Gardening For Dummies – Advice And Helpful Tips For Garden Beginners
October 24, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Gardening For Dummies – Advice And Helpful Tips For Garden Beginners
There are reasons why people choose to build a garden. Some want to experience the beauty of the brilliant and amazing garden in the backyard of his home front. Some for economic reasons want to be independent and save money on eating.
Some use gardening as a way to ease the stress of their busy work schedules at the same time to use it as the weekend routine of family. If you are encouraged to create their garden yourself, building your own garden is easier than you can imagine. You just need the right equipment and a piece of professional advice for gardening for beginners to create your dream garden.
The first step is choosing a good location for the reservoir that gives you considerable enjoyment. The location should be a good choice to relax and have fun watching your garden. It may be near the house of your deck, a courtyard or overlooking your bedroom or living room.
Then you need to make good planning and design of your garden. This is where your skill aesthetic is challenged. Make simple plan of your garden. At the same time, it’s time to decide what varieties of flowers or plants to plant in your garden and where to allocate a specified location. The best plants for beginners that is easy to grow, little maintain and save your money.
It is better if you choose certain seed that able to supply you for entire years needs like pumpkin, spinach, chilies and much more.
Buy the basic material for gardening. You will need a rake, a shovel, hoe, garden hose or irrigation and garden stakes. You can also read some gardening reference books to learn more about fertilizers and soil suitable for the type of plants or flowers you would like to grow.
The last thing to keep the plants grow healthy is watering the garden. You can set a schedule for watering than do it once a day in full amount. The best way is to water in the morning, which gives the plants time to dry during the day. On the other hand, this also helps prevent fungal diseases of plants.
Water plants at night or in the coolest hours of the day will reduce the rate of water loss through evaporation plant. These are some gardening tips beginner that guarantees your plants grow healthy. Remember to maintain healthy and beautiful gardens which need lots patience and time.
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Vegetable Gardening For Beginners – 6 Easy Tips To Start You Off
October 19, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Vegetable Gardening For Beginners – 6 Easy Tips To Start You Off
Healthy vegetable gardens do more than provide a beautiful area in your yard. They repay your labor with nutritious food and a healthy varied diet. Vegetable gardeners are in tune with the environment, giving back to the soil what they take from it. Abundant vegetable gardens start with healthy, rich soil. Compost and mulch contribute to that natural wealth.
About 11,000 years ago, the first farmers began to select and cultivate desired food plants in the southwest Asian Fertile Crescent – between the ancient Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Although we believe there was some use of wild cereals before that time, the earliest crops were barley, bitter vetch, chick peas, flax, lentils, peas, emmer, and wheat. About 9,000 years ago, Egyptians began to grow wheat and barley. About the same time, farmers in the Far East began to grow rice, soy, mung, azuki, and taro.
Then, about 7,000 years ago, ancient Sumarians established the first organized agricultural practices that made large-scale farming possible. Of particular note, they established irrigation as a way to nurture crops where none were possible before. Vegetable gardeners today use many of the same techniques established in early history. But today’s vegetable gardeners have millennia of experience behind them. Trial and error today is success or failure at the margins. Failure is not disaster.
As in centuries passed, a successful vegetable gardener cultivates the garden before planting for three main reasons: to eliminate weeds, to distribute air and nutrients throughout the soil, and to conserve moisture. Preparation of the soil is the single most important step in assuring abundant harvests.
Weeds are the most powerful enemy of a healthy vegetable garden. Letting them multiply in your vegetable garden will create much work and disappointment through the growing season. And when your vegetables begin to grow, removing weeds can your new vegetable plants beyond repair. Weeds also steal the precious nutrients necessary to produce healthy vegetables.
Rather than sacrificing the new garden to a patch of weeds, the successful vegetable gardener will cultivate the bed often, breaking up the soil to maintain healthy air, moisture, and heat to facilitate desirable chemical processes that produce abundant plant food. Ancient growers learned by trial and error the importance of keeping the soil loose around young plants. Early farmers deposited rotten fish beneath their crops as fertilizer and then used tools of shell and stone to nurture healthy soil and get plentiful air to the roots of their crops.
As important as air is water, even when the vegetable garden is a promise waiting for new seeds. Consider the process of “capillary attraction” – the ability of a substance to pull another substance into it. When you dip one end of a strip of blotting paper into water, you’ll see that the moisture moves up the invisible channels formed by the paper’s texture. But when you place the side edge of the blotting paper into water, the moisture won’t move upward. In a vegetable garden, capillary attraction describes the attraction of water molecules to soil particles. Well cultivated, loose soil maximizes capillary action, maintaining an even distribution of moisture throughout your vegetable garden soil.
