Gardening Advice

Gardening Tips & Techniques

• Gardeners use white glue for sealing the ends of pruned stems and branches against insects and excessive moisture loss in the garden.
• When doing your garden fall flower planting (if you order from a gardening company that sends you the roots and/or bulbs in labeled bags) put rocks in the bags and leave them in the garden where you planted them so next spring you'll remember where and what you gardened and planted last fall!
• When storing garden bulbs for the winter sprinkle them with medicated baby powder and store them in old onion sacks.
• Prevent garden soil from leaking out of a potted plant. Place a pair of pantyhose in the bottom of gardening plant pots to provide drainage
• A birth control pill dissolved in one quart of water will help garden ferns grow faster and stronger.
• Use all your gardens fall leaves! Shred them and put them in your gardens flower and vegetable garden for extra nutrients in the soil and protection from the cold winter!
• If you want moss to grow on your garden rocks paint plain yogurt on the surface. Make sure you repeat the gardening process after any rain.
• Gardening Tool Carrier - One great tip is use an old golf bag to store your garden tools in, it can carry both your long handled and short handled gardening tools. It makes gardening so much easier since you don't need to run back and forth for your tools
• Weed your garden after a rainfall. Weeds pull easier. If you need to weed and it hasn't rained, water your garden first.
• A great way to maintain moisture to the gardens soil, as well as reducing weeds is to lay down several layers of newspaper sheets between the gardens rows and plants. At the end of the season this mulch can be turned into the garden’s soil. Make sure the print is vegetable oil ink.
• To get rid of garden weeds that comes up between patio cracks and gravel, just sprinkle salt
• To prevent dirt from getting under your fingers while gardening, scratch a bar of soap before starting to work. When you are finished, the soap will wash out from under your nails and your nails won't have those telltale dark gardening stains under them! 
• Use an inexpensive plastic kid’s pool filled a few inches with water during gardening to keep your potted plants in when on vacation
• Cut the bottom of empty plastic cola bottles (any size) to use to start seedling. They are the perfect size for gardening and you will also be recycling.
• Rinsed out milk cartons are excellent gardening containers for kitchen scraps waiting to go out to the gardens compost.
• When starting new plants from cuttings during gardening, if you put a little sugar in the water, it seems to help the cuttings get roots a little faster!
• If an unsuspecting frost came upon your garden while you were sleeping and the garden plants were not protected, get to the garden before the sun shines on the plants and spray the foliage with the gardening hose.
• You can make a tumbling composter using a plastic garden garbage can with a sturdily attached lid. Just poke holes in the sides for aeration, and roll the can to mix the gardens compost.
• Besides regular water gardening, once a month dissolve an Aspirin in a cup of tea and feed to your gardens plants.
• Herbs for the winter: Cut 4-5 inches of stem from your favorite garden herbs, tie in a bunch and hang upside down to dry in a cool place. It’s beautiful, smells great and its economical as well!

Garden Plant Requirements
Many factors come into play in your garden to determine whether or not a plant will perform well for you. Each kind of plant has its own needs and requirements in the garden. Some plants, like the dandelion, are tolerant of a wide variety of garden conditions, while others have very exacting gardening requirements. Before you spend the time, effort gardening, and money attempting to grow a new plant in your garden, it is best to do some research to learn something about the garden conditions that the plant needs to grow properly.
Day length

Day length is usually the most critical factor in regulating gardening vegetative growth, flower initiation and development, and the induction of dormancy. Garden plants utilize day length as a cue to promote their garden growth in spring and prepare them for the cold weather. Many plants require specific day length conditions to initiate flowers.

Light
Light is the energy source for plants. Cloudy, rainy days or the shade cast by nearby plants and garden structures can significantly reduce the amount of light available. Shade adapted plants cannot tolerate the bright light of full sun. Plants survive only where the amount is within a range they can tolerate in the garden.

Temperatures in the Garden
Plants grow best within an optimum range of garden temperatures; and the range may be wide for some species, narrow for others. Plants survive only where the gardens temperatures allow them to carry on life-sustaining chemical reactions.

Cold effects on the Garden
Plants differ in their ability to survive cold temperatures especially in the garden. Some tropical plants are injured by temperatures below 60°F. Arctic species can tolerate temperatures well below zero. The ability the gardens plant to withstand cold is a function of the degree of dormancy present in the plant, its water status, and general health. A gardens exposure to wind and bright sunlight or rapidly changing temperatures can also compromise a plant’s cold tolerance.

Heat effects on the Garden
Heat tolerance varies widely from species to species and from garden to garden. Many plants that naturally grow in arid tropical regions are naturally very heat tolerant, while subarctic plants and alpine plants show very little tolerance for heat. High night temperatures are often the most limiting factor for many plants in the garden.

Garden Water
Different plants have different water gardening needs. Some plants in the garden tolerate drought during the summer but need winter rains. Others need a consistent supply of moisture in the garden to grow well. Careful attention to the need for supplemental garden water can help you select plants that need a minimum of irrigation to perform well in your garden. If you have poorly drained, chronically wet soil, you can select lovely garden plants that naturally grow in bogs, fens, and other wet places.

Gardens PH
The ability of plant roots to take up certain nutrients depends on the pH, which is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of your soil. Most plants grow best in soils that have a pH near 7.0. Most ericaceous plants such as azaleas and blueberries need acid soils with pH below 6.0 to grow well. Lime in the garden can be used to raise pH and materials containing sulfates such as aluminum sulfate and iron sulfate can be used to lower pH. The solubility of many trace elements is controlled by pH, and only the soluble forms of these important micronutrients can be used by plants especially in the garden. Iron is not very soluble at high pH and iron chlorosis is often present in high-pH soils, even if they contain abundant iron.

