Garden Tips & Resources

Archive for November, 2007

Growing a garden specifically for canning or freezing foods is becoming a popular hobby these days, primarily because gardeners know just how much healthier home grown food is for their families, compared to most of what’s found in the produce section of your local grocery store. And growing a canning garden can be fairly easy and simple, or it can be more complex too. How much of which really depends on the personal preferences and desires of the gardener.

Canning gardens are general vegetable gardens which are grown with the purpose of canning the produce once it’s been harvest. And usually anything that’s eaten fresh can be used for canning, so many gardeners will simple plant extra vegetables so they’ll have some of the harvest for fresh eating, and some for canning too.

In many cases though, experience will show that some varieties of vegetables work better for canning than others. So if you want to create a vegetable garden specifically for canning, you may want to try some of the species which are known to work best.

You’ll also want to consider what type of canning you plan to do. If you plan to can tomatoes for instance, will you can whole, peeled, or chopped ones? Or would you prefer to make tomatoe sauces and pastes, or even various marinara sauces or salsas too?

Cucumbers are another excellent vegetable to grow for canning purposes, because you can make pickles from them. Even here however, you can select from a variety of different cucumber plants. Some work wonderfully for canning dill pickles, while others work better for making sweet bread and butter pickles. Then there are those which work well for pickle slices, and those which are best left whole too.

Different types of hot peppers such as cayenne and jalapeno peppers are often used in canning gardens too, because these are primary ingredients for making salsa and other hot sauces.

Almost any vegetable you might buy canned in the grocery store can be grown in your canning garden too. Carrots, Beets, Green Beans, and Peas are all examples of vegetables commonly grown for canning purposes.

If you have fruit bushes, vines, or trees, you might want to try your hand at canning these too. Not only can you simply can the fruits in liquid for use during the winter seasons, you can also freeze them fresh, or create various jellys and preserves from them too.

Simply put, mulch is a layer of organic or synthetic material which is laid on top of your garden soil. This top layer is designed to help the soil hold moisture longer, prevent soil from eroding, prevent the soil from fluctuating in temperature too drastically, and prevent weeds from easily being able to grow around your plants.

Mulch is usually light enough to allow plenty of water and air to get through it to the roots of your plants, but it’s also dense enough to prevent weeds from being able to grow easily. Organic mulch deteriorates over time too, and this has an additional effect of adding nutrients, minerals, and vitamins to the soil around your plants too.

Organic mulch usually comes from some type of plant material such as leaves, grass clippings, wood bark, or straw. Mineral type mulches can be used too though, and these usually come from some type of stone, gravel, or other small rocks. There are also plenty of synthetic mulches available too, and these can be made from a variety of materials such as plastic or rubber. Many synthetic mulches are made from recycled materials, and they can last for quite a long time.

Organic and mineral type mulches will often help keep the soil beneath them cooler, and synthetic mulches tend to help the soil warm up. Organic mulch will of course degrade and decompose over time, so it has to be added to regularly. Mineral mulches can last several lifetimes, and some types of synthetic mulches can too.

Any type of natural material which decomposes on its own can be used as a mulch material. Some of the most popular include grass clippings, hay, tree leaves, wood chips, and straw. It helps to create thick layers of mulch when you’re using organic materials, because the thicker layers help protect your plants from weeds and weather better. Thicker layers will also pack down a bit better, and not be lost or scattered with any little breeze that comes along.

One of the best reasons to use mulch around your plants is for weather protection. If you put a nice deep layer of mulch around the base of tender plants before winter sets in for instance, that mulch will often allow the roots to stay alive even when it gets quite cold outside. And when the roots of your plants can survive through the winter, you’ll be able to enjoy the plant when it starts budding naturally the following spring.

The other major advantage to mulching is, when done correctly, you’ll find yourself fighting weeds much less often in your garden.

Most gardeners start out with some of the most basic tools they’ll need for working in their gardens, but over time there are many others which can be quite handy to have on hand too. So today we’ll look at some of those.

