3 Gardening Tips for You

Garden advice is not that difficult to come by. In fact, you can receive gardening help from another gardener, a gardening TV show, gardening books, gardening magazines, and on the Internet. Although each plant is different, there is some gardening advice that applies to any plant.

For example, the gardening advice offered for planting is pretty much the same. Plants must be placed where there is room to grow so they do not crowd each other. Good air circulation is a plus, and plants must be grown where they will receive adequate amounts of sunlight. Good advice will encourage you to add various types of nutrients to the garden soil, such as mulch or compost, to lead to optimum plant growth.

Gardening help on watering plants is more varied. Each type of plant needs different amounts of water. For example, you would not water a cactus nearly as much as you water a pepper plant. How much you water obviously depends on where you are located, the climate, and how much rain your area gets.

Gardening advice tells you that your plants fertilize when you first plant them, but also need to be fertilized throughout their growing cycle. What type of plant food used will depend on the soil type and pH balance. Nearly all plants could use regular feedings. Compost can be used instead and it's not difficult to find instructions on how to make a compost pile as well as when the compost is ready to use.

Tips and Tricks for a Calming Water Garden

There are many new trends surfacing in gardening, and water gardening is one of the main new interests. Water gardening can be in the form of waterfalls, ponds, fountains, all of which can be enhanced by rock work combinations and lighting, plants, and fish. Water gardening doesn’t have to be a pond or natural water source either. It can consist of just a plastic tub, basically anything that can hold water.

The most important thing to consider in water gardening is probably the spot chosen. Since plants and fish both need plenty of sunlight, places in direct light away from trees and bushes is the best place. This will also help prevent leaves and debris from collecting in the water.

When planning for a water garden first decide the size you want. This will depend on how much money you are willing to spend because water gardening can get expensive if you opt for a large garden full of plants, rocks, fish, and lights. Also consider the size of our property, and the amount of time you want to spend with maintaining your water garden. 

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Gifts for the Gardener

Nearly every gardener has some type of gardening equipment.  In fact, it’s nearly impossible to have a garden without used gardening equipment.  What kind of gardening equipment you use will obviously depend on the size and extent of your garden, what you are able to handle, if you want to spend a lot of time in your garden or get done quickly, and finally, how much money you are willing to spend.

While many gardeners do not have expensive or high-tech gardening tools, all of them have some type of gardening equipment for cultivating.  Tools for cultivating can include both hand held tools and power tools.  What kind you buy depends on how serious of a gardener you are.  Hand tools include your everyday items like shovels, spading forks, rakes, trowels, and diggers.  These can all be used to get a garden ready for planting and are relatively easy and do not require much strength to use.  Other tools include a wheel cultivator, pickax, and mattock.

While power tools are a little more expensive than hand tools, they really cut down on the hard labor.  The most essential piece of gardening equipment is undoubtedly the tiller.  The tiller will break up the ground and get it ready for planting, chop up any debris, and help mix in fertilizer and compost.  If you don’t want to spend the money on a tiller you can hire someone or rent a tiller for one time use.  Other power tools that are very popular include chippers, garden shredders, and chain-saws.

If you have shrubs, hedges, or small trees in your yard, pruning tools are a vital piece of gardening equipment.  Pruning shears are good for branches about ¾” in diameter, while lopping shears can handle branches from a half inch up to about 2 inches.  Pole pruners are on a pole and can reach branches about 15 feet above ground.  Hedge shears and pruning saws are both larger, more heavy duty pruning tools for the serious gardener.

Since your plants must be watered in order to survive, and lets face it, it doesn’t rain whenever we want it to, gardening equipment for watering is a must have.  The one thing you can’t get along without is a water hose, everything after that is optional.  Many gardeners use sprinklers or s drip irrigation hose.  There are even timers you can purchase for sprinklers or drip hoses, if you are willing to drop the extra cash. 

Gardening without gardening equipment would be a nightmare.  Sure there are some people who enjoy getting a little dirty while they plant their flowers, but even those types of people have the most basic of gardening tools, like a rake or a hoe.  Gardening equipment is a part of gardening, as important as the dirt and the seeds.

More on Butterfly Gardens

FLOWERS' PASSAGEWAY TO THEIR NECTAR

Butterflies with short proboscises chose plants with short passageways to their nectaries’, such as lantana, phlox and verbena flowers. Whereas, skippers and swallowtail butterflies stretch their long proboscises down the long tubes of Beardtongue flowers to sip nectar. (Even hummingbirds with their long beaks like the nectar of these flowers).

FLOWER SHAPE

Generally, butterflies prefer plants that have lots of flowers clustered in a flat-top. Firstly, this ensures a ‘splash’ of color, drawing the butterfly to it. Secondly, with flat-topped cluster flowers, butterflies are assured of a good fill.

PETAL SIZE

Butterflies like flowers with large petals -- it's easier to land on them. Which means, they do not have to hang precariously, flapping their wings (something the hummingbird does so energetically) to drink the nectar. And as mentioned above, this helps the flower too in pollination.

A number of flowers are just for butterflies. The nectar of such flowers is at the base of tubes that are too narrow for other bugs to use.

Some butterflies are attracted by plants of some colors and even seem to avoid plants of other colors. The Silver Spotted Skipper likes lots of colors -- red, pink, blue, purple, white – but not yellow flowers. Sulphur Butterflies, on the other hand, prefer yellow flowers.

There are about 24, 000 species of butterflies. Every one of them is different in looks, tastes, colors, shapes. How many can you attract to your garden?

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.

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.

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.