How to Plant and Grow Roses
Learn how to plant and grow the easiest rose varieties for the best blooms all season long. One of the most popular flowers in the world is the rose. This shrub is a perennial, with over 100 species, primarily native to North America. Roses are prized for their many colors, and some have a beautiful scent. The sizes of rose blooms range from small and compact to large and lush. Nearly all rose varieties have thorns. The three main types of roses are shrubs, climbers, and ramblers. Shrubs are suitable for gardens and borders, climbers are best for camouflaging walls or adding color to outdoor structures, and ramblers are suited for groundcover and to give a more natural look to a garden. Roses are sometimes considered difficult plants to grow and care for since they require regular pruning and maintenance. While that may have been true for roses before, in…
Follow This Fall Garden Checklist to Prep Your Yard for Winter
Changing leaves signal that the growing season is winding down. Here are fall gardening tips for what you should do to prep your landscape for colder months. As temperatures begin cooling off and daylight hours dwindle, it’s time to finish the gardening season strong by preparing all your plants for winter. Essential autumn chores on your to-do list should include giving permanent plantings such as trees, shrubs, and perennials a little TLC, cleaning up your veggie garden, and winterizing your lawn. A little work now means you’ll have more time in spring for planting vegetables and colorful blooms rather than being bogged down with clean-up tasks and tracking down garden tools. Use our fall gardening tips and checklist to tackle a couple of tasks a day, and you’ll be ready for winter in short order; then you can spend your time browsing seed catalogs while you dream up next year’s garden plans. Get Your Lawn…
How to Deadhead Spent Flowers From Your Plants For Longer Bloom Times
Your annuals and perennials will bloom more if you snip away spent flowers. Plus, it’s an easy way to help your garden look tidy. Let’s face it: Even the name of this task sounds scary. But deadheading your plants isn’t as morbid as it sounds; it just means trimming off spent flowers. Not only does this help keep your garden looking tidy, but it also encourages your plants to continue making new flowers instead of spending energy on producing seeds. Some gardeners get a little nervous about snipping parts off their plants, but unless you start whacking away, it’s tough to damage or kill a plant just by clipping spent flowers. So when your flowering plants have fading blooms, brown, curled up, or otherwise looking unattractive, that’s your cue to pull out your garden shears and start deadheading. Which Plants to Deadhead? You can often get a clue about which plants to deadhead…
How to Winterize Perennials in 5 Simple Steps
With a little work now, you’ll be rewarded with a healthier and more colorful garden next spring. In the fall, most perennials start winding down and going dormant for the colder months. We show you how to winterize perennials so they’ll come back in good shape next spring. A little work during the pleasant autumn days will set you up for a lush, healthy perennial garden once the weather warms up again. However, don’t be tempted to start winter preparation too early. Wait until temperatures consistently stay on the cool side and plants have mostly stopped growing. Then, use these tips to tuck your perennials in for a long winter’s nap. 1. Take Stock The end of the growing season is the perfect time to assess the perennial garden. All the successes and challenges will be fresher in your mind than next spring, when your memories of the previous season may have faded. Look with…
5 Simple Steps for Preparing Gardens for Winter Weather
Use these tips to help your perennials, trees, shrubs, and more survive the colder months. Your plants will come back stronger in the spring. As temperatures drop in autumn, it’s time to start preparing gardens for winter. It may seem like not much is happening in your yard as the weather cools. However, a lot is going on in the soil until it freezes. This is especially true for newly planted trees and shrubs, divisions of perennials, and hardy spring bulbs, all busily growing roots to anchor themselves in the ground. And earthworms and soil microbes are also still at work, processing organic material into nutrients plants need. While nature has its ways of coping with the colder months, you can do a few things to help prepare your plants for winter. 1. Mulch Your Perennials Perennials return yearly, as long as they are hardy where you live. Hardy plants won’t require much effort…
