Improving Your Garden by Adding a Fountain

A great way to spice up your garden is to add a water feature. These can be both soothing and aesthetically appealing. I’ve found that there’s nothing more relaxing than sitting on a bench next to my garden and listening to my fountain while I read a good book or do some studying.  Putting in a water feature is fairly easy and relatively inexpensive, and will add immensely to the pleasantness of your garden. Also, the maintenance level is minimal.

Usually, people install fountains for the benefit of the natural ambiance it provides. For some reason, being around a gorgeous scene of water gives you a positive energy. This is also good if you practice Tai Chi or some form of yoga or meditation. The constant drone of the water is exactly what most people need to concentrate on what they are doing. Even if you’re not into that kind of stuff, just being in a garden with a fountain has a sort of meditative quality to it, even if you’re not trying to do so. I recommend it to anyone.

When you first decide to put in a fountain, you need to put great care into picking out one that will go well with the rest of your garden. If you have any other decorations, you want to consider if it goes well with your motif. Does the fountain you’re considering stand out in your garden like a sore thumb, or does it look like it was meant to be there? If
you’re like me, you can’t naturally tell whether the fountain will be a good addition to your garden just by looking at it. So my solution was to bring my sister (a natural at fashion design and that kind of stuff) along with a picture of my garden to the store. I was able to get her expert opinion, as well as see for myself what it would look like. By doing this
I was able to pick a beautiful rock fountain that goes marvelously with the rest of my garden.

However, I still had a slight problem with supplying my fountain with power. You see, my garden isn’t very close to my house. I thought it would look pretty tacky to run an extension cord across my yard, so I had to come up with another solution. I discussed my situation with a Home Depot employee, and he quickly found me the exact solution I needed: an extension cord meant for being buried! All it took was a few hours of digging a small trench across my yard, and I had power to my fountain without an unsightly cord running across my yard. After I got over this little hitch, my fountain plan went beautifully.

So if you’re looking for a way to make your garden a more classy and beautiful place to be, I hope you consider installing a fountain. The whole process is surprisingly inexpensive, and I think that you will be very happy with the results. Having a fountain in your garden is not only soothing, but it also adds a lot of character to an otherwise bland
garden. Remember, gardens are not just for giving us vegetables! A garden is a place to go when you want to retreat from the outside world and dwell in your own thoughts with no disturbance.

Butterfly Gardening

When creating a butterfly garden, the possibilities of what to include in your butterfly garden design are endless. Below are some suggestions to help get you started. They are designed to spark the creative process of your mind and get you started on your way to creating a lovely butterfly garden.

Before you even begin your butterfly garden, find out which species of butterflies are in your area. Consider taking an exploratory hike around your location with a butterfly identification book. This may take a little extra time and effort, but the results will be worth it. After you have compiled your list of local butterfly species, be sure to write down in your butterfly garden plan what these particular species of butterflies use for nectar and food plants.

Be sure that your garden is in a location that provides at least six hours of sunlight per day. Butterflies are cold-blooded creatures and therefore do better where they are warm and sheltered.

Wind can be a butterfly’s worst enemy so be sure to have plenty of wind protection in your design. You can plant tall shrubs and other plants in order to create a wind break, but a location that avoids heavy winds is even better.

The best of all would be a butterfly garden placed on the sunny side of your home with windbreaks on both the west and east sides, or wherever the prevailing winds come from in your area. Try and locate your garden close to a window so you can view the butterflies from indoors. Provide seating outside too.

If possible, you could excavate an area and build a stone wall around it. This would create the ideal windbreak for your butterflies. Make gravel pathways around your garden to save walking in mud.

There are many creative ways for constructing a butterfly garden. Take your time to design a garden that you will enjoy and be proud of.

Using Vines to Decorate your Garden

A great way to decorate your garden is the use of vines. They are very low maintenance and look good on almost anything. If you’ve got a fence or separator that really stands out in the field of green that is your garden, then growing a vine over it can be a quick and aesthetically pleasing solution. However, there are many types of vines for different situations, whether you are trying to grow it up the side of a house, along the ground, or up a tree.

