Gardening Class Tips and Trick

Outdoor lighting is not just a front porch light anymore. Many lighting vendors are making every type of light you can think of, rated for a damp and even a wet location, for the exterior of your home. You are now able to get absolutely, stunning outdoor chandeliers and or pendants rated for outdoor lighting for your exterior living area, porch or patio, along with table and floor lamps, yes; I said TABLE and FLOOR LAMPS. Table and floor lamps are now available UL rated as outdoor lighting for the exterior of your home, listed for damp and even wet locations. All these types fixtures come in many styles Traditional, Arts and Crafts, Coach Style, Tuscan, Tropical and Old World Style, this just names a few. Picture this for a small deck or back patio setting, a still hot august night, and a couple of wooden chase lounges with beautiful thick red cushion. In between the lounges, a wicker glass top cocktail table behind the cocktail table there is a floor lamp rated for outdoor lighting, m

The Japanese Maple Bonsai is the most frequently used maple for the indoor and outdoor bonsai garden. There are several reasons why this is considered the perfect maple for a bonsai garden. The Japanese Maple Bonsai features delicate, ferny type leaves, which change to brilliant orange, gold, and red during the fall. Giving the tree the correct care is important. This type of tree will have to be placed in a semi shady area during the summer, but will need full sunlight during the remainder of the season. It is also vital that it be placed in an area where it will be sheltered from the wind. The Japanese Maple Bonsai Tree should be pruned during the spring, cutting the unwanted shoots. Pruning is one of the most significant aspects of successfully growing the bonsai tree. It is by pruning, that you will create the illusion of a miniature tree, so keeping up on this will be necessary, but only prune in the spring. Repotting and fertilizing is also important to successfully growing the J

A bird box makes a delightful addition to any garden and will be more than welcomed by our feathered friends. When deciding what type of bird box to put in your garden there are some things you need to consider. Choose a bird box that is made from an insulating material such as wood, coir or terracotta or a special waterproof wood and concrete compound like WoodcretePLUS. A nest box that is made from a hardwood like cedar, oak or beech will last a lot longer than one made from a softwood like pine. The wood should be between 15 and 20 mm thick. Treat the outside of the box with a non-toxic, water-based preservative. A box made from thin wood, plywood, corrugated cardboard, plastic or solid ceramic is unlikely to be as successful. Boxes made from dense materials such as ceramic can be dangerous as they can get too hot or too cold for the chicks to survive. There should be drainage holes at the bottom of the box and ventilation holes to ensure a fresh supply of air. If you live near wood

In this article about garden design, we will discuss why this matter is so important and how you can derive advantage from this descriptive information. For those of us who love to garden, garden design is a subject near and dear to our hearts. When the winter months deprive you of the chance to roll up your sleeves and dig some dirt or tend the flowers, nothing can stop you from poring through the seed and plant catalogs, dreaming of spring. Plans to put in a cutting bed or create a mini-field of perennial wildflowers dance in your head like sugarplums, full of fun and promise. Without a cohesive plan for your planting adventures, you may end up with a garden design that's not as pleasing as you'd like. Winter is a great time to work on sprucing up your existing garden and fine-tuning an overall design. After all, what else is there to do? The fun part of designing a garden is constructing your wishlist of plants, from shrubs to vegetables - and beyond, of course! Remember, yo

Feng Shui is the art of arranging the things around your personal space in such a way that the energy flow it creates is beneficial to our home and family. This also means paying attention to the chi that is created by the landscape around us. This article discusses about how to create a meandering chi in the landscape around our home. As a rule of thumb it is considered to be significant if the landscape to the left of our home (from inside facing out) is elevated than the land to the right of our home. Similarly it is good to have a small mound in front of the home and a supportive mountain in the back of the house. Now, we all live in an imperfect man-made world where such an excellent natural landscaping is available only for a few who live in mountainous countrysides. For the rest of us it is possible to create such an effect with some good planning. Plant a nice tree to the left of the house (from inside looking out) and a shrub (that would grow only to a four feet maximum height