Even so, water stored in soil during rain immediately begins to escape, evaporating into the air. Surface water is the first to vaporize into the atmosphere. With capillary action, sub-surface water moves upward and evaporates. Left to natural processes, your garden will lose its moisture as quickly as if you left sponges in the topsoil. Cultivating your vegetable garden by hoeing the soil around your plants disturbs natural capillary action and slows the loss of water for your vegetables.
It’s important to hoe your vegetable garden often, particularly those areas not shaded, at the very least every other week. If this seems too difficult, using a wheel hoe will reduce your labor and keep your vegetable garden healthy and productive. Looking somewhat like an old-fashioned plow, the wheel hoe allows you to cultivate very close to your healthy plants, maintaining an even depth and destroying new weeds before they get established. With the wheel hoe, you can cultivate as fast as you can walk.
If you wait until weeds are established, you’ll have to pull the weeds by hand, damaging the root systems of your vegetables, depleting the soil of nutrients, and creating a much greater workload for you as gardener. And the work you invest will not be to cultivate a productive crop. It will be to prevent damage that may have already been done. A wheel hoe is essential for a large vegetable garden, but it will also save much time and effort in a small one. However, a simple scuffle hoe is effective in small spaces as well. It takes less storage space and cultivates the soil effectively.
Preparing your vegetable garden properly before you plant vegetables is well worth the investment in time and labor. Keeping your vegetable garden rows free of weeds later on is slow going and difficult. Here are a few tips for keeping your vegetable garden clean and clear of weeds as your plants mature:
1. Work at the weeds while the ground is soft and/or moist. Soon after a rain is the best time. Weeds will come out by the root easier without breaking off, leaving the unwanted plant to grow again.
2. Just before you weed your vegetable garden, cultivate the rows with your wheel or scuffle hoe very shallow in the topsoil and as close to your vegetable plants as possible. This will loosen the soil and make weeds easy to see. A double-wheel hoe with discs is best for this purpose, especially for large plants.
3. Make sure all of the soil is loosened when you cultivate. Pull all the weeds out carefully, avoiding disturbing the vegetable plants. Your weeder will destroy weed seedlings, but you’ll have to hand-weed near plant bases and where weeds have matured.
4. Use a small hand-weeder near your vegetable plants. It will loosen the soil, making weeds easier to eliminate, and save a lot of wear and tear on your hands and fingers.
5. Practice with your wheel hoe. At first, watch the wheel’s direction and the pressure you put on the handles. The discs or rakes will follow automatically, maintaining an appropriate cultivation depth in your vegetable garden rows.
6. “Hilling” was once a common way to nurture young vegetable plants. This is done by building the soil up around the stems of young vegetable plants, usually the after you’ve hoed your garden two or three times. In wet soils or dry climates, hilling may still be the way to go. But in most areas, level soil is best. It makes it easier to cultivate the soil in the long run, thereby assuring healthy vegetable plants through the growing season.
Rotating Vegetable Crops
Crop rotation, or growing different vegetable crops each time you plant, is an important part of maintaining a healthy, productive vegetable garden. Some Roman texts mention crop rotation, and early Asian and African farmers also found rotation a productive method. During the Muslim Golden Age of Agriculture, engineers and farmers introduced today’s modern crop rotation methods where they alternated winter and summer crops and left fields fallow during some growing seasons. With Chemical Revolution of the mid-20th Century, crop rotation lost some of its appeal. But for home vegetable gardeners, rotation eliminates the risks of using dangerous chemicals and prevents the environmental consequences associated with modern pollutants.
Each different vegetable plant depletes the soil of different nutrients, and each leaves different nutrients as its roots and stems decay. Rotating crops with each planting keeps the soil balanced and rich. Planting the same crop time after time drains it of necessary nutrients, leaving it less productive. Crop rotation also reduces the build-up of pathogens and pests that destroy healthy vegetable gardens. Rotation helps maintain a healthy mix of essential nitrogen in your vegetable garden.
Rotating crops is more important with vegetables like cabbage, but it is a good practice for your vegetable garden generally. Even the hardy onion benefits from rotation, especially if you’ve done a good job of breaking up the old garden soil and mixing the remaining vegetable plants to serve as compost for the following crop. Here are some basic tips about crop rotation:
1. Do not rotate crops of the same vegetable family, for example turnips and cabbage. Be sure the following crop is a complete different type of vegetable.
2. Deep-rooting crops like carrots or parsnips, should follow vegetables with roots near the surface like onions or lettuce.
