Tag: organic horticulture

Top Tips For A Thriving Organic Garden

Many individuals prefer organic horticulture, as they fear the possible long-term effects on their health as well as the environment from the many commercial pesticides and fertilizers that are used. A lot of organic horticulture strategies are cheap. Here are some helpful techniques to help you learn to garden organically.

Clay soil can be a real pain to work with as it often sticks to the end of the shovel. Coat and buff the digging end of the shovel with automobile wax to make digging easier. The wax prevents the clay from sticking to the shovel, and stops rust from forming.

Choose higher yield plant varieties. Hybrids are usually hardier in terms of disease and weather resistance, and are designed to produce more.

If you want to keep your garden free of pests, start with healthy soil! The healthier the plants you grow, the more resistant they'll be to illness, fungus, or bugs. If you want to get the best plants, begin with a soil that has hardly any chemicals, and that will bring salts.

Give your flower beds a boost by introducing annuals and biennials. The annuals and biennials are usually fast growing because they only last one season, and this will let you change the garden every season for a nice change of pace. In addition, you might need something to fill empty spaces in your flower garden. Fill gaps with annuals or biennials. Just make sure the flowers will get enough sun to thrive. Some of these that you might consider are petunias, marigolds and sunflowers. If those are not flowers you like, you can also try cosmos, holyhocks or rudbeckias.

TIP! Shoveling clay is very difficult and lots of work because the clay is hard and sticks to the shovel, making it tough to handle. To ease the digging, apply some car wax or floor wax to the head of the shovel and buff.

Plants require a good amount of CO2 in order to grow to their maximum height. Most plants will grow better with more CO2. A greenhouse can concentrate the levels of CO2. For the best growing conditions you should keep the CO2 levels high.

Invest in a kneeling stool, and a wheelbarrow to work in the garden. Gardening can be very tough on the knees as you spend much time leaning near the ground, so a portable stool can make all the difference to your comfort. Also, gardening can involve a lot of heavy lifting and moving items, therefore a robust wheelbarrow can make that aspect much easier.

Choose a specific plant to become your garden's focal point. A focal point can help direct a viewers gaze. Many times, it's just a plant that differs from the surrounding plants.

TIP! Pick your plants with an eye to maximize the yield you can get. If yield is important, choose hybrids designed to resist cold and diseases rather than traditional varieties.

Heather is a magnet for friendly insects. Heather will attract bees early in the spring as well as other beneficial insects. Spiders, ground beetles, and other useful insects spend time in undisturbed heather beds. For this reason, you should always remember to put on your gardening gloves when tending to your heather.

To create a unique English garden, use a variety of plant types and lengths in the same flower bed. If you use a combination of plants that grow to the same height, your garden bed will be uniform and dull looking.

Ward off certain diseases that plague plants with the use of aspirin. Dissolve aspirin (1.5 pills per 2 gallons of water) in a bucket and administer to your plants. Help your plants to fight disease by spraying them with the aspirin water. Apply at three week intervals.

TIP! Choose the right soil for best results. Your soil may not be correct, but it depends on what sorts of plants you want to grow.

Killing weeds the natural way? Use several layers of newspapers for weed control. Weeds can only grow in sunlight. The newspaper will block sunlight and weeds won't be able to grow. Because newspapers decompose well with the passage of time, they make great additions to compost. Covering the newspaper with mulch will help your garden to be more pleasing to the eye.

If you'd like to create a raised bed, use materials like brick, stone, or untreated wood. Be sure to use wood that is naturally resistant to rotting and that has not been treated. Some good choices include locust, cypress, and cedar. It is particular important that you don't use treated wood for vegetable beds, as the chemicals and toxins on the wood could leach into the soil and be absorbed by food plants. If you have built a bed with treated lumber already, use a barrier such as plastic to line the bed.

Add mulch for healthy soil. Mulch can protect the ground it sits upon. The soil will stay cool in high heat, preventing damage to the roots. It helps the soil retain moisture longer by reducing the evaporation rate. Mulch is also great for controlling weed growth.

TIP! When you're out and about in the garden, particularly in the fall, keep an eye out for sink bugs. Stink bugs prefer peppers, beans, tomatoes, and various varieties of fruits.

Hopefully the useful advice in this article will help you create and maintain your own beautiful, healthy, and toxin free organic garden. You can also look forward to a boost in the volume of wildlife inhabiting your nature-loving garden.

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Healthy Living: Tips For Growing An Organic Garden Of Your Own

You are ready to grow a healthy organic garden. The time to do it is now. This article is packed with tips and inspiration that will allow you to better understand the basics of organic gardening. Read on!