Growing roses is both an art and a science: as my gardening aunt used to say, ...it's a six of one and half a dozen of the other!” As a rose grower myself and author of a gardening website, I get many questions about why a certain rose bush has failed or what a person might be doing wrong. Over time, these many mistakes people make, began to fall into five major categories. The five major rose growing mistakes that most people could avoid! 1. Planting in the wrong location: Before you actually dig the hole for your new rose bush, consider the location. It will need six hours of good light including some time in the sun. It will need healthy soil where water drains well and other plants and trees haven't taken over with their own roots. Not in the shade of a large tree, or over a concrete pipe or in a pot small enough for a geranium! Take time to choose the right location. 2. Choosing the wrong bush in the first place: My rose bush, Savoy Hotel, grew so large I had to move the

The hydroponics industry has been growing within the recent years. Such growth has been influenced by the need to have a more efficient and cost-effective agriculture system. But let us first define hydroponics. Hydroponics is the system of plant culture such that there is a less need for soil, or soil less agriculture. This technology has been tapped due to its accessibility and flexibility both for the local household gardening or even for commercial agricultural production. Hydroponics involves a system where the plant is introduced with a nutrient solution. This nutrients solution becomes a ready alternative for soil. The past decade marked a great breakthrough in agricultural efficiency and quality. A realistic example is the use of hydroponics in tomato production in the Canada. As the consumers are becoming for sophisticated and demands for a high quality of produce, the hydroponics becomes an answer to this growing need. Hydroponics are very much advantageous such as in agricul

A water garden A man artificial or natural, but there are two things that brings them together. Using some kind of water feature gardening and the presence of water on something like the focal point. A famous garden of old who used a garden water feature was the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. Another famous garden water feature is the Lady Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain. Water gardens have returned prominence at the scene of the landscape in recent years, ranging from container water gardens for huge structures outdoors. They are known by various names such as backyard ponds, water ponds and aquatic gardens. A real water garden feature different uses of water gardening to compose the whole. The main types of water fountains, waterfalls, ponds and streams of water are very common. Not just a characteristic of water gardening add to the beauty of your garden, also added soothing, relaxing music flowing water. It also gives a great place to attract wildlife, especially bir

For those of us who enjoy gardening, mosquitoes are a frequent pest. As they aim to feed on the nectar of flowers, gardens, to mosquitoes, are like all-you-can-eat buffets: we are open, come on in. This not only hurts your landscaping and ruins your garden, but it can also be detrimental to your health: mosquitoes are well known for spreading disease. You could ignore these facts, of course, and go on with your gardening and with your life in some kind of West Nile denial. But, when ignoring mosquitoes and the problems they cause proves futile, you may find yourself in need of a solution. Luckily, there are natural ways to get rid of your problem. Fill your Water with Fish and Frogs: Water, particularly stagnant water, is highly attractive to mosquitoes; it’s where most mosquitoes lay their eggs. For this reason, having water in your backyard, such as a stream or a fountain, can leave you wasting away in mosquito-ville. Removing water from your backyard is one solution, but if you can’

Summer gardening tips . . . Don't be afraid to trim those flowering shrubs and trees that need it. Failure to prune is probably the biggest gardening mistake a person can make. I spent 20 years landscaping homes and businesses, and I watched people make the investment in my services, then they failed to prune when the plants needed it, and before you know it their landscape looks terrible. If you make a mistake pruning, don't worry about it. It's like a bad haircut, it will grow out. Of course use common sense and read the previous articles that I've written on pruning. Summer gardening tips . . . Along with summer time comes high humidity. High humidity can cause a lot of problems with the plants in your garden and around your house. One of the simple things you can do is don't water just before dark. Make sure your plants are nice and dry when you tuck them in for the night and you can cut down of the chance fungus being a problem. One of the more common fungi tha