3. Follow root crops with vines or leaf crops.
4. Rotate vegetable plants that have long growing seasons with quick-growing crops.
5. Decide on your vegetable garden rotation when you’re constructing your planting plan. Making these decisions in the middle of the growing season will be more difficult and waste time and money.
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Organic Gardening for Beginners?
October 19, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Dream On asks: Organic Gardening for Beginners?
Can anyone recommend a good gardening book for complete beginners – who want to use organic/environmentally friendly/chemical-free methods.
I want to try and grow some vegetables in pots and grow bags, but I know nothing at all about gardening.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
The answer voted best is:
Answer by badkitty3168
Simple question, long and complicated answer–learning gardening is a life-long process–but I’ll keep the answer short. Basically, buy large plastic containers or use bushel baskets which are best for tomatoes. There is less evaporation from plastic than clay containers. You will need “potting soil” which is very different from top soil which has a clay base and will turn hard in a container. Next read labels til you want to drop dead. A lot of feeds and pest control bottles will say if the product is environmentally friendly. Water frequently, sometimes twice a day in August.
Frequent nurseries and talk to employees about organic pot gardening. Go to a bookstore and flip through books. Surf The Old Farmer’s Almanac website, http://www.almanac.com. Hope this gives you a good start.
Disagree? Give your answer to this question below!
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Seed Starting Tips For Beginners
October 14, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Seed Starting Tips For Beginners
When springtime rolls around, nurseries open their balmy doors and display rolls of perfectly cultivated seedlings. If you have always planted with nursery seedlings, you may be under the impression that starting seeds is difficult.
Many people just go out and buy a or a small pot to grow in their window ceil or apartment balcony. In fact, it is so simple that a child could accomplish the task as a basic science experiment- and they do, all the time! If you have been unable to find plant varieties that you prefer, or just want more control over your garden, it’s a great time to try seed starting.
You will need a covered cell pack to hold your seedlings, some seed starting mix and something to mark the seedlings with either commercial markers or simple craft sticks. These basic supplies are inexpensive and you won’t need much, so don’t be tempted to skimp. While you could certainly dig up garden dirt, it won’t work as well as a seed starting mix, so don’t substitute. Always remember that you can just simply go out and read similar such as the one your reading now, they will ususally explain where and when you went wrong, if you did of course.
Of course, you will also need some seeds to grow; tomatoes and peppers are great places to start your seed starting adventures.
Because of the peat moss, it’s hard to work with dry seed starter.
Once damp, you can pack it gently into the cell packs.
Drill two holes into the mixture with a regular pencil tip.
Drop seeds of the same variety into each hole and cover.
Place a marker, indicating the date and variety, into the edge of each cell.
Cover the container that is holding the cell packs and place in a warm, dark place.
Once that happens, move your seedlings to a light source, either natural or artificial, to complete their growing stage.
Beginners Guide for Flower Garden
October 9, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Beginners Guide for Flower Garden
Beginners Guide for Flower Garden
Flower gardening is an exciting hobby that many people are undertaking as a pastime. People consider that flower gardening means just planting the flower plants and watering them. For the beautiful and attractive flower garden, it is important for you to follow all the flower gardening tips. These tips will help you design an effective flower garden with beautiful blooming flowers.
There are many things that one needs to consider when thinking of planting a garden. Initially one should inspect the garden area and decide on what type of garden you want to design. Following are some gardening tips that will help the beginners for planting a flower garden.
Beginners Tips for Planting Flower Garden
Garden Area
Inspect the area where you want to plant your flower garden. If you have enough space in your backyards, it will be the most suitable place for your garden. But don’t worry if you don’t have a spacious backyard, you can even plant a flower garden in your balcony. Make sure that the area you select for your garden is well equipped with the drainage and water facilities. Also make sure that the garden area receives full sunlight for the maximum time of the day. If you are planting in the containers and pots in your balcony, you can move them in the sunlight during day hours.
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Garden Design
Decide on what type of garden design you want for your garden. You can draw a rough sketch on paper for the design and see of the area you have chosen is suitable for such kind of design. Keep sufficient space in between the garden for walking and watering the plants. You can plant the small and attractive bushes for making fences for your garden.
Choosing the Flower Plants
Selecting the flowering plants for growing in your garden is another important consideration before planting a flower garden. You should select the plants that grow well in your area’s climatic conditions. Roses are the best choice for every type of environment. Along with roses, the combination of lilies and daisies can give a beautiful look to your garden. Every type flower plants have different water and food requirements. Hence, it is important to select the plants with similar requirements. This will enhance the overall growth of all the flower plants.