Shoveling clay is very difficult and lots of work because the clay is hard and sticks to the shovel, making it tough to handle. Get better results in clay by rubbing car wax or floor wax onto the shovel, then buff off and dig. The clay will no longer stick to the shovel, and this also helps to prevent other problems like rusting.

TIP! Trying to shovel through clay soil can be extremely difficult and tiresome. Rubbing wax on the shovel prior to digging can kick this challenge to the curb.

Try to plan a variety of perennials that are slug-proof. Snails and slugs are garden nightmares, and only need a single evening to obliterate a plant. These garden pests prefer perennials with thin, flat, delicate leaves, particularly if the plant is not yet mature. Perennials that have tough or hairy leaves are often times unappetizing to snails and slugs. Good choices in this category are plants such as achillea, campanula, and euphorbia. Heuchera and helleborus also work well.

Starting a garden with the best soil is a great defense mechanism against pests. Healthier plants are stronger, which in turn can help the plants you grow to become more resistant to disease and bugs that can harm them. You want to cultivate quality soil with adequate salt levels, which leads to healthy plants.

Stink Bugs

TIP! You can plant wheat grass or cat grass near the plants that the cat eats. You can also put something on top of the soil around the plants that has an offensive smell to cats, such as mothballs or citrus peel.

Keep an eye open for stink bugs in your garden, especially during the fall months. Stink bugs like to reside in tomatoes, beans, and pepper plants, as well as many fruits. They can do serious damage in your garden, so look for an effective method of reducing their population.

If you want your garden to blossom with flowers throughout the spring and summer, plant some bulbs in it. Planting and growing bulbs is very simple, and once planted the bulbs will grow for years. Different types of bulbs bloom at different times, so if you choose appropriately, you can have blooms from early spring to late summer.

Don't cut your grass too short! If you let your grass keep some height after mowing, it will be able to absorb more sun and moisture resulting in a lusher, greener lawn. If the grass is too short that will lead to shallow roots, which will cause a brown and dried-out lawn.

TIP! When mowing your lawn do not cut it as short as possible. Keeping grass with a little more height makes it healthier.

If you're growing veggies in the garden, they need to be in a spot that lets them get about six hours of sun daily. Most vegetables need at least that much sun for optimal growth speed. Some flowers also have the same needs.

To keep pests away, you can use plants in the garden or other natural materials. For example, planting a border consisting of marigolds or onions can repel slugs. Wood ash also makes a great insect deterrent; simply use it as mulch around your shrub and tree seedlings. Using these methods eliminates your need of chemical pesticides.

When planting anything, think about planting for color so that you have something to enjoy in the fall. That doesn't have to be way it is though! Autumn is the most colorful season of all, foliage-wise. Fall hues of orange, yellow and red can be seen falling from maple trees, and dogwoods and beech trees offer comparable spectacles. When you choose shrubbery, try hydrangea, barberry, or cotoneaster.

TIP! Be vigilant about keeping moisture off your plants. Moisture can be a magnet for disease and parasites on your plants.

Water your garden regularly and smartly. You can water efficiently by using a soaker hose which will eliminate the necessity of watering each plant one by one with a nozzle, or having to use a water can that you have to refill over and over. To protect your plants, keep the flow on the soaker down. Let it water the plants for a while as you do other things.

Avoid sun damage by dressing appropriately whenever you will be gardening in the sun. Wear a hat, sunglasses and sunscreen to protect your skin from the damaging effects of the sun. When you protect yourself against the sun's rays, you are more likely to avoid both skin cancer and sunburn.

Allow your children to actively participate in planting your organic garden. Toiling together in the garden brings your family closer together and offers many different opportunities to learn new things and instill green values.

TIP! The best way to start a garden is from first principles: seeds. The environmentally conscious way to start a new garden is to start with seeds.

Keep your horticulture tools close by to maximize gardening efficiency. Use a bucket large enough to hold all your equipment or wear pants with multiple pockets. Keep common tools such as your gloves or your pruning shears within reach so that you can quickly and easily maintain your garden whenever you need to.

Don't let all the little chores in your organic garden build up. While you may not be able to spend a lot of time every day in your garden, even little items done daily will stop the mountain of work from growing. For example, snatch out a weed or two whenever you pass by the garden, such as when you take your dog out for a potty break.

Organic Horticulture

TIP! Place a few inches of organically based mulch around your vegetable plants. When you place mulch around your plants, it keeps the ground more moist.

You should now feel enthusiastically prepared to enter the relaxing and productive world of organic horticulture. Even veteran organic gardeners might have learned a thing or two. The tips above should have given you some advice and a few ideas, so that you can begin an organic horticulture adventure in your own backyard.

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