Live Chemical Free By Growing It Yourself

~ craigb

TIP! Trying to shovel through clay soil can be extremely difficult and tiresome. Rub a thin layer of floor or car wax over the surface of the shovel, and then buff the surface using a clean cloth.

More and more people are realizing the wonders of organic gardening. If you use the suggestions here, you’ll be able to create your own successful organic garden. Just put these tips to work for you and you will soon see great results.

TIP! Use perennials resistant to slugs and snails. Slugs and snails are voracious eaters that can destroy a plant literally overnight.

It may be helpful to let your plants begin their life in a pot and to transfer them to your garden when they’re seedlings. Doing this will increase the survival rate of all your outdoor plants. It also allows you to tighten up the time periods between plantings. As soon as the mature plants are removed, you can replace them with fresh seedlings.

TIP! Brighten your garden with biennials and annuals. Fast growing biennials and annuals can enliven a flower bed while letting you change up the look each season and year.

You can use the wooden handles of your tools as measurement sticks. Tools with long handles, such as rakes, hoes, and shovels can be converted into handy measuring sticks. After laying the handles on the floor, run the measuring tape along beside them. Have a marker handy, and mark the distance with it. Now you have easy access to a long ruler whenever you are gardening.

Flower Garden

TIP! Regular weeding is essential to the health of any garden. Weeds will cause your garden to become overgrown and cluttered.

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. Fast-growing annuals and biennials can brighten up a flower bed, and allow you to change the look from season to season and year to year. Use them to fill gaps between shrubs and perennials in the sun. Notable varieties include cosmos, rudbeckia, petunia, hollyhock, marigold and sunflower.

TIP! Grow wheat or cat grass around the plants your cat likes nibbling. It may also work to add citrus peelings or mothballs to the soil of the plants, because the odor is unpleasant to cats.

For a garden that thrives, choose the right type of soil. The soil may have to be adapted, depending on what types of plants you’re planning for the garden. For special requirements, you can build separate areas with soil that is right for certain plants.

TIP! Do not cut your grass too short. If you leave some of the grass when you mow, the roots grow further into the ground, which makes the grass less prone to drying and other hazards.

Deciduous shrubs need protection from the cold. If the temperature drops below 50 degrees, you should consider protecting them, especially if they do best in warm environments. Try to tie the tops all together and cover them with a sheet, large piece of cloth, or blanket. This method is superior to covering plants in plastic, because air can freely circulate, which prevents rotting.

TIP! To help them out, try poring leftover water from steamed vegetables on them. In order to help acidify the soil for plants like gardenias and rhododendrons, you can use coffee and tea grounds.

If you want to effectively weed out young plants, you can try “boiling” away the weeds. The safest herbicide that you can probably find is a cup of boiling water. Douse boiling water on the weeds and avoid nearby plants carefully. If you pour the water near your plants, it will kill the roots.

TIP! If you plan to raise organic plants inside, you need to think about how much light they will get. The amount of light available can determine which type of organic plants you should grow.

Cooled water left over from steaming vegetables can be fed to them as a little snack. You can also acidify soil for rhododendrons, gardenias and more by using coffee or tea grounds. Chamomile tea is a good remedy against fungus.

TIP! When working in the garden, try to work as efficiently as possible. One of the biggest time wasters is not keeping track of your tools and having to look for them every time you need them.

When gardening, don’t use any broad-spectrum pesticides. These strong pesticides are non-selective, killing beneficial insects as well as pests. Since these pesticides often affect the good bugs more than the bad, using them can actually increase your pest problem. This might result in you having to use even more pesticides to get rid of the pests.

TIP! Coffee grounds are a great addition to soil. Plants can use the nitrogenous nutrients found in coffee grounds.

Choose a plant to use for a focal point. There should be a solid focal point for every good garden design. The best focal points are those plants that really stand out from those that are adjacent.

Involve your children in gardening. The benefits for your children will be a closer bond with nature and an understanding of where food comes from.

TIP! Over-watering your plants can be harmful, because roots that are drowning in water cannot effectively pull nutrients out of the soil. Prior to watering your outdoor plants, you should check with weather stations to see if it will be raining later in the day.

Sprouting seeds need less warmth than before. Take your plants out of the heat once they start to grow. Remove plastic films on containers to prevent warmth and humidity from penetrating them. Keep an eye on your seeds so you will know when this should be done.

TIP! Each year, you should rotate the plants in your garden. When similar plants are planted in pretty much the same spot every single year, this can cause fungal and disease growth.

Tuck away some plastic grocery bags and use them to slip over your muddy boots. You’ll be able to keep your momentum going without needing to take off your shoes, and stay on track with your horticulture project.

TIP! Spread three inches of organic material on your garden for mulch. Mulch adds nutrients to the soil, keeps the soil moist, reduces weed growth, and makes beds look tidier.

Pine mulch can be highly effective under the right conditions. A number of plants commonly grown in garden settings do best in an acidic soil. When you have plants like this, nothing is easier than to gather pine needles for your beds. Go ahead and cover the beds you have with needles a couple of inches and while they decompose, they actually disperse some acid into the soil.

TIP! When you garden, be aware of what you can use. Try using organic substitutes for the typical chemical fertilizers.

Looking for a natural way to kill weeds in your garden? To control the growth of weeds, all you need is last week’s Sunday paper. Weeds need sun for growth, just like any other plant. By covering them with a layer of newspaper, you are essentially suffocating the weeds due to a lack of light. It’s easy for newspapers to break down over an extended period of time, making them great for compost. If you want it to look better, just add a layer or two of much over top of the newspapers.

TIP! When planting trees and shrubs, dig irregular holes with rough sides. If you create holes that have “glazed” sides created by shovels, it’s possible that one of those holes will restrict any root from getting into the soil nearby.

For container planting, be sure to plant your seeds at a depth around three times the radius of the seed. Some seeds need to be in direct sunlight, though, so you need to know information about each type of seed. Some of these seeds are petunias and ageratum. If you do now know how to plant your seed, consult the information that came with the seed when you bought it or check online for helpful information.

TIP! Make sure your trees are in a location near your house so that they give you a lot of shade. Your energy bills will reflect this maneuver as your home will be naturally cooled by the shade from the tree.

As stated earlier, applying organic horticulture methods requires only a modest amount of time and effort. Apply the tips and techniques from this article to your efforts, and witness for yourself just how awesome your gardening can be. Regardless of which organic crops you choose to grow, these tips will help you enjoy a bountiful harvest.