Grow the Most Gorgeous Perennials with These 11 Essential Tips
Here’s how to ensure your blooms look their best each season. A beautiful, blooming perennial garden can be the showpiece of your landscape and provide pretty cut flowers for bouquets. Unlike annual flowers (which can be blended into your flower garden but need to be planted every year), perennials can be planted just once and enjoyed for many years as they regrow from the same roots in spring. Some perennials grow and bloom well for just a few years, and others may live for decades. Most bloom for a period of just a few weeks over the spring and summer, but a few will bloom twice in a season. Many perennials are easy to care for, but they all require some degree of attention to look their best. 1. Choose the Best Garden Site Most blooming perennial flowers require full sun. That means 6-8 total hours of direct sun each day of the…
25 Gardening Tips Every Gardener Should Know
Are you wanting to start digging and growing, but don’t know where to begin? Then, check out this list of helpful hints for making sure all your plants thrive. When you’re just starting out with gardening, it can seem like there’s so much to know, and you’ve got a thousand questions. How should you plant your veggies, and what kind of soil is best? When should you prune your hydrangeas and divide your hostas? Is everything getting enough sunlight and water? The good news is that nature is a terrific teacher. The more you garden, the more you’ll learn about what works and what doesn’t. But for now, use this list of basic gardening tips to find the answers to some of the most common questions beginners have. And don’t forget to have fun while growing your own food and beautiful flowers in your yard! 1. Know your USDA Hardiness Zone. Use it as a guide…
6 Tips for Creating a Low-Maintenance Cottage Garden
Go big on color, but light on labor with this classic, informal garden style. While formal gardens are all about order and well-defined spaces, cottage gardens bubble in cheerful tangles of flowers that form a kaleidoscope of hue and texture. According to Darrell Trout, an avid gardener, writer, and lecturer with a passion for the easy-growing beauty of cottage gardens, their style is “relaxed, colorful, and fun.” Because nature is allowed to take its course more in these spaces, as opposed to the careful manicuring other styles may require, they tend to need less work. “A cottage garden has perhaps less regard for rules than for doing what you really love,” Trout says. You can make cultivating your own corner of delightful floral abundance even easier with the following advice and ideas. How to Create an Easy Cottage Garden Cottage gardens are intentionally casual. These tips will help ensure your space is easy to maintain and looks gorgeous every…
How to Protect Plants from Frost So They Survive Cold Snaps
An icy forecast can be bad news for your plants. Here’s how to help them weather sudden cold snaps. Frosty weather in spring or fall that sends you to the closet for a jacket can be hard on certain plants in your garden, too. Temperatures in the low 30s Fahrenheit can kill vegetable crops such as tomatoes and peppers and colorful flowering annuals like petunias and begonias. While you can’t grab a jacket for your cucumber vines or pots of marigolds, you can help your frost-tender plants come through cold snaps unscathed. Here’s what you need to know about which types of plants need frost protection and when to take action. What Is a Frost? When weather forecasters issue a frost advisory in late spring and early fall, that’s your heads-up to protect annuals and other vulnerable plants. You might think temperatures have to get to the freezing point (32˚F), but a frost can occur between 36˚F and 32˚F. Also,…
10 Easy Steps to Create Gardens in Your Yard for the First Time
Dig into your new gardening adventure with this step-by-step guide to help you make the most of your landscape. Starting a garden is one of the most rewarding things you can do. Plant fragrant florals or start a vegetable garden (or both!), and everyone can benefit from getting their hands a little dirty. But if you’re new to gardening, it can be difficult to know where to start. Still, it doesn’t have to be complicated; when you break your project down into manageable steps, you can ease into gardening at your own pace. And soon you’ll see the rewards of your efforts with beautiful views, delicious flavors, and colorful blooms. These steps will help you get started from scratch, but if you have something particular in mind, you could also use a garden plan to guide your design. 1. Consider What to Plant Do you want to plant a vegetable garden? An herb garden? A flower garden?…
