gardening tips for home

 how to start a flower garden for beginners

Plan before you plant.

Know what grows in your zone

Have the pH of your soil tested so you know what it needs.

Put hardscape in first, then prepare your soil with amendments, then plant the next year. Do weed abatement with cardboard over the winter.

Start a compost pile.

The spring makes everyone garden crazy. Especially first-time homeowners who have no knowledge about native plants. Annuals or perennials. Bulbs or herbs. Vegetable gardens or flower gardens. How big trees grow or what the light is like during the year. How time-consuming a garden is to be beautiful. I spend at least a half-hour a day in my garden with a hoop hoe, weeding.

Spend the year planning for next year, reading about your area, and deciding what type of garden you want to grow. Keep a journal and take pictures of your future garden all year so you’ll learn about the shadows and sun.

Gardening Tips And Tricks 

If you must do something. Buy annual seeds and scatter them. Buy plants at Home Depot and put them in. Then prepare for next years garden by learning about your yard

first 2 years First two years you must more depend upon the soil wet watering new plants, so they can establish a good root system.

Give Labels

All plants give labels, whether they are intended to be there a lifetime or just a vegetable for one season. You can write down the name and variety on paper then laminate the paper or write it in indelible ink on a piece of plastic. Lee Valley has some metal tags that you can write names on and then tie to trees. This comes in handy when you have 28 varieties of apple trees like I do, and you’re trying to remember which is which or when someone comes over and asks you, “what kind of plant is that?” Don’t ask me how I know this.

When you plant annuals, if you put a little alyssum in each pot, you will cut down on aphids because alyssum attracts the bugs that eat aphids.

With some care, you can over-winter geraniums in a cool basement and have the same plants every year.

If you weed your beds a little at a time all year round, you’ll never be overrun with weeds.

You’ll get more tomatoes if you start your plants indoors and get them going before it’s warm enough to have them outside.

Poppies will reseed themselves and act like perennials. However, poppies don’t like to be moved, so plant them where you want them, forever.

Wisteria is gorgeous and very hardy. However, note that it can take 7+ years to flower the first time, and it grows into a very strong thick vine that can tear structures down, so be careful where you plant it.

If you want to try to grow roses, if you prune them down severely, you will get fewer but larger blooms. If you prune them lightly, you get more but smaller blooms.

Used (freshwater) aquarium water is great for watering indoor plants.

An inexpensive way to keep a shrub or small tree warm if it’s in a colder zone than it likes is to wrap Christmas lights around it and keep them lit.

Most gardeners are happy to give you free cuttings or tubers/bulbs/rhizomes when they divide stuff (like irises). Look for a gardening exchange group on Facebook or on Craigslist.

Vinca is a great ground cover for shady areas. It is resilient and perennial.

Join a local horticultural group. They are generous folks, and you’ll wind up with tons of plants and tons of tips to go with them.

Edit: One more thing: invest in a couple of bags of plastic zip ties and a few yards of burlap. You’ll use this stuff to tie trees to stakes, vines to fences, and prop up top-heavy flowers that your dog mowed down like irises.

By

Peoples Gardening