Are you eager to try your hand at flower gardening or vegetable gardening but a little afraid you’ll fail miserably? Ha, we felt the same way and put it off for many years. When we finally did start gardening we soon found that it wasn’t nearly as scary as we had made it in our minds.

A few helpful gardening tips from a good friend of my wife and we were on our way to being gardeners in our own backyard, finally.

I am happy to tell you that we did pretty good for our first year as beginner gardeners and are looking forward to the next growing season. We have started planning and it’s only the first of January.

Note that I haven’t said anywhere that we didn’t make any mistakes because we did but that didn’t take away from the joy we experienced and next year we will do better and grow even more great produce. We don’t get too worked up over mistakes, we just try not to repeat them.

Now I would like to share some of the gardening tips that others shared with us.

1. Plant Hardiness Zone – Know The Plants That Will Grow Best In Your Area.

Nothing about gardening is more depressing than watching your plants shrivel and die and not knowing why. That’s where my first tip comes in. Knowing what you can grow where you live is important so that you don’t try to grow things that require a very hot dry climate when you live in an area that gets a lot of rain.

It’s good to start with flowers, shrubs, trees and veggies that do well where you live and that’s where knowing the hardiness zone you live in will help. When you purchase plants or seed they should have a tag that tells you the growing conditions and hardiness zone. Stick with plants in your plant hardiness zone and you should do quite well.

Just go to your favorite search engine and type in: plant hardiness zone for [your location]. Once you know the zone you will be able to look up plants for your zone.

Make your gardening experience more enjoyable by know what grows best in your area. Once you have the hang of gardening you can move onto some things that need more attention and maybe even a longer growing season, but that’s for another day.

2. Know The Growing Season Where You Live.

Here we have to deal with frost so it’s important for me to know when the threat of frost is over. Knowing that June 10th is usually the last of the frost threats I can plan my planting around that date.

Knowing when the season is over helps as well because then you have a good idea of how many days you have from the time you plant until your season is done. So, if June 10th is the starting day and Sept. 15th is the last day then you just add up the days and you have a good idea of how long a growing season you have. Approximately that is.

Once you know the number of growing days you have you can check each plant or seed package to see the length of time it takes to grow to harvest. Of course this doesn’t apply to plants that have a very short growing season, like radishes or lettuce.

It may seem strange to say know your growing season but it can be really disheartening when you plant too early only to be hit by a frost that kills all you planted. So know when your area usually is safe from frost. Here we usually say after June 10th but that doesn’t mean you can’t plant and prepare before that.

Using June 10th as an example I would still plant before that but I would protect my plants by covering them at night or by having them in containers and move them in and out of the garden shed until the threat of frost has pasted.

3. Know Where You Will Get The Best Sun For The Summer.

I made some major blunders when we first started growing flowers in our yard. I didn’t pay attention to where the sun was going as spring turned to summer and found a lot of my plants that needed sun light were in the shade after their first month.

Take note of the buildings and trees that may block areas of your yard. Know where the sun is going to be tracking across your yard during the growing season and plan for it. Put the shade loving plants in the path that gets shaded at the hottest time of the day. And of course you will want your sun loving plants to get the most of the sun you have.

I love raspberries and bought two stalks but I put them on the opposite side of the yard than I should have. We still had raspberries but after I moved them to the other side of the yard where they will get the sun we will see if they yield a lot more.

4. Proper Drainage And Soil Preparation.

When we started digging up the spot where our vegetable gardening would go we knew the soil was clay and had very poor drainage. We knew that because ducks would land in our yard like it was a pond. But the area we have our garden is the area we get the most light for the summer and it needs to be there.

We hadn’t started composting at that time so we bought peat moss and topsoil, plenty of it and I started removing the lawn in that area. Then I dug the clay out to about a foot deep and started mixing it with the topsoil and peat moss until it became the garden soil we needed, that would also drain better.

This year we had the most rain we have had in recent history so our little veggie garden got tested beyond anything we thought it would need to do and it did well.

Focus on making your soil the best it can be and you will have won half the battle of gardening right there.

5. Learn About Garden Pest And How To Deal With Them.

An example that makes me laugh is about growing zucchini. I would go out each day and look at the zucchini plant and wonder when it was going to get some zucchinis growing but all I could get to grow was beautiful yellow flowers and then they would just fall off in the night.

We I soon learned that my problem was slugs. They love coming out at night for party time with my zucchinis. Once I learned a few methods of getting rid of them I actually got to see the flowers extend into little green zucchinis.

Just putting out a couple of lids, I used peanut butter jar lids, with some beer got those darn slugs so loaded the just drank themselves to death. I also picked a few off at the start and squashed them but I liked the beer idea better.

I used some damp cardboard and placed a few small pieces around the edge of the zucchini. The slugs would crawl in or under the damp cardboard once they were done munching my zucchinis for the night and were waiting for me to dispose of them in the morning.

Tweet This Post

According to a 2009 study conducted by the National Gardening Association, it was discovered that the average vegetable gardening household saved just over 500 dollars per year by growing plants and cultivating their own harvest. Most couples used just 70 dollars to get started with their garden supplies, seeds and garden tools. It is estimated that 34% of all American households now grow some of their own food – a number that rose 10% from 2007-2008, and another 19% from 2008-2009.