Many different ground vines are available. These types grow fast and strong, and just inch their ways along the ground. They are very easy to direct, so they can make a border around your garden, or just weave in and out of the plants. I suggest using these as a hardy ground cover if you just want some green on your dirt or mulch. Usually you can find a variety that is resistant to being stepped on. It’s like a leafy, nice alternative to grass. Even if you have kids and a dog, it should have no problems staying alive.

Another type of vine that is available is a “twining” vine. This refers to their method of climbing. Twining vines require a lattice or equally porous surface to climb up, since they are not sticky at all. They just climb by sending out small tendrils to loop around whatever is nearby. I suggest using this type of vine for climbing up trees, or any type of mesh. Usually you have to guide them a lot more during their early stages, and after that they will go wherever you want them to.

Vines not only look good on the ground or on lattices, you can blend them in to the very architecture of your house. This is usually achieved through the use of vines with small tendrils that have adhesive tips. They extend from the vine and attach themselves to almost any surface. If your garden is adjacent to your house and you want something to camouflage the big unsightly wall, it’s a great idea to start out a few vines near the base. If you have a vine like the Virginia Creeper growing, then your entire wall will be covered in a matter of months. However I have seen situations where the vine got out of control. After that, you have no choice but to watch the vine take over your entire house.

One of the vines that you would probably recognize is Ivy. You see it around a lot, generally because it is so adaptable. Out of the types I mentioned above (ground, twining, and sticky pads), Ivy can fill in for pretty much anything. It makes a great ground cover, and will grow up about any surface you put it on. Although it grows quick and strong, I wouldn’t suggest growing it up your house. This is because recently, buildings which have had ivy for many years have found that it has been deteriorating the building.

So no matter what you want to do with a vine, you should have no problem getting it to grow. You should always do your research beforehand and find out about any negative qualities the vine has (such as its ability to destroy buildings, in Ivy’s case.)

Preparing Healthy Soil

If you’re getting ready to go on a new garden venture, you need to prepare your soil to ideally house your plants. The best thing you can do in the soil preparation process is to reach the perfect mixture of sand, silt, and clay. Preferably there would be 40 percent sand, 40 percent silt, and 20 percent clay. There are several tests used by experienced gardeners to tell whether the soil has a good composition. First you can compress it in your hand. If it doesn’t hold its shape and crumbles without any outside force, your sand ratio is probably a little high. If you poke the compressed ball with your finger and it doesn’t fall apart easily, your soil contains too much clay.

If you’re still not sure about the content of your soil, you can separate each ingredient by using this simple method. Put a cup or two of dirt into a jar of water. Shake the water up until the soil is suspended, then let it set until you see it separate into 3 separate layers. The top layer is clay, the next is silt, and on the bottom is sand. You should be able to
judge the presence of each component within your dirt, and act accordingly.

After you’ve analyzed the content of your soil, if you decide that it is low on a certain ingredient then you should definitely do something to fix it. If dealing with too much silt or sand, it’s best to add some peat moss or compost. If you’ve got too much clay, add a mixture of peat moss and sand. The peat moss, when moistens, helps for the new ingredient to infiltrate the mixture better. If you can’t seem to manage to attain a proper mixture, just head down to your local gardening store. You should be able to find some kind of product to aid you.

The water content of the soil is another important thing to consider when preparing for your garden. If your garden is at the bottom of an incline, it is most likely going to absorb too much water and drown out the plants.  If this is the case, you should probably elevate your garden a few inches (4 or 5) over the rest of the ground. This will allow for more drainage and less saturation.

Adding nutrients to your soil is also a vital part of the process, as most urban soils have little to no nutrients already in them naturally. One to two weeks prior to planting, you should add a good amount of fertilizer to your garden. Mix it in really well and let it sit for a while. Once you have done this, your soil will be completely ready for whatever seeds you
may plant in it.

Once your seeds are planted, you still want to pay attention to the soil. The first few weeks, the seeds are desperately using up all the nutrients around them to sprout into a real plant. If they run out of food, how are they supposed to grow? About a week after planting, you should add the same amount of fertilizer that you added before. After this you should continue to use fertilizer, but not as often. If you add a tiny bit every couple of weeks, that should be plenty to keep your garden thriving.

Basically, the entire process of soil care can be compressed into just several steps… ensure the makeup of the soil is satisfactory, make sure you have proper drainage in your garden, add fertilizer before and after planting, then add fertilizer regularly after that. Follow these simple steps, and you’ll have a plethora of healthy plants in no time. And if you need any more details on an individual step, just go to your local nursery and inquire there. Most of the employees will be more than happy to give you advice.

