting for effect where you can shine the light on feature trees or plants in the garden.
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Express Yourself with Gardening

Gardens offer you one of the best opportunities to express yourself.

You can often get a good idea of a person's personality just by looking at their garden.
It can show you whether they are free spirited with color and plants splashed everywhere or prefer a more organized and regimented approach to life.

Planting your garden gives you the freedom to choose the colors that make you feel good.
The colors and plants that make you feel happy.
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Themes in Your Garden

It is good to have a theme that you can follow throughout your garden and work on a plan and a selection of plants that will go along with that theme.


By having a theme to follow this will dictate, not only the types of plants that you will be buying, but also anything else that you put in the garden. This will include everything from sculptures and garden furniture, to the colors of the pots that you will choose.
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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.
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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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Using Vines to Decorate your Garden




















A great way to decorate your garden is the use of vines. They are very low maintenance and look good on almost anything. If you’ve got a fence or separator that really stands out in the field of green that is your garden, then growing a vine over it can be a quick and aesthetically pleasing solution. However, there are many types of vines for different situations, whether you are trying to grow it up the side of a house, along the ground, or up a tree.
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The Basics of Planting Vegetable Gardens

Not a lot of people try planting vegetable gardens these days, especially not in the city. What with the busy lifestyle, constrained spaces, and pollution, it seems inconceivable that a vegetable garden would survive. The fact is, you can actually grow them even if you are smack in the middle of a busy city. It's only important that you get the basics of planting vegetable gardens right.

First things first. Soil preparation. This is one of the most basic things that any new gardener will have to learn. Whether you plan to use a plot of land in your backyard or start a vegetable garden in plant boxes, soil preparation plays an important role in whether your vegetable garden will survive or not. There are three types of soil that you need to be familiar with; sand, clay and silt. Sandy soil is loose and helps the roots of plants breathe because it lets the air pass through easily. Clay soil absorbs water faster and keeps it inside longer, a soil composition that has more clay particles in it would be ideal for places that are too hot and the soil dries up quickly. Silt is a fine mixture of sand and clay particles.
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A GARDEN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY


You can have the most elaborated back yard from the entire neighborhood, but if it isn’t functional you have built it in vain. We all want to have beautiful and flourishing gardens, but when we have a family; we must also take into consideration the needs of the other members of it. Divide the space of your yard in two or three visual spaces, one for play and relaxation, one for gardening and maybe one for pets.

An open space, covered by lawn is ideal for your children. Here you can install a table for open air lunches or for a romantic summer evening dinner.

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Dealing with Garden Pests


While tending to my own garden, I have found that one of the most frustrating things that can happen to a gardener is to walk outside to check on your plants. It’s just a routine walk to make sure that your garden is thriving, but you end up finding holes in all of your plants that looked fine only hours before. The explanations for some of these plant-destroying holes are garden pests. Some of the main garden pests are slugs, worms, caterpillars, birds, snails, and the occasional gopher.
Although you can never wipe out these pests entirely, after all your hard work in the garden you have to do something.
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"God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures". ~Frances Bacon

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