The first thing you’ll need to do when designing a vegetable garden is selecting the right size and location. First, be sure your site gets a lot of sunshine. The majority of vegetables need at least six to eight hours of direct sunshine each day for the best outcome. If you have a more shaded area, you can stick your spinach and lettuce there. As you assess your yard, make sure to take into account the shade cast by the deciduous trees and the house during specific times of the day.

Ideally, the garden will be handily situated in close proximity to the kitchen, so you can tend to it with less effort and gather your crop without hiking long distances. The best soil will be full of nutrients and drain well, so you may have to add compost and use garden tools to aerate the earth before you start.

When choosing what goes into your garden, you’ll need to consider how much space the crops you want take up. Vegetable gardening items like corn, winter squash and tomatoes tend to take up a lot of room, so you’ll need a 20 x 20 garden at least. If you want to grow a few herbs, peppers, cucumbers and greens, a 12 x 16 plot should be sufficient. Garden guides from the National Gardening Association recommend growing plants in succession in three foot wide beds with 18-inch paths between each row. It’s also a good idea to add a few flowers (such as marigolds) into your garden to add some beauty, deter pests and attract helpful pollinating bees.

There are several strategies when it comes to choosing which plants to use in your vegetable gardening endeavor. Some vegetables are grown from seeds in a method known as “direct-sow.” A few weeks before the last frost (check the Farmer’s Almanac to get this date), sow your beets, carrots, parsnips, peas, radishes, chard, turnips and salad greens. After the last frost, sow your beans, corn, squash and herbs like dill and cilantro. Next, you may want to use some transplants for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, parsley, peppers and tomatoes. Your summer squash, lettuce and broccoli will grow equally well from seeds or transplants, so that choice is up to you. Growing plants like beets, chard, green beans, lettuce, parsley, peppers, tomatoes, radishes and summer squash is rather easy in most parts of the country, so you may want to include a lot of these crops to start.

The benefits of a vegetable garden can’t be beat. You’ll get to enjoy fresh picked produce and you’ll get some great exercise at the same time! From the organic vegetable garden to herb gardening, you’ll find the information you need at the Vegetable Gardening Site.

Tweet This Post

Flower gardening truly can be an art.

With each seasonal garden, you will come up with more ideas on how to enhance your backyard ecosystem. Many people enjoy reading about gardening tips on how to attract wildlife to their gardens. As a child, you may recall chasing yellow, orange and white butterflies, but perhaps you seldom see them anymore. Most of us remember our first glimpse of a tiny, delicate hummingbird or the first time a dragonfly touched our skin while we were floating on a raft at the lake. Certain plants are dynamos for luring these wonderful creatures to our back doorsteps. While you are free to incorporate whatever flowers you’d like into your garden, adding a few carefully chosen wildlife favorites will give you much more to gaze upon.

If you are considering designing a garden that will appeal to song birds, then you can include several special bushes, annuals, perennials, cultivated and native plants to attract them to your garden. By growing plants from each classification, you can provide seeds and fruit for every season to keep your feathered friends chirping year round. Make certain to add a bird bath and put seeds out in the winter to keep your bird clan satisfied.

In addition, think about the fact that, as well as your blooms, birds like trees for safety, nesting and shelter from the weather. Often the trees also provide food such as berries, sap and seeds. You can choose leafy trees such as hazelnut, American mountain ash, chestnut, dogwood, red mulberry, black walnut and sassafras, along with evergreen trees including blue spruce, American holly, red cedar Douglas fir, white cedar, ponderosa pine and California juniper.

Flower gardening is an important source of food for sparrows, finches and other songbirds. You can try perennials like penstemon, tickseed, bee balm, goldenrod, cosmos, purple coneflower and four o’ clocks, or you may try annuals like sunflowers, asters, bachelor’s button, spider flower, snapdragons and cockscomb. Garden guides also recommend planting shrubs and vines where birds can hide from predators and seek out food. Some tasty plants (like cherries and raspberries) are preferable to our flying friends, but they’re picked clean in a hurry. On the other hand, birds can be seen feasting all year long on elderberries, blackberries, huckleberries, chokecherries, bayberries, Oregon grapes, beauty-berries, silver-berries, blueberries, crab apples, cranberries and currants all year long.

Naturally, flower gardening to attract both hummingbirds and butterflies is ideal. Gardening tips suggest incorporating bee balm, California fuschia, salvia, columbines, daisies, sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, peas, clover, mint, milkweed, parsley, violets and pansiesthe to increase your odds of keeping these creatures nearby. Nature stores also sell very effective red and yellow hummingbird feeders that these little winged beauties just love. Since hummingbirds can be pretty territorial, you might want to set up more than one in different locations around the yard if you notice the birds are coming to your home.

Your house may be beautiful, but if the surrounding area isn’t well maintained, it ruins the whole effect. Home gardening can make a tremendous difference in the appearance of your property. Visit the Landscaping Ideas site for some fabulous ideas to add class and style to your property.

Tweet This Post