Preparing the Flower Bed
Inspect the garden area and remove all the weeds from the area where you want to plant the garden. You can do this in two ways – either by removing the weeds with hands or using the herbicides to kill the weeds. Then you can plow the land or dig the soil for about feet. Add the natural mulch and organic fertilizers or compost to the soil. Mulching will avoid the further growth of weeds in your garden area and natural compost will help to increase the nutrient contents in the soil. This will be beneficial in the plant growth.
Planting the Seeds
You can sow the seeds by pressing them two to three inches inside the soil. Water the area gently after sowing the seeds. During early days after planting, water the area daily. You can water the plant alternately after few days of growth.
Plucking the Flowers
Cut the dead branches and twigs from the plants immediately or it may haunt the proper growth of the plant. Pluck the flowers when they bloom completely and do not keep them on plant for long time after blooming.
Best Flower Gardening Tips For Beginners
September 23, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Best Flower Gardening Tips For Beginners
Flower gardening is actually getting more and more popular everyday. Flowers could lighten most people’s day, they smell nice, and also are a good hobby. Flower gardening is simple, economical, and also tons of fun. Flower gardening may be possible for patio adornment, as a pastime, as well as professionally.
Usually there are some selections that ought to be made before flower gardening may be started. You must choose if you would like annuals living for just one season and needs to be replanted every year, or maybe perennials which often survive the winter and return again in the summertime. When buying and planting, pay attention to types of flowers that blossom in your weather along with the sun requirements.
As you are flower gardening, you have to decide what type of design you prefer prior to planting. For instance, blending various heights, colors, and varieties of flowers collectively in a “wild-plant style” is going to give your backyard a meadow look not to mention are usually highly charming. If small flowers are grown in the front side of your garden and work up to the highest flowers in the back you’ll have a “stepping stone style”.
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You can find seeds for flower gardening from catalogues or perhaps a buy them from the nursery. Most people would head to the nursery and get certain flowers and then transplant them. Once you’ve prepared your garden section and purchased flowers, it is smart to place the flowers out in your flower bed to make sure you like the arrangement and that they’ll be spaced appropriately.
One of the easiest processes in flower gardening is the planting, if you have seeds just simply spread them around the flower bed. For planting transplants dig a hole just larger than the flower, pull the container off, and set the flower into the hole upright. Cover it with the loose soil and simply press down safely and securely, and moisten it with water.
Keeping a flower garden is a whole lot easier rather than planting one. Although they will make it by themselves, a bag of fertilizer applied in early spring is a great idea. Pinch back any sort of blooms once they start to die and keep them good and properly watered. In order to save yourself work on the next season of flower gardening, clear your garden of all debris and spread out organic and natural nutrients like peat moss or perhaps compost. Remember to turn over the soil to properly mix in the fertilizer also rake smooth when finished. In case you have weeds planted it’s best not to disrupt their roots in this particular process.
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Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners
September 19, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Vegetable Gardening Tips for Beginners
Furthermore, the space of the garden and the availability of water play a major role in vegetable gardening. Keep in mind that gardening requires a lot of water so that your vegetables will grow. Anyway, having to grow a vegetable garden and nurture them gives you a sense of fulfillment and planting a healthy vegetable garden provide us so many benefits such as organic food, and minimizing expenses. In this article, we will talk about several tips on starting a vegetable garden.
Select the vegetables you want to grow
This is the most important step in starting a vegetable garden. We must identify first what vegetables we want to plant. It is easier on your part to plant vegetables that are easier to grow such as carrots, radishes, tomatoes and squash. You must research these vegetables first on what particular soil they are suitable.
Examine the quality of the soil
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Once you identify on what vegetables you want to plant, you must check the soil quality. The soil serves as the lifeline of the garden. You must make sure that the soil and your vegetables have a good match. The pH level that is needed for your soil is 6.5. The pH level of your soil determines how much nutrients your vegetables will be given.
Choose a good spot
Once you know the soil quality, examine the location to ensure that your garden will have enough sunlight. A successful garden requires 8 hours of sunlight and make sure that there is adequate wind since too much wind will damage the crops. Moreover, ensure that there are fences available to protect your garden.
Maintenance of the garden
When everything is in place, all you need to focus on is how you maintain your garden. Water your garden at least once or twice a week. Make sure your plants are rehydrated and maintain their particular moisture. Once your vegetables are ripe, harvest them. In addition, try to improve harvest more often in order to increase production.
Anyway, once you have your vegetables harvested, you can enjoy your newfound success as a gardener.
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Great Gardening Tips For Beginners
September 18, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Great Gardening Tips For Beginners
Gardening can be a healthy and fun way to beautify your environment and get some exercise. But it is nearly impossible to get anything done in the garden with efficiency if you do not spend some time organising your gardening tools and materials. If you have a shed that is full of clutter, this alone is probably costing you a lot of valuable gardening time. Here are some tips for conquering the clutter in your shed in order to make gardening easier.