Growing Your Own Herbs

If you’re not the type of person that wants to spend their time managing an elaborate fruit or vegetable garden, you might consider planting and maintaining an herb garden. While the product might not seem as significant, you’ll still enjoy the constant availability of fresh, delicious herbs to flavor your meals with.

First you’ll want to choose the herbs that you’ll plant. You might have a hard time doing this because of the huge scope of herbs available. But the best way to choose is to do what I did; just look at what you have in your kitchen. By planting your own collection of these herbs, you can save money on buying them from the grocery store while having the added benefit of freshness. Some of the herbs you might start with include rosemary, sage, basil, dill, mint, chives, and parsley among others.

When choosing an area to put your herb garden, you should remember that the soil should have extremely good drainage. If the dirt gets watered and stays completely saturated, you have no chance of ever growing a healthy
plant. One of the best ways to fix the drainage problem is to dig a foot deep in the soil, and put a layer of crushed rocks down before replacing all the soil. This will allow all that water to escape, thus saving your plants.

When you are ready to begin planting herbs, you might be tempted to buy the more expensive plants from the store. However, with herbs it is much easier to grow them from seed than it is with other plants. Therefore you
can save a bundle of money by sticking with seed packets. Some herbs grow at a dangerously fast rate. For example, if you plant a mint plant in an open space then it will take over your entire garden in a matter of days.  The best way to prevent this problem is to plant the more aggressive plants in pots (with holes in the bottom to allow drainage, of course).

When it comes time to harvest the herbs you have labored so hard over, it can be fatal to your plant to take off too much. If your plant isn’t well established, it isn’t healthy to take any leaves at all, even if it looks like its not using them. You should wait until your plant has been well established for at least several months before taking off any leaves. This
wait will definitely be worth it, because by growing unabated your plant will produce healthily for years to come.

Once you’ve harvested your delicious home grown herbs, you’ll want to use them in cooking. Why else would you have grown them? Well first the process begins with drying them out. This is easily achieved by placing them on a cookie sheet and baking them 170 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 to 4 hours. After they’re sufficiently dried to be used in cooking, you can consult the nearest cookbook for instructions on using them to effectively flavor a dish.

If you want to store your herbs for later usage, you should keep them in a plastic or glass container. Paper or cardboard will not work, because it will absorb the taste of the herbs. During the first few days of storage, you should regularly check the container and see if any moisture has accumulated. If it has, you must remove all the herbs and re-dry them. If moisture is left from the first drying process, it will encourage mildew while you store your herbs. Nobody likes mildew.

So if you enjoy herbs or gardening, or both, then you should probably consider setting up an herb garden. It might require a little bit of work at first to set it up for optimal drainage, and pick what herbs you want to grow. But after the initial hassle, it’s just a matter of harvesting and drying all your favorite herbs.

Container Gardening Tips for Newbies

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. You can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colorful pots of annuals, or fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you’ll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another. Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Experiment with creative containers. You might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you’d rather make something really modern with timber or tiles.  If you decide to buy your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don’t want your plants to dry out, so paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.
Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside with water-based paints for good effect.  When purchasing pots, don’t forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting.  Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.

If you have steps leading up to your front door, an attractive pot plant on each one will delight your visitors. Indoors, pots of plants or flowers help to create a cosy and welcoming atmosphere.
Decide ahead of time where you want your pots to be positioned, then buy plants that suit the situation. There is no point buying sun lovers for a shady position, for they will not do well. Some plants also have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.

If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.
Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots of the same type and color, but in different sizes also looks affective.

With a creative mind and some determination, you will soon have a container garden that will be the envy of friends and strangers alike.

3 Tips in Landscaping your Garden

Landscaping is usually a fairly big task, consuming much time and energy. But before you hire that professional, here are some tips that could save both time and money.

1. Spend some time thinking about exactly how you want the final design to be. You need to take account of the style and function of your landscape. Do you want to include an area for entertaining? A barbeque? Is there to be an area for children to play, a fishpond or a swimming pool? An idea of the plants you want to be there will also help. Focus on the area where you spend most of your time. That’s a good place to start.

