Garden Tips & Resources

Archive for January, 2008

Garden sheds are a very handy accessory to have, particularly if you have a large yard or garden area. Garden sheds do some in a wide variety of sizes and styles these days too though, so it’s possible to find one which fits almost any need, design preference, and space limitations too.

Some garden sheds are quite small and might be considered nothing more than a potting bench or storage box. These small garden sheds can be useful though, if you have very little available space around your home, and if you do very little gardening throughout the year.

Medium sized garden sheds tend to be similar to storage sheds, but even these can range in size drastically. Some might have room for all of your lawn and garden equipment for instance: The larger hoes and rakes, smaller hand tools, extra gardening soil, extra containers and pots, and maybe even your lawnmower or edge trimmer too.

Smaller versions of the “medium” sized garden sheds might not be large enough to fit your lawn mower in though, and some aren’t even made to store larger hand gardening tools either.

Larger garden sheds can sometimes be quite large, and many of them are quite elaborate these days too. Not only can the larger sheds accomodate your larger hand tools and extra gardening supplies, but often these sheds have plenty of room for you to set up a full fledged potting bench. Some of them also have room for you to set up a small greenhouse area too, so that you’re able to get your seeds started even before the ground thaws each spring.

Elaborately designed garden sheds come in a wide variety of designs, which are meant to help you fit the shed nicely into your personal landscape and garden areas. Some of these for instance, are made to look like small English Cottages. There are even places where you can buy garden sheds which look like a miniature version of your own home too.

When buying a garden shed, try to take into account what garden tools and supplies you already have, and what types of things you’re likely to buy in the next several years. With that information on hand, you should choose a shed that’s large enough to accomodate both your existing supplies as well as those you’ll be buying later.

A worker in the Denver Colorado Water Department coined the term xeriscaping way back in 1981, joining the Greek word xeros, which means dry, with “-scape,” as in landscape to describe garden design planned to resist and withstand drought.

Drought resistant shrubs and plants can lower the water requirements in any home garden, especially important now when so much development is occurring in areas with low water reserves. In fact, many cities and counties are severely limiting the amount of lawn grass that can be planted in new developments because lawn grasses require so much water to keep them looking green and healthy.

However, regardless of where you live in North America, you should start considering less water greedy alternatives to traditional grass lawns. Extending patio or deck areas, building terraces, allowing woodland gardens to go natural and landscaping or re-landscaping with drought resistant plant species are all good alternatives.

 Drought resistant plants tend to share one or more of the following physical characteristics:

fleshy thick stems and leaves, (succulents such as cactus, sedums and jade plants)
 
waxy coated leaves (herbs and flowers like rosemary, wax-leaf begonia)

densely hairy leaves (plants like lamb’s ears or Stacys)

silvery, grayish or bluish foliage (such as Artemisia, Dianthus)

narrow leaves (like ornamental grasses)

prickly leaves (such as globe thistle or Eryngium)

Though the plants in the following lists will require some water, the amount they need is at the low end of the scale.

Drought resistant evergreens and deciduous trees include White fir, Box Elder, Gray Birch, Cedars, Hackberry, Spruces, Pines, Oaks, Staghorn Sumac, Black Locust, White Cedar and most Elms.

Good shrub choices for low water needs include: Dutchman’s Pipe, Red Chokeberry, Butterfly Bush, Trumpet creeper, Blue mist Spirea, Flowering Quince, Sweet Autumn Clematis, Carolina Allspice, Cotoneaster, Scotch Broom, Witch Hazel, Virginia Sweetspire, Juniper, Honeysuckle, Russian Arborvitae, Bayberry, Virginia creeper, Cinquefoil Shrub roses, Yew and Weigela.

Good low-watering flower and ornamental grass choices include: Yarrow, Blue Stars, Wormwood, Butterfly Flower, False Indigo Feather Reed Grass, Heather, Sedge, Goldenstar, Coreopsis, Hardy Ice Plant, Dianthus, Coneflower, Plume Grass, Blue Fescue, Blanket Flower, Geranium, Baby’s Breath, Hellebore, Daylily, Plantain Lily, ( in shade) Dead Nettle, Lavender, Lupine, Catmint, Evening Primrose, Switch Grass, Poppy, Foxtail Grass, Peony,  Phlox, Russian Sage, Hens and chicks, Thyme, Black-eyed daisy, periwinkle and yucca.

Sticking with plants from these categories will help ensure that the demands you make on our water supplies remain reasonable while your garden remains healthy and green.

When it comes to growing for profit, gloxinias (sinningias) have two real advantages: They are among the showiest of flowering pot plants and they also make excellent “specializing” material. The heaviest flowering of these gesneriads occurs during the warm months, but staggered plantings will produce some flowers the year round, so plants are almost always salable. Colors range from purest white through blues and purples to the brightest red. There are selfs, bicolors, margined varieties, and some with speckles and dots. There are older varieties with narrow tubular throats and modern hybrids with large wide faces and nodding “slippers” large and small.

