A Must Read If You Are You Ready To Garden

~ craigb

TIP! Gradually acclimate plants to temperature changes and conditions, if you want to avoid shocking them. Start by placing your plants outside for a few hours only.

Horticulture lets you grow beautiful flowers and fresh vegetables just outside your door. Nothing is better than fresh tomatoes on your salad or a salad that is totally comprised of what you’ve grown. A wide variety of information is available online, in magazines and in gardening books to help you grow a healthy, luscious garden.

TIP! Make garden tools do double duty as handy makeshift rulers. Larger handled tools like rakes, hoes, and shovels make great measuring sticks.

To prevent shocking your plants, you must gradually introduce new temperatures and other conditions to them. Leave them outside in sunlight for a couple of hours on the initial day. Gradually increase the the time they spend outside over a one week period. By the time the week ends, your plants will be ready for their big move and should have no problems!

Choose plants that will give you the most yield at harvest time. In many cases, a disease-resistant or cold-tolerant hybrid will produce a higher yield than a traditional variety.

Flower Bed

TIP! Keep your plants dry and aerated daily. Moisture on the surfaces of your plants is an invitation to pests and illness.

Plant a variety of flowers to keep your flower garden colorful and interesting. Annuals and biennials can add excitement and interest to your flower garden every season. Biennials and annuals that grow quickly can add color to a flower bed, plus they permit you to modify the way the flower bed looks each season and each year. Use them to fill gaps between shrubs and perennials in the sun. Some excellent choices include rudbeckia, hollyhock, sunflower, cosmos, petunia and marigold.

TIP! Mint is a very tasty herb that has a tendency to run wild in the garden if not kept in check. Stunt their growth a little by planting your mint into a garden container or large pot instead.

Before planting seeds, soak them overnight. Place them in a cupboard or other place where they won’t be exposed to light. Put some seeds (a small amount) in a container that isn’t too large for the plant you’ll be growing. Fill that container with water, almost to the top. This will allow seeds to be watered and they will get a kick start when growing. This gives the seeds a better chance of flourishing.

TIP! All of your vegetable plants should have approximately two inches, just outside the stem, of organic mulch placed around them. Mulch helps the soil surrounding the plants remain moister for a longer time.

Plant some wheat grass or cat grass near where you car tends to nibble in your garden. You can put something over the soil which surrounds the plants which has a bad smell to cats to deter them.

Knee Pads

TIP! Try to pour a bit of leftover water from your steamed veggies on them. Add coffee grounds or tea leaves to the soil of acid-loving plants like rhododendron and gardenia.

If your plants do not grown very tall, try buying some knee pads used for gardening. Long hours spent in the garden will wreak havoc on your knees. Pick up a good pair of horticulture knee pads to help cushion your knees.

TIP! Don’t count the fall season out. That doesn’t have to be way it is though! The fall season is probably the most colorful of the year in terms of foliage.

Apply organic mulch generously around your vegetable plants. When you place mulch around your plants, it keeps the ground more moist. This is also efficient in preventing weeds from growing. Time and effort will be saved pulling out all the weeds.

Garden Pests

TIP! Organic gardening is a safe hobby to share with your children. Gardens are terrific teaching tools for kids, and provide great opportunities for interaction, growth, and instruction on healthy living.

Don’t use pesticides that aren’t meant to kill specific types of garden pests. These pesticides will kill every type of pest in your garden, including beneficial bugs that eat garden pests. Good bugs are often more sensitive to pesticides than their bad counterparts, so if the population of good bugs goes down, the pest problem can grow. This can lead to needing even more pesticides to eliminate the problem insects.

TIP! When growing plants inside of the house, you should ensure the thermostat is set at around 65-75 degrees in the daytime. It is important for them to be kept in this temperature range if they are to grow properly.

In order to bring in good insects to your garden, you need to plant heather. Heather is great for getting bees to stop by at the beginning of spring, as heather plants have nectar available early in the season. If your heather bed is undisturbed, as it would be in nature, many beneficial insects will make it their home. With this knowledge at hand, it is in your best interest to wear gloves when tending the heather.

TIP! Think about using all-natural botanical insecticides in your organic garden; they are very handy when it comes to getting rid of harmful pests. Oftentimes, natural insecticides work better than synthetically produced pesticides.

Asprin will actually help your plants out by killing diseases. Your plants can benefit from a solution you can make by dissolving one and one-half aspirins into a couple of gallons of water. You can just spray this on them to fight disease. Try to apply the mixture to the plants at least once in each three week period.

TIP! For the best results when mulching, you should aim to create a bed of mulch two to three inches thick. Doing this will nourish the soil in your garden and improve its ability to retain moisture.

Try not to let the chores associated to your organic garden build up. Sometimes it might prove difficult to get in a little horticulture time every day. However, you shouldn’t fret, as there are a few things you can do that can minimize the time you spend gardening when you do manage to get to it. For example, if your family is cooking out on the grill, you could clear a few bunches of weeds between checking on the burgers.

Laundry Basket

TIP! You have heard a lot about the uses of compost, but you may not know how it is produced. It is made of things such as wood chips, lawn cuttings, fallen leaves, bits of produce, straw and other yard waste that has started to decompose.

An old laundry basket works great for gathering produce from your garden. An old basket will act like a strainer does. The produce can be rinsed off as it sits in the laundry basket, and extra water will drain out through the sides.

TIP! Be sure to know when and how to water the plants in your organic garden. Utilizing a soaker hose can provide much needed help.

As a good general practice, you should make sure to plant your seeds three seed-widths deep into their containers. However, some seeds do not need to be covered, they need the sunlight. These seeds include petunias and ageratum. If you are not sure whether your seeds need to be exposed to sunlight, resources are usually provided with the seeds or can be found online.

TIP! Adequate mulch in your garden does a lot to cut down on water use. A thick layer of mulch will mean you have to water the plants less often.

The simple beer trap is still one of the best methods of ridding your organic garden of slugs. Dig a hole the size of a glass jar, and bury the jar with the top at ground level. Pour beer into the jar until it is an inch from the top. The slugs will be attracted to the beer and will end up being trapped within the confines of the jar.

TIP! Start brand new plants by using cuttings from existing plant roots. Cut the roots in winter, as this is when they are usually dormant.

Gardening is a relaxing hobby that will produce delicious vegetables and sweet fruit. Preparing fresh, healthy meals using what you have grown can be a very satisfying experience. Apply these guidelines in order to get the most out of gardening.