2. Think twice before hiring a pro. An independent designer might cost you hundreds of dollars when you may be able to access free plans on the internet or at a nursery. But if you have an awkward block such as very steep ground, a pro might give you the expertise to save costly mistakes.

3. The style of your home must be taken into account. If you have a rural cottage, formal gardens surrounding it will look out of place. Think also about your lifestyle. Do you want to spend hours caring for many beds of annuals or pruning beds of roses? If so, go ahead and plant them, but if you’d rather spend your free time at the beach, then go for an easy-care garden and landscape.

Here are the various landscape styles you can choose for your own garden:

a. Formal. This style uses lots of straight lines and perfect geometrical shapes. Orderly arrangement of plants instead of random positioning is employed. Close arrangement and pruning is seen on many landscaped gardens with this style.

b. Informal. This kind of landscaping workds well with cosy cottages. Beds with curved edges instead of straight lines and random placement of plants suit this landscape style.

c. English Garden. This style emphasizes the harmony between the house’s architecture and the garden.

d. Formal/Informal Garden. This style often comes with a brick walkway that exudes formality. This walkway leads to the rear with a circle of plants. The arrangement of plants resembles the English garden style but it has no formal borders.

e. Oriental. It is often the kind of garden found in small backyards. It uses rocks, evergreens and water. A wide variety of plants create several interesting angles with this style.

f. Woodland. This landscaping suits a house that has a wooded backyard and sloping ground.

Watering Your Garden

Ninety-five percent of the structure of the plant is composed of water. Almost all of the processes of the plant involves water, and this is why watering is one of the more important aspects of effective gardening for your vegetables’ organic garden. Together with light and carbon dioxide, water helps accelerate the necessary processes needed in effective care of your plants.

With vegetables, you cannot afford to go wrong since this will provide nourishment to both animals and humans alike. Water also acts a supplementary source aside from rainfall.

An irrigation system is necessary to provide the required amount of water in your garden. The natural sources of water, namely, precipitation and underground water systems, are not often sufficient for the plants. Most of the time, human intervention is required to ensure that the plants will reach their maximum potential. The frequency of your watering is proportional to the average amount of rainfall that falls on the area under which your garden lies.

The type of soil also affects the quality of plants’ water retention. The soils made of clay are usually lauded for its excellent ability to hold water in, but sometimes it goes overboard, so caution is required.  Sandy sieves require more assistance as they tend to slide off the water being placed on it. The addition of organic matter such as a composting mix also helps improve the ability to hold water.

There are also other external factors affecting the nature of watering in your garden. During cold weather, the plants can easily drown in water and wilt. On the other hand, the plants require more water when there is a surplus of sunlight or humidity levels. The factors of wind and air movement can also move the water from the plants. Also, the type of plant can affect the capacity to hold water. More mature plants may find it more difficult to retain water than the younger counterparts.

When watering the plants, make sure that you are able to soak the soil thoroughly before doing anything else. Another thing to consider is observing the plants at different times of day. Usually, plants look more wilted at night time, but this is natural and won’t usually require excessive watering. The balance is usually obtained the following day. But if you see the plant wilted during daytime, it is best to soak it with water to avoid it from wilting completely.

Often, vegetables picked from well-watered plants last longer than their less watered counterparts. Unless you are growing a cactus, water need not be used sparingly. There are various ways to water your plants: by a sprinkler that is manually controlled or automated, by hose or other means. Often, the sprinkler is the most famous form of watering tool. Proper scheduling of the frequency of your water sprinklers’ operations will also ensure that your plants will be consistently watered at different times of day.

It is also recommended that uniform distribution of water be maintained in order to ensure that all the plants in your vegetables’ organic garden are well-cared for. Despite the need for frequent watering, also bear in mind that there is also a need to conserve water, so make sure that there are no leaks whatsoever beyond what your organic garden needs.

Different Vegetable Gardening Styles

Each gardener has his own set of characteristics that make him fit for certain gardening styles. If you know yourself and the right gardening style that will fit your rearing of your organic garden and help you yield your vegetables effectively, then you have pretty much gotten an edge over other gardening enthusiasts. But what are the different types of gardening that you can look out for? Here are some of the types that you can consider:

Residential Gardening

This is the most common of all gardening techniques. If you are just a beginner and not yet inclined to produce vegetables for industrial reasons, then residential gardening is for you. The primary purpose of residential gardening is to sustain a family or two of a steady supply of vegetables and at the same time, render aesthetic appeal to your backyard.