10 Reasons Why Fall Is the Perfect Time for Planting Your Garden
Move over spring! Autumn is the best season for getting new perennials, trees, and more in the ground. Fall garden chores often involve getting your garden ready for winter and raking up fallen leaves. But you’ll miss a perfect planting opportunity if you’re only focused on leaf-removal. Cool temperatures, along with several other benefits, make autumn an ideal time to add new plants to your landscape, divide overgrown perennials, and in some regions, plant a veggie garden for fall and winter harvest. Plus, all those fallen leaves make excellent mulch for all your newly planted trees, shrubs, perennials, and bulbs. Look at the season in a fresh way with these top 10 reasons to plant in fall, then exchange that rake for a shovel and start digging. 1. Moderate Weather Warm, not hot, days coupled with cool nights are the perfect forecast for establishing new plants. Spring can suddenly turn hot and dry, which…
How to Build a Raised Garden Bed for Easier Veggie or Flower Planting
Elevated planters make growing almost any plant easier. You can create your own in just a few simple steps. A raised bed can solve various garden problems, especially if your yard has hard-packed, poor soil. Rather than trying to dig a new garden bed in the ground, a raised bed lets you rise above it all. Besides having fewer weeds to deal with, growing in elevated beds can eliminate some bending and kneeling that can make gardening in regular planting beds feel like a major workout. Another bonus of raised garden beds: The soil in it warms faster in spring so that you can get planting a little sooner, and it also drains more quickly in wet weather. While you can buy plenty of raised bed kits, making your own out of a few wooden boards is not too difficult. What You Need Rake Level (4) 1-foot-long 4x4s (8) 4-foot-long 2x6s (4) 2-foot-long 2x2s Drill Screws…
Here’s What to Plant in the Fall for the Prettiest Spring Yard
Give yourself a jumpstart on spring with these fall plantings. After a steamy summer, autumn’s cooler air temperatures are easier on both plants and gardeners, but the soil is still warm enough to allow roots to grow until the ground freezes. Fall showers are generally plentiful, but it’s easy to deeply water plants if it doesn’t rain at least an inch per week. Pests and disease problems also fade away in the fall. Plus, the late season is often bargain time at garden centers that are trying to sell the last of their inventory before winter. Look for deals on spring-blooming bulbs, perennials, trees, and shrubs, which can all be planted in the fall, up until your area gets hit with a hard frost. And don’t forget your lawn; cool-season turfgrass can be seeded this time of year, too. Get these plants in the ground in fall, and they’ll reward you with gorgeous…
Want to Grow Flowers from Seed? Start with These 15 Easy Annuals
One of the best ways to fill your garden with color is to plant annual flowers, which grow quickly and bloom all season long. Several of these varieties are very easy to start from seeds which are less expensive and give you more exciting choices than buying plants at a garden center. Here are some of the easiest annual flowers to grow from seed, as well as tips for when and how to sow them. 01.Marigold It’s hard not to love a marigold‘s bright yellow, orange, and red flowers. Happily, this is one of the easiest seeds to grow. You can sow marigold seeds directly into the garden after the last frost date. If you start seeds indoors, sow seeds one-eighth inch deep. Look for sprouts in less than a week. Name: Tagetes selections Growing Conditions: Full sun in evenly moist, well-drained soil Size: Up to 1 foot tall 02.Bachelor’s Button A charming annual that blooms…
How to Make Seed Balls So Plants Grow Exactly Where You Intend
Seed balls are an easy and sustainable way to grow clusters of plants anywhere you please—and they are as simple to make as mudpies! Clay soil is the bane of many gardeners, but there’s at least one good thing you can do with the sticky stuff: make seed balls. The process is simple and fun as patting mud into delectable fantasies or rolling modeling clay into snakes. Making seed balls entails mixing a few easy-to-grow seeds with soft clay and shaping little balls. Seed balls make it easier to plant seeds, especially if you’re sowing small seeds that are difficult to see and handle. Coating seeds with clay also protects them from being washed away by rain or eaten by birds. Use one finished seed ball per small container, or use the balls to plant clusters of annuals in a garden. What You’ll Need Equipment / Tools 1 Mixing bowl 1 Measuring…