Growing and Gardening Herbs for Cooking
If you cook with herbs then you might have already thought about growing your own garden herbs for cooking. You can learn how to set up a small herb garden, how to garden and cultivate and prepare herbs as well as what herbs to use with certain foods. In no time at all, you can become an herb specialist and your food will be all the better for it!

There are many different types of herbs you can make in a garden such as culinary herbs, aromatic herbs, medicinal and much more. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Handbook on Herbs lists 73 different types of herbs. There are many common and non-common herbs and if you are a beginner culinary herb gardener, there are some that may be easier for you to start with. Parsley, thyme, savory, marjoram, mint, chives and basil are some common herbs used in cooking that you can create in your own garden.

Gardening Herbs for Beginners
If you are a beginner herb gardener, you might not know what garden herbs to plant since there are so many to choose from. It is a good idea to get a variety of flavors and uses in cooking so that you are not stuck with all one kind of herb. You can choose from:

• Strong herbs such as rosemary, sage and winter savory
• Accent herbs such as dill, mint, sweet basil, sweet marjoram and thyme
• Blending herbs such as chives, summer savory and parsley
  These are great to start out with in your herb garden and over time you might want to move into other gardening interests and less common herbs.

Remember that there are annuals, biennials and perennials to choose from. The climate will also affect the type of garden herb you choose. Annuals include anise, basil, chervil, coriander, dill and summer savory. Some samples of Biennials are caraway and parsley. Perennials are chives, fennel, lavage, marjoram, mint, tarragon, thyme and winter savory.

Of course this is not a complete list but it gives you an idea. Annuals are herbs that will bloom only for one season in the garden and then they die. Biennials live for two gardening seasons but they only bloom on the second gardening season and perennials bloom each season once they have been established so they are very popular.

Preparation and Drying
Once you have gardened and grown the herbs and you are ready to actually use them, it requires some preparation. You have to dry the gardens herbs before you use them in cooking. Most herbs reach their peak just before flowering so you can collect them from the garden then for drying and storage.
Cut the herbs in the early morning when the dew has just dried. You should cut annuals off at ground level and perennials about a third way down the stem. Now wash the herbs with the leaves on the stem in cold water to remove dirt, dust, bugs, etc. You can drain them on towels or by hanging upside down in the sun to let the water evaporate.

Next you will strip all the leaves off the stalk leaving only about the top six inches. Be sure you also remove any blossoms. You know that the garden herbs have to be properly dried before storing and certain hers such as mint and basil need to be dried quickly or they mold. One way of natural air drying is to hang them in the dark in paper bags. Be sure to hang upside down because this lets essential oils flow from the stems to the leaves.
The room should be about 70-80 degrees and be well ventilated and dust and dirt free. It normally takes about 1 to 2 weeks for the garden herbs to be completely dry and feel crumbly.

If you need to dry quickly you can use an oven. Place the leaves or seeds on a cookie sheet and cook on low heat (less than 180 degrees F) for about 2 to 4 hours. You can also put them in the microwave for about 3 minutes, mixing them around every 30 seconds so they dry evenly. Once your garden herbs are properly dried, you can store them until they are ready to be used.

Which Herbs for Which Foods
There are so many different types of garden herbs that it may be hard to know which herbs from your garden are good for which foods. There are no set rules for this but some general guidelines are set below.

Basil is good for tomatoes and other vegetables as well as fish, meat, poultry, potatoes, cheese, garlic and summer fruit. Thyme is good on meats as well as soups and stew and vegetable dishes. Nasturtium is a good garnish for salads, entrees and desserts and sage is good on meat and fish dishes. Oregano is best on Italian dishes and dill is good for many things such as chicken, fish, beef, asparagus, beans, beets, carrots, cabbage, corn, cucumbers, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, breads, eggs and cheese.

Mint is also often used for flavor in drinks and sauces. A good rule of thumb is to remember that you don’t want the herbs to overpower the food, and you don’t want the herb to get lost in the flavor of the dish you are using it in. A more pungent or stronger herb marries well with a more robust meat or food and a more subtle herb goes well with a lighter dish.

Gardening Wildflower Seeds - Reasons Why You Should Plant

Native wildflowers are those that were growing naturally in the landscape before the first settlers arrived from Europe. Ever since that time more and more plants have been introduced and gardened from around the world with very mixed results. Although many of the imports are now prized garden specimens, others are regarded as invasive garden weeds whose cultivation is actively discouraged e.g. Japanese Knotweed.

The benefits of growing and gardening wildflowers are many, but here are just a few:

• Since wildflowers grow naturally in the landscape they will thrive in similar soil types and situations in your garden.
• Because wild flowers are growing in their natural habitat, wildflowers will require less water and fertilizer than other garden plants.
• Equally wildflowers have a natural resistance to garden pests and diseases and so will reduce the need for sprays and pesticides in your garden.
• Many wildflowers are attractive to bees and butterflies and so will encourage these colorful insects to visit your beautiful garden.
• Songbirds are also attracted by the seeds and berries produced by the plants for your garden.
• Wildflower gardening and planting can produce a dense groundcover that will encourage frogs and toads that will eat slugs but not harm your gardens plants themselves.
• On a more practical level, give up part of your gardens lawn, sow wildflower seeds and save yourself the effort of mowing the garden.

Read about the folklore of wildflowers and discover a whole new world of traditional uses of plants as food, as tisanes, potpourris and more. Many wildflowers have in the past been used as medicines and a number of modern drugs are based on plant extracts. Your area of wildflower gardening and planting can be a contribution to the preservation of the natural environment in an age where everything has been replaced by buildings and shops.