Residential gardening does not require too much space. It can also be cultivated in window sills, balconies and other small areas that have sufficient light source, easy to monitor and at the same time, easy to maintain or free from pests. The good thing about residential gardening is the ease with which it ushers the gardening wannabe from having no knowledge of planting to expanding to other gardening styles, whichever deems the fancy of the budding gardener.

Specialized Gardening

Specialized gardening involves non-residential areas that are known for its green quality and are often marketed as such. Parks, botanical gardens, amusement parts and other tourist attractions fall under this category. Often a staff is required to maintain due to its size, so effective administrative skills on top of gardening expertise may be required. It is also tailored for delivering in profit to certain causes or organizations.

Impact Gardening

If you are up to the challenge of blocking weeds with minimal costs, then impact gardening is for you. It involves using a relatively small space and maximizing its gardening potential. The plants are often crowded together.

Indoor Gardening

Residential gardening is under the huge scope of indoor gardening. Other types under this category include the gardens of conservatories, greenhouses and academic institutions. Systems for heating and air conditioning may also be found for certain breeds of plants. If you are the type of gardener who really loves cultivating plants in and out of season, then indoor gardening is for you.

Water Gardening

If you want to garden with minimal supervision and love water organisms, then water gardening is for you. This is a bit of a challenge for most gardeners because it usually doesn’t involve the initial conditions of other traditional gardening techniques. The novelty of water gardening appeals only to those who have ample water facilities to cultivate this type of gardening style.

Community Gardening

If you are motivated by group efforts, community gardening may be for you. It involves concentrated efforts of the different members of the community to be able to help make a greener place. It involves a huge scope, but the members of the community are given autonomy to style their areas in whichever way they choose.

Tips For Organic Vegetable Gardening

Organic vegetable gardening is easy. But to help you, here are some tips you should know.

The most important thing to do is to decide what you want to grow. There are so many vegetables to choose from but keep in mind that certain vegetables cannot be grown because of the climate so take that into consideration as well.

So you want have a hard time taking care of it, choose those that are well adapted to the soil, temperature, sun and shade exposure.

If you live in an area where droughts are frequent, make sure you are planting drought resistant vegetables since it does not eat up that much water and can withstand dry weather.

You should determine how much space you have. This will make it easy for you to plot on a sheet of paper the layout of how you want your vegetables to grow.

You should mulch your vegetables with organic material. This can be made from food waste, dead leaves or grass and manure. This helps conserve water, adds humus and nutrients as well as discourage weeds from growing.

The best part is that you don’t have to dig deep to put these in because 85% of the vegetable’s roots are found in the top 6 inches of soil.

Aside from compost, you can also use natural fertilizers and organic material to help the vegetables grow. They also encourage native earthworms that are nature’s tillers and soil conditioners.

The biggest threat that could destroy your vegetables are pests. To get rid of them, you should use other insects, birds, frogs. If your crops though have been infected, spray infected stems and leaves with dilute soapy water and then clear water that is very effective.

If you decide to buy vegetables that are grown instead of using seedlings, most of these come in plastic containers. Be careful when you remove them so you avoid tearing the outside roots especially if these have grown solidly inside the container.

When planting vegetables, don’t stick with just one but plant many different kinds because this invites insects to take up resident in your yard.

Believe it or not, only 2 percent of the insects in the world are harmful. This means the rest are beneficial. Some examples of these include ladybugs, fireflies, green lacewings, praying mantis, spiders and wasps since they eat insects that try to eat your vegetables. Another thing they do is pollinate the plants and decompose organic matter.

Don’t forget to remove weeds that come out in your garden. You can pull these out by hand or spot spray it with a full strength of household vinegar. Best of all, it is safe for the environment.

Practice crop rotation. This will make sure that the soil is always fertile. When planting the new vegetable, avoid regular deep cultivation as this will damage the roots, dry out the soil, disturb healthy soil organisms and bring weeds to the surface that will soon germinate.

If you follow these tips, you will surely be able to have a successful organic vegetable garden. You can plant and harvest them all year round so you don’t have to buy these goods anymore from the supermarket. That is assuming of course you have a huge parcel of land to work with.