Is the Gloxinia Business for You?
Many amateur and professional growers have found gloxinias profitable. Some specialize in seeds, some in tubers. Others carry the plants through the season, selling thousands at Easter and on Mother’s Day. Huge plants, grown for these special occasions, retail for about $25.00 apiece.

Gloxinias also attract collectors. If you sell by mail, you can interest them through a little two- or three-dollar ad in a specialized publication, such as The Gloxinian or The African Violet Magazine. Keep up with things through the American Gloxinia Society, and its magazine. Membership is $2.50 per year. Address: Edith McDonald, Secretary, 310 East 71st St., New York 21, New York.

From My Greenhouse
When I first began selling, I vended small potted gloxinias, in bud only, in 3-inch pots to local plant counters. Today I sell only species tubers and those from my crosses between species and large-flowered hybrids, most of them directly to a commercial seed house which also orders gloxinia seed. The species seem most popular, followed closely by the hybrid slippers.

You will find that standard varieties are always in demand. The older ones were hybridized in Europe and today commercial dealers here still obtain many of these varieties from foreign sources. Since European growers have low labor costs, they are able to sell below most American dealers.

You pay the wholesaler $7.50 to $35.00 per hundred tubers, depending on the tuber size. You can retail small ones for about 30 cents each; the giants will bring 75 cents to $1.25 each, depending on the market.

For Collectors
The newer hybrid forms appeal most to collectors. Flowers are wide-throated, open-faced, in a great array of colors. Although no yellow gloxinia has been developed, there are a number with yellow throats, and there is plenty of variety with which to stock your greenhouse. I know of only a few firms selling doubles, so if you discover any among your seedlings, it would pay you to reproduce them.

Popular with collectors are the species. These have down­ward-facing, slipper-type flowers and pouchlike corollas. Sinnin-gia speciosa, the blue slipper and its varieties, have fair sized slipper-type flowers in blue, purple, white, and rose, and plain green leaves. S. macrophylla, commonly called Brazilian glox­inia, has olive-green leaves red beneath and nodding purple flowers; regina is similar; S. eumorpha displays dangling white bells among shiny green leaves. Baby of them all is S. pusilla with leaves scarcely an inch long and tiny quarter-inch blue-purple flowers. The largest of the species, S. tubiflora, has pointed silvery-green leaves and fragrant white flowers resem­bling nicotiana.

Schedule for Tubers
If you are starting with tubers, plant them in February for June to July flowers and give a daytime temperature of 70 to 80 degrees with the usual 10-degree drop at night. Start tubers in any light soil, peatmoss, sphagnum moss, or vermiculite. As soon as they show growth, move to 4-inch pots. For maximum flowering, they require subsequent shifts to 5- or 6-inchers, depending on size of tuber.

Yellow is a beautiful, vibrant color that seems to be full of life and happiness. It’s an excellent color to add to your garden too, when you want to attract butterflies, hummingbirds, or other birds. Large batches of bright yellow in the garden are particularly attractive for hummingbirds.

Whether you want to create an all yellow flower garden, or you’d simply like to add splashes of yellow to your existing color mix, here are several suggestions for you…

Desert or Mexican Goldpoppy – These adorable poppy flowers have a color that ranges from yellow to orange, and they bloom from February through May in the Western desert states such as Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. These flowers open wide on bright sunny days, and close at night time or when it’s cloudy.

Yellow Evening Primrose – This is an herb which is sometimes called a sundrop, and it blooms from February to May in Arizona and California. It’s a small and delicate little yellow flower which opens around sunset, and closes again not long after the sun rises each morning. On cloudy days it may stay open longer too.

Yellow Jessamine – This bright yellow funnel shaped flower grows on vines which can reach up to twenty feet in length. The vines like to climb trees, and sometimes they’ll even reach from one to another as they grow. The beautiful yellow flower blooms are sweetly scented, and they tend to bloom from March through May.

Coreopsis – These cheerful little yellow flowers look a bit like a daisy. Some varieties have petals which are primarily yellow, with a touch of dark orange in the center. Coreopsis are drought resistant perennials, which look wonderful in hanging baskets, flower beds, or wild flower gardens.

Nasturtium – This is an edible annual flower which blooms in bright yellow or orange. It can be grown as a small compact bush type of plant, or as a vine, and they prefer to grow in full sunlight. They don’t do well with heat however, preferring areas which have cool dry summers instead.

This is of course just a small sampling of the various kinds of flowers you can grow which bloom in shades of bright yellow or orange. If you prefer more formal looking flowers in your garden, you’ll be happy to know there are plenty of yellow roses and yellow tulips you can grow too. Alternatively if you’d like a wildflower or natural garden, there are also many different native plants which produce yellow and orange flower blooms too.

