This is part 1 of 2 regarding vegetable garden care. If we don't take care of our vegetables they won't take care of us in a healthy way. This section I will be discussing weeding and watering, the following article, titled Vegetable Gardening Care will be about mulching and a few tips for vegetable garden care.
Weeds. The soil that has been enriched and improved by your careful tending, of plenty of water and sun, will help the vegetables that you have planted thrive even better if the weeds are eliminated. Those weeds are competing with your vegetables for the available nutrients and will grow crazy in your well cultivated soil. If the weeds are allowed to grow undisturbed from the very beginning, you could possibly injure the roots of your vegetables when you pull them up later.
Vegetable seeds or seedlings, that is the question. Some vegetables, including our root crops, must be planted directly into the ground as seeds. Others can be started in small pots or flats that can be set in the garden at a later date as plant seedlings. Once we have looked at the options we can decide if we want to plant vegetable seeds or seedlings.
In the spring our garden nurseries and most garden centers have an overflow of flats, usually with six or eight plants, and single pots of a variety of vegetables for planting. These commercially grown plants are very convenient. They save us a lot of time and eliminate the risky effort of starting seeds indoors. For those who don't have a greenhouse or a sunny window space, they are essential.
In order to get the maximum yield out of our vegetable garden we need to take a few things into consideration: size, harvest time, sunshine, interplanting, perennials, yields and times for planting. I am listing the considerations below; after all you want the best maximum yield vegetable garden in your neighborhood.
Size
Each individual vegetable needs a certain amount of space in order to grow well. Don't crowd plants into a smaller space than they need. Radishes on the other hand need very little room. Squashes and melons have a tendency to sprawl for yards in every which direction. Corn will grow tall, as will asparagus and pole beans. The height on these plants might make it necessary to plant them in a place where they won't shade other plants. Brussels sprouts and cabbage need plenty of room as they grow to a bulky size.
Chrysanthemums, which some of you know, are native to China but they are also revered by the Japanese. They are probably considered as one of the most popular plants in temperate climate zones around the globe. They are beyond compare in the garden for their late-summer and fall blossoms. Most chrysanthemums will flower anywhere from three to eight weeks with the flowers ranging from small buttons to extensive globes that can measure up to 8 or more inches across.
They are not only beautiful in the garden, but hobbyists delight in chrysanthemums because they can be grown not only outdoors but also in the greenhouse. There are some hybridists that have developed many varieties that can be induced to bloom at any time, particularly in the greenhouse. These varieties can vary tremendously from their common ancestors. There are many greenhouse gardeners that grow mums specifically to enter in flower shows.
I am sure we have all thought about purchasing garden furniture for our patios, decks and gardens. There are so many different styles and materials that it is sometimes hard to choose. I think most of us want our garden furniture to last for a number of years, particularly if we use them on a daily basis.
The construction of garden furniture can be made of different materials. We can mix and match garden furniture depending on our garden or several smaller gardens within our yard. The range can go from plastic to Reforest Teak, it all depends on our garden design. Our budget and the amount of time we will be spending in our gardens, whether gardening or just relaxing, has a lot to do with how we choose our materials. I am giving you a few of the different materials used when making outdoor furniture below:
Garden tools are an important necessity for any type of gardening. We have tools for composting, digging, container gardening, vegetable gardening, and flower gardening, most of which are interchangeable. For instance you can use a digging tool for vegetable or flower gardening and a composting tool for digging. It is not necessary to purchase identical tools for all your different garden areas, some of the same garden tools will work quite well in many different areas.
Composting is a combination of yard, garden and landscape scraps; which is considered as the brown waste, and kitchen scraps; considered as green waste. Composting is the end result of a feeding pattern which includes hundreds of different organism, such as bacteria, fungi, worms and insects. In order to keep this process going there are a few things we need to do. One of the garden tools that is needed is called a turning post or turning tool and it is mainly for aerating the compost pile, which is an important step.
From the first snowdrop in spring to the last fall-flowering crocus, bulbs, corms and tubers provide color throughout the year, and most need little attention. The wide range of bulbs, corms and tubers available from catalogs, garden centers and online is a great aid to a colorful garden.
In this article, the group as a whole will be referred to as bulbs or bulbous plants, unless it is necessary to identify the plants specifically as corms or tubers.
The vivid displays produced by rhododendrons and azaleas can last from spring into summer. There are plants to fit any size garden, but the soil must be right. The value of this group of plants for the home landscape can hardly be overestimated. Ranging from matlike dwarf shrubs only a few inches high to trees more than 40 feet tall, rhododendrons and azaleas offer a remarkable variety of sizes and shapes.
