It is that time of year again, summer time. This is the time that makes gardening aoxide a bit more enjoyable as those 3 top gardening tips. Why? Simple, the weather is warming up and people are antsy to get outside working in the yard or garden.
Here are those gardening tips for this week:
1. You should plant a rainy plant
I know that sounds pretty darn backwards. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about it is advice for planting a beautiful rain plant. Rain gardens are beautiful, relaxing spots filled with beautiful birds and butterflies. They attract the wild birds need and the birds bring the butterflies flowers also.
Basically you take a bucket of water, clean it up, find some twigs, bushes, roots or whatever you want to grow and put it in the rain. The debris at the bottom of the bucket acts as fertilizer for your plants and the debris at the top acts as a filter so the water keeps flowing down to the plants roots.
2. You must find the right soil for your garden
The soil is where your plants will take their nutrients. This is why it is so important to find the right type of soil for your garden.
You want a soft yet packed soil that will contain some type of gravel or stone. This will let water be retained within the dirt much like a sponge. However, you also want dirt that will allow air to flow through the dirt and this is achieved with loam.
Once you know what type of soil you have you’ll want to fill it with some type of organic matter. This can either be home-made compost or manure. This will act as the fertilizer for your plants and will ensure that they receive everything they need in the right ratios.
For example, if you want a 20% Peat Moss Mix and 80% Perlite Soil, that is where you should place your garden. You’ll want to mix these two mixes together about six to eight inches deep. Then you should place about one inch of topsoil over top of the dirt pack.
Since the Perlite is porous, you’ll want to make sure that the soil is not too tight. If you are able to dig a hole about six inches wide and six inches deep you should be able to bury most of the potting soil paying attention to the top couple of inches.
The last two gardening tips for this article are simply to mulch and fertilize.
Mulch:
This is the easiest of the three to put in and easiest to take care of. I recommend burying all supplies in the center of the mulch so that they break down quickly. If you have supply sulfur, add it to the mulch. If not, you can use wood chips, pine needles or ground-up newsprint.
Fertilizer:
One thing that many beginning gardeners do is to set-up their own fertilizer system. I recommend against this, however. whenever possible, I like to use organic solutions. Sure, they will get the job done slower than Miracle-Gro-type “weed-inators” but it comes to little hassle for me vs. chemical fertilizer.
As for the landscaping of the beds themselves, less is definitely more. It is possible to use large plastic bricks to create raised garden beds. Bricks set right against each other will keep weeds away. The problem is that the bricks will most likely be the cause of some future soil erosion problems as the soil tries to conform to the bricks and the bricks keep the soil out of the ground.
Small rocks can create interesting designs and can be used to break up a large clumpy looking block of soil. aggregate materials such as broken up tree branches, small rocks and branches from bushes can be mixed with loam to serve the same purpose.
Bagna gardening is my favorite. Most of the time we don’t have to remove and haul large amounts of soil.cium, magnesium, and phosphorous deficiencies can be solved by adding lime. Gypsum is the best product for calcium deficiency problems and one teaspoon of it will give you 20 percent of what other products such as dolomitic lime require.
Most of the nutrients that plants need can be found in the limestone. So making sure you have plenty of it is a good idea.
For people that don’t garden, it is easy to have a garden. By mixing a few of the above basics in your soil, you will be well on your way to growing a healthy garden capable of supporting the plants you choose to grow.