How to Start Seeds Indoors to Jumpstart Your Spring Garden
Get a jump on spring by sprouting your own flowers and veggies indoors. Then you’ll be ready to plant as soon as the weather warms up. When spring rolls around after a long winter, you don’t want to waste a minute of that glorious warmer weather to get growing! Starting seeds indoors is a time-honored way to get a jump on the season. It’s also a fun and rewarding project that you can often do with whatever you already have on hand; no need to buy any special supplies. And with a few dollars-worth of seeds, you can grow lots of plants very inexpensively. Starting your own seeds also allows you to try out unusual and interesting varieties that you can’t find at a local garden center. Here’s what you need to know to successfully start seeds indoors for planting in your garden once temperatures stay above freezing. Easy Seeds to Start Indoors If…
Here’s How to Use Fertilizer for Plants in Your Garden or House
A regular dose of important nutrients goes a long way toward better growth. Get expert tips on fertilizing plants for the best results. When it comes to figuring out what to feed your plants, it can get overwhelming fast. Once you factor in the different types of fertilizers, the quality of your soil, and what exactly your individual plants need, sometimes it feels easier to just skip the whole process. But if you’re not fertilizing your plants, they likely won’t grow as well or bloom as much as you want. Besides sunlight and water, all plants require certain nutrients to thrive, and if you don’t occasionally replenish their supply, they can end up having health issues. Here’s what you need to know about fertilizing plants to keep your greenery thriving. Why Do Plants Need Fertilizer Much like people do, plants need a set of essential nutrients to grow properly and…
How to Install Edging
When building a garden path, use edging to keep it in place. Here’s how to install various types of edging in your yard. Edging is a quick and easy way to form a stable edge for a pathway. And depending on the chosen material, edgings do more than keep patio and path materials inside their boundaries. They also become an integral part of the landscape design, adding color, form, and texture. We’ll introduce you to the many different types of edging—plus offer how-to tips for installing edging in your yard. Types of Edging Brick: Brick is set as soldiers (standing upright and on edge), sailors (flat along the edge), or at an angle. Set brick in a concrete footing for increased stability. Poured concrete: You can color poured concrete during mixing to match or contrast the paving material. You can also give it texture. Plastic and steel: Flexible plastic edging will conform to…
30 Fun Facts About Plants
We’ll bet you didn’t know you can cut onions without crying. Here are some fun and interesting facts about plants. There’s a lot more to our plants than we realize. Secrets are lurking everywhere in our gardens. Here are 30 super interesting facts you may not have known—until today, of course. 1. Torenia, a shade-loving annual, is called the wishbone flower. Look for tiny wishbone-shaped stamens inside the purple, blue or burgundy petals. 2. The world’s tallest tree is the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), which grows along the Pacific Coast of the United States, mainly in California. Interestingly enough, it’s not the world’s oldest growing tree; that award goes to a bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata). 3. Bamboo is the fastest growing woody plant in the world. It can grow up to 35 inches in a single day. 4. Tomato juice is the official state beverage of Ohio, honoring the part A. W. Livingston of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, played in popularizing the tomato in the…
Your Season-by-Season Guide to Watering Your Garden Effectively
Keeping your plants well hydrated is key to helping them thrive all year. Use these tips to ensure they get the moisture they need. Much like you, your plants get thirsty, especially during those long, hot summer days with no clouds in sight. A wilted plant is a stressed plant, so it won’t grow well and is less able to fend off pests and diseases. Figuring out how much to water your garden can be a little tricky, since it depends on a number of environmental influences, including the season and weather conditions, as well as the types of plants you’re growing. Here are a few basics you need to know in order to have the healthiest, best-hydrated landscape, while more efficiently using every last drop. When to Water Your Garden by Season The time of year and precipitation (or lack of it) impact the amount of water you may need to supply. Plants grow…