Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Where to Get Flowers For Your Garden

You can order seeds for flower gardening from catalogs or buy them from a nursery. Most people will go to the nursery and buy actual flowers and then transplant them. After you have prepared your garden area and bought flowers, it is a good idea to lay the flowers out in the bed to make sure you like the arrangement and that they will be spaced properly.

One of the easiest processes in how to grow flowers is the planting. If you have seeds just sprinkle them around in the flower bed. For planting transplants dig a hole just bigger than the flower, pull the container off, and set the flower in the hole right side up. Cover it with the loose soil and press down firmly, then water.
     
Maintaining a flower garden is even easier than planting one. Although they might make it on their own, a bag of fertilizer applied in the early spring is a good idea. Pinch back any blooms after they start to fade and keep them good and watered. To save yourself work during the next season of flower gardening, rid your garden of all debris and spread out organic nutrients like peat moss or compost. Don't forget to turn over the soil to properly mix in the fertilizer and rake smooth when finished. If you have perennials planted be careful not to disturb their roots in this process.
     
How to grow flowers is as easy as 1, 2, and 3: simply decide what to plant; plant it, and water, water, water!  Flower gardening is undoubtedly gaining in popularity and gives anyone excellent reason to spend some outdoors and test out their green thumb.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

How Butterflies Drink and Eat: What You Need to Know


Just like you drink through a straw, a butterfly drinks through its proboscis – which is like an in-built straw. A butterfly doesn’t have a visible, exterior mouth. So it cannot chew its food. Hence it must drink its food.

A caterpillar has a visible, exterior mouth and it chews on its food – the leaves. But once the caterpillar goes into its cocoon and emerges as a butterfly it loses its mouth and in its place is the proboscis – a long, tubular straw-like extension shaped like an antenna. When it’s not feeding, the proboscis is coiled inward.

Flowers position their pollen at their neck and at the tip of their petals. A butterfly searching for nectar first lands on the flower and tastes the nectar with its feet. Then it swings around and extends its proboscis down the tube to drink. The pollen sticks to the feet and the throat of the butterfly. When the same butterfly visits another flower, pollination takes place.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Landscaping Plants: Grow Flowers

Flower gardening is becoming more and more popular every day. Flowers can brighten everyone's day, they smell nice, and are a great hobby. Flower gardening is simple, inexpensive, and loads of fun. How to grow flowers is a skill every gardener should know. Flower gardening can be done for yard decoration, simply as a hobby, or even professionally.

There are some decisions that have to be made before even flower gardening can be started. You must decide if you want annuals that live for one season and must be replanted every year, or perennials that survive the winter and return again in the summer. When buying and planting, pay attention to what kind of flowers thrive in your climate as well as the sun requirements.

When flower gardening, you must decide what type of look you want before planting. For instance, mixing different heights, colors, and varieties of flowers together in a "wild-plant style" will give your garden a meadow look and can be very charming. If short flowers are planted in the front of your garden and work up to the tallest flowers in the back you will have a "stepping stone style".

You can order seeds for flower gardening from catalogues or buy them from a nursery. Most people will go to the nursery and buy actual flowers and then transplant them. After you have prepared your garden area and bought flowers, it is a good idea to lay the flowers out in the bed to make sure you like the arrangement and that they will be spaced properly.

One of the easiest processes in how to grow flowers is the planting. If you have seeds just sprinkle them around in the flower bed. For planting transplants dig a hole just bigger than the flower, pull the container off, and set the flower in the hole right side up. Cover it with the loose soil and press down firmly, then water.
     
Maintaining a flower garden is even easier than planting one. Although they might make it on their own, a bag of fertilizer applied in the early spring is a good idea. Pinch back any blooms after they start to fade and keep them good and watered. To save yourself work during the next season of flower gardening, rid your garden of all debris and spread out organic nutrients like peat moss or compost. Don't forget to turn over the soil to properly mix in the fertilizer and rake smooth when finished. If you have perennials planted be careful not to disturb their roots in this process.
     
How to grow flowers is as easy as 1, 2, and 3: simply decide what to plant; plant it, and water, water, water!  Flower gardening is undoubtedly gaining in popularity and gives anyone excellent reason to spend some outdoors and test out their green thumb.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

More Trees That Bloom White in Winter

Viburnum 'Dawn' has flowers that are deep pink in bud, open in light pink and fade to white.  The fragrant white flowers appear from November through March. This is a small tree only growing to ten feet.
Japanese Pieris has white clusters of scented flowers at the tips of the branches.  It's evergreen and grows to twelve feet tall in rich well drained soil and full sun.

Pussy Willows grow to 25 feet with silvery white fuzzy blooms along the branches in late winter. Since it grows naturally in swampy areas pussy willow is well suited to boggy spots in the garden.  Sever pruning is necessary to keep it under control.

Winter Honeysuckle also known as "breath of spring," is smothered in white blossoms with a lemon fragrance.  Winter honeysuckle grows to ten feet in well drained soil in full sun.

Camelias bloom in temperate areas in late winter.  The shrub grows to small tree size.  The flowers are three inches wide and unscented but are very showy. 

Brighten up your winter landscape by planting a few trees that bloom in winter in the coming spring time.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Trees That Bloom White Flowers in the Winter

Most trees take the winter off with bare branches and not a leaf in sight never mind flowers.  Winter blooming trees may be cold sensitive and their flowers curl up tightly in a bud when it's too cold.  Some trees bloom in winter to take advantage of less competition for pollinators.  There aren't many that bloom in white or in the winter.  Here are a selected few.

Loquat produces orange fruit from white flowers that bloom between December and the end of February.  The clusters of creamy white flowers are nestled against the dark green large evergreen leaves.  Clusters contain between 30 to 100 blossoms.  The tree will eventually reach 30 feet tall.  The fruit is oval shaped and between one to two inches long.  The taste is sweet and tart. The loquat was thought to originally be imported from Japan and China

Witchhazel grows to 15 feet tall and has flowers with long slender petals in off white, red or yellow.  It blossoms in January to about the middle of February.  Most varieties are fragrant, but not all.  Check if the variety you're considered is scented if that's what you want.  It's not unusual to see the blossoms curled up and frozen under ice and then stretch out their petals after a thaw.