Small town, big town, it doesn’t matter, if you have a small area in your backyard that you can use for planting, then you can make money growing small plants at home. Actually you can make pretty good money on 1/40 of one acre. That’s an area about 30 feet by 40 feet. You will be amazed at how many plants you can fit in an area that small, and at how much money you can make. Even apartment dwellers can do this! If you live in an apartment, just to get a feel for how fun and rewarding a tiny nursery can be, find somebody with a little piece of ground that they will either let you use, let you rent it, or do a joint venture with you. Is there really a market for small plants? The market is huge, something like 4 billion dollars last year alone, and the demand is tremendous. As a small grower, you have a tremendous advantage over the larger nurseries, their overhead is very high. As a backyard grower yours will be almost nothing. You might be asking; "I live in a small town in a rur

The secret to making your flowering trees, shrubs, annuals, and perennials bloom more is in the numbers. All fertilizers have analysis numbers on the package. These numbers represent the percentage of each chemical the product contains. For example, 12-12-12 is a typical garden garden fertilizer that would contain 12% nitrogen, 12%phosphorous, and 12% potassium. The quick explanation is; nitrogen produces vegetative, or top growth, phosphorous produces flower buds, fruit, and root development, while potassium builds strong healthy plants. Most lawn grasses are vigorous growers and therefore require significantly more nitrogen than the other plants in your yard. A lawn fertilizer would have an analysis of 26-3-3, indicating a fertilizer high in nitrogen. You would not want to use a fertilizer containing such a high percentage of nitrogen on landscape plants because it would be very easy to burn them. You must also keep in mind that many lawn fertilizers contain broad leaf weed killers,

There are two kinds of winter gardening. The first method usually starts in January as the gardening catalogs begin to arrive in the mail. This type of gardening is as easy and sitting in your favorite chair, browsing the catalogs, and either dreaming about what you're going to do this spring, or actually drawing designs for the gardens you intend to work on. The second type of winter gardening is to actually get out in the yard and do a little work. Of course if it's bitter cold, you'd be better off waiting for a good day. Winter is a good time to do some pruning if the temperatures are around 30 degrees or so. I don't recommend pruning if it's considerably below freezing because the wood is brittle and will shatter when you make a cut. One of the advantages of pruning during the winter is that you can see much better what needs to be cut out and what should stay. At least that's true with deciduous plants. The other advantage is that the plants are dormant, an

During the warm months of the year there is nothing better than to be outside and enjoy the wonderful weather. However, if you don’t have a patio or some other place outside to sit and enjoy your yard then you really just can’t enjoy it too much. That’s where outdoor rooms come into play and if you have never heard of them before then you are about to! There are many ideas when it comes to outdoor rooms and enjoying your Phoenix lawn one of which is to create an outdoor kitchen. An outdoor kitchen is a fabulous idea because it will allow you to cook outdoors and enjoy the open air as well. If you are into Phoenix lawn care then you will especially benefit from an outdoor room because you can enjoy the beauty of your lawn as well as the great weather. There are several things you should keep in mind, however, when creating your outdoor kitchen. First of all, you want to consider what exactly you will be doing in your outdoor kitchen. Are you going to be cooking, barbequing, entertaining

A vegetable garden is admittedly a part of any home place that has a good rear area. A purchased vegetable is never the same as one taken from a man's own soil and representing his own effort and solicitude. It is essential to any satisfaction in vegetable-growing that the soil be rich and thoroughly subdued and fined. The plantation should also be so arranged that the tilling can be done with wheel tools, and, where the space will allow it, with horse tools. The old-time garden bed consumes time and labor, wastes moisture, and is more trouble and expense than it is worth. The rows of vegetables should be as long and continuous as possible, to allow of tillage with wheel tools. If it is not desired to grow a full row of any one vegetable, the line may be made up of several species, one following the other, care being taken to place together such kinds as have similar requirements; one long row, for example, might contain all the parsnips, carrots, and salsify. One or two long rows