What’s in that Old Shed, Anyway? If you haven’t peeked in that shed for a while, chances are that is a question worth asking. What is in that old shed? Is it a place where you have stored old tools, planting soil or building materials? Chances are that you might even have a few hidden treasures in that old shed that you completely forgot you had. The first step to organising your gardening so that it becomes a more efficient and pleasant practice is to take a full inventory of what is in your gardening shed. Cross off a whole afternoon for this task, or ( depending on the size of the shed) a whole day. Wear thick work gloves and begin to remove items so that you can get a close look at all those things you’ve had stored away. Determine Whether Your Shed Needs Repair You may find that your old shed is need of repair. Depending on the type of building materials, sheds are often prone to rust, wood rot, roof problems or other types of repairs. Are you willing to invest the money and time for a proper repair? Decide whether the shed is still viable, and whether it would be more cost-effective to repair or replace it. In many cases, your shed may just need a thorough sweeping and clearing out. Now is the time to get that project done.
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Decide What’s Useful and What’s Not Once you have dragged out all those things in your gardening shed and taken stock of what you have, it is time to decide what is useful and what’s not. Many of us store old tools in our garden sheds that aren’t quite what they used to be. Decide which tools are still useful to you, and which are well past their prime. Separate your old tools into two piles: tools that can be repaired, and tools that would be better off being discarded. If you find that you have accumulated a lot of tools that are in need of repair, make an appointment to get them fixed and be sure to take them in on that day. You can get axes and old-fashioned mowers re-sharpened at home repair shops. Conversely, make a date to get rid of the tools that you do not need any more, or those that are well beyond repair, and stick to this date.
Designate Space and Corners Once you have cleared out your shed, it is time to organise for maximum efficiency. You want to make your shed as user-friendly as possible. That is, ask yourself: what can I do to make my shed work for me? If you haven’t stepped foot into your shed before now, why did you avoid it? Was it too dirty, too cluttered or just too unpleasant? Use these guidelines to determine how you should organise your shed. Designate space for your tools, pots, gardening material and leave enough space so that you can easily enter and exit the shed. To prevent future clutter, set a new rule: every time you store something new in your gardening shed, one item must come out (and stay out). Make your garden shed work for you, and you will find that gardening will become much more efficient, and enjoyable
This article contributed by Andrew Edward (Author.)
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Inside Plant Garden, Gardening Tips for Beginners
September 16, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Inside Plant Garden, Perfect for the Gardening Lovers, an Example of Right Herb for Inside and Gardening Tips for Beginners
Article by Vivienne Toff
The article will present the advantages of having an indoor herb garden, an example of suitable plants and some inside gardening tips.
There are a couple of people, who love to raise plants, but some of them don
Gardening Tips for Beginners
August 29, 2011 by Green Thumb
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Gardening Tips for Beginners
If you happen to be someone who is new to gardening, but are looking to get more serious about growing plants, this article will provide you with 4 essential steps you need to follow to maximize your gardening experience. Even if you haven’t tried container gardening, follow these 4 gardening tips and you will be on your way to a positive experience.
Firstly, when it comes to home gardening make sure you are properly assessing the conditions on your gardening area. You want to make sure you consider how the location of buildings and trees affect your garden, as they can cast considerable shade and thus impact the amount of sunlight plants receive in a given day. Further, an excellent gardening tip for a beginner would be to assess the ability of your soil to properly drain, thus ensuring your plants are not over hydrated. Lastly, whether you are vegetable gardening or perennial gardening, you always want to check the fertility of the soil.
Once the gardening area has been assessed and deemed fit for your intended use, it is important that you clear the area of all debris. Removing large stones and miscellaneous other pieces of wood or even garbage will ensure that your gardening area is a prime to produce flourishing plants.
Taking a closer look at your soil is the next step in bringing your gardening ideas to fruition. When assessing the soil in your garden, it is important to ensure that you have the optimum mixture of clay, sand and silt present to promote strong plant growth. A strong gardening tip in this regards is to ensure that you take advantage of gardening tools such as fertilizers to ensure that you have the proper mineral balance in your garden.
The last gardening tip for beginners is to ensure that if you are buying pre grown plants, that you avoid those which look diseased on the shelves. Avoiding these plants will ensure that your gardening efforts are maximized. Also, should you decide to start from scratch and purchase seeds for your garden, ensure that the seeds come from a reputable brand.