Most rhododendrons have magnificent foliage, and the flowers of many varieties are among the most beautiful in the world of shrubs. The flowers' colors are white, lavender, violet, purple, pink, crimson, scarlet, orange and yellow. Their shapes are tubular, starry, funnel- or bowl-shaped, and bell-like, varying in size from 3/4 to 6 inches wide and from 3/4 to 4 inches long. The flowers are usually produced in rounded trusses with as many as 15 individual blossoms on each one.
Growing shrubs in containers sounds very strange doesn't it? Many of the most decorative shrubs can be grown in large pots or tubs to adorn your patio or deck. The fact that the roots are restricted may actually improve flowering. Not all shrubs respond well to container culture, however; the magnolia and large forms of daphne, for example, do not. In general avoid planting shrubs in containers that have thick, fleshy roots.
Some shrubs that grow particularly well in containers include the barberry, bluebeard, camellia, clematis, forsythia, honeysuckle, jasmine, lilac, passionflower, and wisteria, just to name a few. For example, a shrub expected to grow 4-5 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide will need a tub at least 2 1/2 feet wide by 1 1/2 feet deep.
Composting at home is a means of returning to the soil as humus a great amount of organic material that would otherwise be thrown away. The best way to make a compost pile is to sandwich vegetable matter between layers of nitrogen-enriched soil. Composting at home is simple and easy to do; we just have to remember to do it.
Given adequate air and water, a well made compost pile will reduce such potential garbage as leaves, lawn clippings, raw kitchen wastes, coffee grounds, even vacuum-cleaner lint, sawdust and well-soaked newspaper to usable humus in a matter of months. There are limits however.
A Greenhouse garden gives a gardener more time to spend cultivating his garden without the perils of nature. Even a small greenhouse affords many new possibilities, from early vegetables to orchids. Available automatic equipment can give complete control of the environment. Growing vegetables in winter, in the cold and frigid areas, is a popular trend for a greenhouse garden.
In a greenhouse, a gardener can raise plants that would suffer from cold, heavy rain, wind, and disease if they were grown in the open. For cold-climate gardeners there is the enjoyment of having plants in full bloom in the dead of winter when the outside landscape is covered with a blanket of snow.
Many of us enjoy attracting butterflies to our gardens. If all we ever do during the day is plant, weed, and deadhead and only have time to sit in the garden in the evening, we are missing something. It is the butterflies, they are most active during the day when the sun is out and the weather is warm. Attracting butterflies means we need to plant the right plants in our garden so more and more come around.
A wonderful place to plant a butterfly garden would be next to your deck or patio so you can watch them come in and enjoy the plants. While attracting these beautiful little insects, you just might see a hummingbird or two coming to see what is available. With the following plants in your garden; Anise hyssop, Verbena, Tall sedum, Butterfly weed and Butterfly bush, it will reach its peak in midsummer. This is when you will see the most butterflies.
Growing tomatoes can be a lot of fun, whether in the ground or in pots. There are so many varieties of tomato to choice from that it can be hard to pick. We have many shapes, sizes and even colors. Some shapes are round, oval, and pear, the sizes run from quite small to somewhat large. The colors go on and on beyond the usual red, such as orange, yellow, purple and even striped. When growing tomatoes we need to consider what our family likes and what they are willing to try that is different.
All the varieties of tomatoes are usually divided into two broad groups; early and main season. The early tomato plants usually grow to a certain size, produce a crop, and then die. The main season varieties are almost always indeterminate: they will continue to grow and bear fruit indefinitely, until the frost kills them. In order for the main season variety to continue to grow properly we need to stake them or provide them with a tomato cage or ladder. If we allow them to grow and travel on the ground they will be prone to more diseases.
Our lawns are a perfect setting for a home. They provide a pleasing background for decorative plants and a great place for relaxing and having fun activities. Our lawns not only beautify an open space, they freshen the air, reduce the temperatures in the summer and protect or insulate the ground in the winter.
In exceptionally hot weather lawns can be as much as 50 degrees cooler than imitation grass or paving. Tall grass is cooler than short grass and short grass is cooler than a simple bare ground.
Have you ever thought about purchasing Reforest Teak furniture? It is teak that is grown in Costa Rica and other parts of Central America, which is actually from re-foresting, not de-foresting. It is land that once was cleared of all trees in order for cattle to graze in. The land eventually was unable to retain water during the dry season which caused soil erosion during the wet season. All that has changed with planting a new forest, as a result, a new product has been born, Reforest Teak furniture.
Our forests are complex ecosystems that nearly cover 30% of the earth's surface. They are the centers for biodiversity and shelter more than two-thirds of all plant and animal species. They also protect watersheds with the filtering of excess nutrients from the soil and purify the precious air that we breathe.
