Picking a Healthy Plant

Posted on January 8th, 2008 by by Keisei

When it comes to getting started with your garden, you have two choices; planting seeds, or buying entire plants. Both have their own benefits. If you plant seeds and care for them every day, you will find it is a much more rewarding experience when you have a full, healthy plant. However, this method is a lot more risky. I can’t tell you how many seeds I’ve planted and never seen any trace of whatsoever.

If you choose to buy the plant from a nursery and install it in your garden, it reduces a lot of the work involved in making it healthy. However, I have found in the past that many incompetent nursery workers will absolutely ruin the future of the plant by putting certain chemicals or fertilizers in. I have adapted to this incompetence by learning to choose the healthiest plant of the bunch. Here I will discuss some of the techniques I use in my screening process for plants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Other Factors in Garden Creation

Posted on January 1st, 2008 by by Keisei

dscn3772.jpgSo now you’ve picked out what type of garden you will have, what the location will be, and what kind of fertilizer you need, now is the time to really get started in choosing your garden environment. First you’ll want to choose what your garden barriers will be. What will separate your garden from the rest of the world? Next you’ll want to choose the decorations and support for your plants. Often some kind of metal mesh is necessary to keep your plant standing up. You will also want to choose how much soil and fertilizer to buy, and how to arrange all the plants in your garden.

Choosing a border is actually a fairly important step in getting your garden started. It might not actually affect the well-being of the plants, but having a garden is a fairly aesthetic ordeal for many people anyways. So usually you will want to choose between metal and wood. You can stack up boards around the perimeter of your garden, and give it a rather nice cabin look. If you’re looking for a more modern look, you can obtain some metal lining at your local home improvement store for rather cheap, and installation is medium difficulty.

Read the rest of this entry »

Optimizing Your Garden for Drought or Water Conservation

Posted on December 25th, 2007 by by Keisei

Living in Colorado and being a gardener has been rather stressful in the past few years, as this state has been undergoing a rather severe drought. The city is imposing watering restrictions which are not giving enough water to lawns and plants. I’ve had to renovate my garden to make it more water efficient. Now, because of the techniques I’ve employed, I’m the only one in my neighborhood with a garden that isn’t completely brown. So if you live in an area that is going through a drought or if you just want to save water, I suggest you use some of these techniques as well.

First, I took out all my plants. The soil I was using didn’t retain water very well, so I had to water about twice as much as necessary in order to get it to actually absorb into the roots. If you have this same problem, you can fix it by loading the soil up with lots of compost. This not only prevents water from escaping, but encourages the plant’s roots to be healthy and able to survive more.

Read the rest of this entry »

My First Gardening Experience

Posted on December 18th, 2007 by by Keisei

summer_squash_72.jpgAh, to this day I still remember my first gardening experience. It was such a disaster that I didn’t think I would ever want to garden again. I almost decided to turn my casual hobby into the most rage-inducing topic you could possibly bring up to me.

It all started a few weeks after I moved in to my first house. I was excited just to have my own grass to mow, since I had been in apartments and condos for quite a while. In between plans to paint walls and renovate the inside to exactly how I like, I thought it would be a good idea to start a fruit garden so that I could have some fresh produce and put my yard to use. At that point I didn’t really know anything at all about gardening. But still in my spunky youthful years, I decided I didn’t need help. How hard could it be to start a garden and grow stuff? After all, it happens in nature all the time and nobody even has to do anything.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gardening with Tools

Posted on December 11th, 2007 by by Keisei

When gardening, you need to use the right tools in order to make your garden grow. The more tools you use the quicker and easier your fruits, vegetables, and flowers are to
grow.

Gardening takes a lot of time and effort to make a garden grow to its maximum potential. It takes a lot of time and dedication to grow a seed into a plant that produces flowers or vegetables.

There needs to be caution taken when determining where you want to start your garden. You will also need to consider the depth of the soil that each plant will need. Read the rest of this entry »