1. Hedge Trimmers – Even if you don’t have a full fledge hedge, you might be surprised at how useful hedge trimmers can be when you just have a few bushes. As bushes grow they become unruly and unkempt. Now you can of course simply prune and clip them regularly to keep them under control and looking nice, but once they reach a certain age and size it almost seems as if you can never keep up. And this is made worse when you have several bushes to maintain. Hedge trimmers however, allow you to make quick work of the basic trimming and shaping, then you can simply leave them as they are after you’ve trimmed, or go in with your pruners and do some fine tuning instead.

2. Tree Lopers – Again these are not thought of in the early stages of a garden, particularly if you don’t have any trees. Once you do have trees however, and especially once they start growing to respectable sizes, you’ll find yourself having problems trimming and pruning them. Tree lopers are simply giant sized pruners. They have long handles so you’re able to reach branches well above your head, plus they’re much stronger so you can easily cut through the thicker branches of a tree.

3. Weedeaters & Edgers – This tool is wonderful whether you have weeds in your yard or not. If you plant flower beds with borders around them, you’ll quickly find that it’s not easy to trim the grass right up against your bed borders. And this is where edgers and weedeaters shine: They allow you to trim everything neatly and orderly, without damaging any of your prize garden flowers.

4. Potting bench or shed – Potting benches make container gardening easier, but they’re also useful for dividing plants too. They simply give you a comfortable work space where all of your tools and supplies are right on hand. A potting shed is an extension of the potting bench idea. It not only gives you space to work, but it also gives you room to store your garden tools and materials safely and neatly.

5. Lawn Aerators – Aerating your lawn helps it to grow more lush and healthy. Many people don’t know that as the grass grows, it can eventually make it difficult for sun and nutrients to get down into the soil where the roots need it most. By aerating your lawn though, you simply poke holes into it which allow additional water, sun, and nutrients to reach the roots of your grass and ground covers.

Creating a garden path or walkway which is filled with wonderful scents is fairly easy to do, and you’ll love the end results too! There are actually several ways to create scented walkways and garden paths, so here we’ll look at each…

1. Plant small scented flowers and herbs between your walkway stones. If you have a walkway or path in place already, or you plan to create one soon, one of the easiest things to do is add flowers and herbs which will release their scent each time someone walks the path.

Planting lavendar between your pathway stones for instance, will provide beauty as well as scent. Whenever you or someone else walks down your garden path, their feet will brush up against or crush the lavendar, and this causes it to release more of it’s sweet smell. Other plants you might want to consider for this technique include low growing herbs or flowers which have a strong smell such as lemongrass, sage, or rosemary.

2. Plant bushes or flowers along either side of your walkway. If you have plenty of scented bushes and shrubs, or flower beds with sweet smelling flowers in place already, then all you need to do here is create the walkway. This can be fun because putting the garden path in after already having blooming flowers and bushes in place, usually means you’ll have to create something of a winding and meandering path through your garden. And these are some of the most enjoyable kinds of garden paths you can have, because they allow you to slowly stroll through your plants and flowers, taking the time to enjoy them leisurely with all of your senses.

If you’re starting a brand new garden however, then you’ll of course have a great deal of freedom in choosing what plants and flowers will be along either side of the garden walkway. And this is also fun, because you’ll get to discover a whole world of scented flowers, plants, bushes and shrubs to choose from.

3. Put arbors and arches over your walkway, and grow scented climbing vines. This last idea combines the previous two to some extent, and it works quite well for putting scented garden paths into narrow spaces, while also helping to create additional shade and quiet space within the garden too.

An overhead walkway simply encorporates some type of arched structure or frame that is both high and wide enough for people to walk comfortably through. Once the structure is in place, you’ll simply plant climbing vines which produce scented flowers for as many seasons of the year as possible. As the vines mature, they’ll climb your walkway’s arched structure, and eventually encompass it completely. And when the flowers start blooming of course, even approaching near the walkway will be a wonderful experience.

Rock gardens can be great sources of enjoyment.  Not only are designing a rock garden and choosing its rock “wardrobe” fun, but rock gardens require much less maintenance than most other types, meaning you’ll have more time to simply enjoy their presence.

Some gardeners opt for rock gardens in order to exploit the natural lay of the land in their yards, such as rocky slopes. Others prefer to bring rocks into flat, relatively featureless yards to provide visual drama. Either way, the effort will be more than worth the trouble.

