Growing a fantastic garden is not as difficult as many people think, as long as you know what to do. With the correct knowledge, anyone can be an expert gardener. This article will introduce you to gardening tips that can help you become a master gardener.
Take the proper approach to laying sod. You want to prepare the soil before you lay down the sod. Remove weeds and break your soil until all the clumps are gone. Compress the soil lightly yet firmly, and make certain it’s flat. Now make sure the soil is thoroughly dampened. The optimum layout of sod rows is to stagger them with offset joints. You want the sod to end up as a flat and even surface. If there are any gaps in between the sod pieces, then you can fill these in with some soil. Water the sod every day for a couple of weeks. Then it should be rooted well and ready for foot traffic.
Trying to shovel through clay soil can be extremely difficult and tiresome. Get better results in clay by rubbing car wax or floor wax onto the shovel, then buff off and dig. The wax prevents the clay from sticking to the shovel, and stops rust from forming.
Slug-proof your garden with smart perennial choices. Slugs and snails are voracious eaters that can destroy a plant literally overnight. Young plants with susceptible leaves are favorite meals for slugs, including those with smoother or thinner leaves. Perennials with hairy leaves or bitter taste are unattractive to snails and slugs, keeping them safe from harm. Excellent varieties include heuchera, achillea, euphorbia, campanula, and helleborus.
When you go to mow your lawn, make sure you don’t mow it too closely to the ground. If you leave a bit more height, the grass roots will get deeper, making your lawn stronger. The shorter the grass, the shallower the roots, which makes the lawn more likely to develop brown patches.
Vegetables should be placed in a spot in your garden that will get about six hours of sun every day. Most vegetables need that much sun to grow rapidly and successfully. Some flowers also require direct sunlight for a portion of each day.
To help young plants, try pouring boiling water on top of nearby weeds. This is a safe way to eliminate weeds, as this will not damage the soil. All you need to do is apply boiling water right to the weeds you want to get rid of. Be careful not to get any on the plants you want to keep. The water will kill the weeds by destroying the roots and if poured directly on the weeds, will prevent them from growing back.
Do you enjoy fresh mint leaves though hate how they grow so fast and take over your entire garden? You can slow their growth rate by planting them in a garden container or large pot instead. By using a separate containment unit, you are limiting the plant’s ability to spread its roots and subsequently grow like wildfire. You can even plant the entire pot so that it still looks just like another plant in your garden.
Spectrum Pesticides
Avoid using broad-spectrum pesticides in your garden. Broad-spectrum pesticides not only kill pests, but also “good” bugs like ground beetles that eat pests. The helpful insects in your garden can be highly sensitive to pesticides and if their population goes down, the harmful insect population will grow. This can cause you to use an additional amount of pesticides in order to attempt to fix this problem.
As was mentioned previously, all you really need is a bit of understanding the basics to see that horticulture is not as hard as it seems. When you have the correct information, horticulture can be both easy and fun. The tips we have provided are a great place to start on your path to becoming an expert gardener.
Originally posted 2013-11-23 03:23:20.