Planting trees in your yard, garden, and landscape not only lends a different type of additional beauty, but it gives you many environmental benefits naturally too.

Trees come in all shapes and sizes. Many trees even produce flowers too, and these add an extra beauty element to any garden. Some types of flowering trees are wonderfully fragrant too, plus they’ll give you an amazing color show at various times of the year.

There are even trees which look stunning in the winter time too, even without leaves or flowers. Their bark and shape is what makes them stand out so well… some having bark of various colors, and others having unusual striking textures that look wonderful with or without snow cover.

In fact, traditional Japanese gardens are planted with all seasons in mind. When a tree is added to the garden, it is selected based on how it looks for every season of the year. This is because the Japanese feel a garden should be beautiful and enjoyable throughout all seasons.

Having trees around your home is also a natural way to moderate the temperatures both inside and out. When you have flowering trees or even just plain trees with many healthy leaves near your home in the summer, it helps block the sunlight and heat that’s so prevalent in the summer time. This gives you a comfortable place to sit and enjoy the outdoors, yet it also helps you use less energy inside your home too because your air conditioning system does not have to work quite so hard.

In the winter time, those trees which shed their leaves and become bare are actually helping you and your home too. The bareness of them allows the sun to reach you more easily at a time of year when the sun strength is weaker. This helps provide you with extra warmth and sunshine when you’re sitting outside, plus it allows more of the sun to enter your home which in turn helps to warm the house naturally – and save on winter heating bills too.

Another wonderful way both trees or bushes can be used is as a wind block. If you live in an area which gets strong winds at different times of the year, you know how probelmatic this can become at times. By planting a row of trees or large bushes though, you can effectively create a natural barrier that helps to break up the wind. By breaking up the wind in this way, you not only make the windy season more enjoyable in general, but you also help your home stay safer because the wind doesn’t gather enough strength to tear off roof shingles or throw things around the yard. You’re also helping to insulate your home a bit better too, because the wind is not strong enough to try to penetrate inside your home as much as it might without a natural wind block in place.

So if you haven’t yet planted trees in your own garden or landscape, start looking into the many varieties there are to choose from, and see if one or more might fit perfectly with your current designs and needs.

Even if you have very few weeds in your yard and garden though, a weed eater is a handy tool to have in your garden shed because it provides other functionality too. One of the best things you can use a weedeater for – besides cutting down weeds – is edging. Weed eaters are handy to trim the grass along the edge of your sidewalk, driveway, patio, and garden beds too. Weed eaters can clip grass that the lawnmower can’t reach too, such as that growing right against the house, or up close to your favorite apple tree.

There are a couple of different types of weed eaters you can buy, and there are also a wide variety of motor sizes and power settings too. These days weed eaters even come with different types of attachments and heads too, so you can select a weed eater that’s just right for your particular yard and garden needs.

Gas weed eaters are the most common type you’ll find, and these are usually considered more powerful as well. These weed eaters have a small engine on them which requires gasoline in order to operate. The extra power of these weed eaters is beneficial for some, particularly if you have a large number of tough weeds in your lawn or garden. Some people don’t like having to buy and store gasoline though, and with today’s gas prices being so high this may not be an ideal choice.

Electric weed eaters use the electricity from your home to run. Generally you need a long heavy duty extension cord so that you’re able to reach all areas of your yard and garden with this type of weed eater, and that can be a big drawback for someone with a very large lawn area to maintain. Electric weed eaters often tend to be less powerful than gas versions too, and this can be frustrating when you have very tough weeds to keep under control.

String heads are the most commonly seen type of head on a weed eater. These use thick plastic cord to actually cut the weeds. The cord is usually arranged in a coiled format inside the head, and the cord is extended out gradually as needed.

When you’re using a weed eater which has a cord or string style head, there is usually a button on the bottom which acts as a feed. When the cord breaks and becomes too short to cut the weeds, you simply tap the weed eater against the ground and more cord is extended. Depending on the type of weed eater you have though, this does not always work as well as it should. And a problem commonly seen with this type of weed eater head is that the cord becomes tangled or stuck inside, so the head must be removed and the problem fixed before you can continue with your trimming.

Another type of weed eater head which is starting to become more popular uses plastic blades. These are like small serrated knife blades made of thick, durable plastic. These blades often last much longer than the plastic cord does, because they don’t break nearly as easily. Often the blades have a shorter cutting perimeter than the plastic does though, and this can take some getting used to if you’ve always used cord style cutting heads instead. Some people don’t like the blades because of their shortness, and in some weed eater models the blades can pop off during operation, which means you must stop what you’re doing and reattach them.

If you’ve never used a weed eater before, your best course of action is to try one or more before actually choosing the type you’ll buy. Consider borrowing one from a friend or family member, or simply rent one from a small equipment rental facility. Then do a bit of research online into the different types of machines and their head attachments, see with other users have to say about each, and make your decision from there.