Though in larger garden areas, creating a sprawling, naturalistic rock garden may be the goal, rock gardens don’t necessarily demand much space. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Consider making a small raised bed for your rock garden to make it more of a feature in your lawn and keep rocks out of the way of mowing and other routine lawn maintenance chores.

Choose colors with care, for the colors of the rocks you choose will affect the types and colors of the plants you select to flesh out your overall color scheme. Red sandstone, for example, is a stunning backdrop for rock plants with small yellow flowers, while gray boulders make a perfect backdrop for reddish crevice plants.

Unless you are building some sort of deep grotto, your rock garden will need to be somewhat elevated above the main level of your lawn. To save on the number of decorative rocks you must use to create the desired effect, begin by making a base of soil and smaller rocks upon which the more eye-catching ones can rest.

To populate your rock garden, choose plants that will grow best when water percolates easily through the soil in which they are planted, leaving plants that prefer wet environments for other areas. Make sure that the plants you choose have very similar or the same growing requirements.

Choose drought-resistant plants if possible; they reduce the amount of time you’ll need to spend watering them. Look for plants with different heights, leaf shapes and textures to increase visual interest.

Good perennial rock garden plants include dwarf yarrow, carpet bugle, stonecress, rock jasmine, alpine columbine, creeping bellflower, snow in the summer, ice plant, hens and chicks, sulfur flower, spurge, oregano, penstemon primrose, saxifrage, woolly thyme and soapwort. 

Once completed, your rock garden will provide you with many hours of (almost) carefree enjoyment. Rocks gardens are often considered visual eye candy for your garden and if you choose exotic rocks and large boulders to accent the space, you will love the final result!

Most of us have some form of functional outdoor lighting in our yard, or at the front door. This not only helps people stay safe when walking to or from the door in the dark, but it’s also a nice general safety feature too.

Now, some of us have also discovered the joy of landscape lighting. Using strategicly placed lights around our yard, we can outline the curves and shapes of the grass area, or light up a winding walkway path we may have installed. But many gardener’s don’t seem to realize that they can also use landscape lighting for beautifying their gardens at night as well.

Landscape lighting can be used for more than just lighting up your yard at night. In fact, it’s wonderful to use for specific types of plants and flowers which only bloom at night, and it really enhances the colors and textures of plantings that have unusual colors and shapes naturally.

Placing recessed spotlights under your trees or bushes for instance, will help your yard to put on a beautiful show at night time as well as during the day. When the lights come on at dusk, they’ll spotlight the trees and bushes in a way you may never have seen before. Since the lights are coming from underneath of your plantings, you’ll notice differences in texture, color, and appearance that you may not have known even existed.

If you have a garden pond or even a water container garden, you’ll be delighted at how this looks when lit up at night time too. Landscape lighting can be installed around the pond to bring out the natural night time beauty of your swamp plantings, or they can be installed at the bottom of the pond or container itself to make the water glow throughout the night. This is particularly beautiful when you have a water fountain installed, or you have fish and other wild life in your pond too.

Even if you don’t yet have a formal garden path made of stone, bricks, pavers, or other path materials, you probably do have a well worn walkway that’s used for strolling around your yard and garden regularly. And this can be turned into a beautiful night time path with the simple installation of landscape lighting too. You could simply outline the walkway with small pathway lights, or you could put lights in specific places to highlight special plants and garden beds along the way.

By installing solar powered lighting, you can make this process easier on yourself too, because you won’t have to turn the lights on and off each day. You’ll also save money on the electric bill while still being able to take advantage of the night time beauty in your garden. You can of course install an elaborate lighting system which works on timers if you’d prefer, but using lights which automatically turn themselves on and off based on the amount of available natural light is usually the easiest option.

There are many different types of lights you can use for lighting up your landscape too, so the first step in creating a beautiful night time garden is to research the types of lights available. Decide what kind of effect you’d like the lights to create, and in which parts of the garden you want those effects to be displayed. Then plan the logistics such as placement, power requirements and hookups, and any related issues that may come into play. Once you’ve done these steps, then you simply need to buy your lights, install them, then sit outside in your garden at night to bask in the new found beauty!