Garden Tips & Resources

Archive for March, 2008

In the flush of excitement we all get when planning a new garden, or finding a beautiful new plant at the store, we don’t always think to stop and create a record of our gardening activities. And while it’s not critical to keep a garden record, it can be extremely helpful in knowing how your plants are doing, keeping track of things you’ve tried and either succeeded or failed at, and revisiting the joy your garden brings anytime you’d like.

And that’s where a garden journal comes in. Keeping a garden journal can help you to learn from past experiences. It can also help you keep track of various plants, trees or bushes you have. It can be used to keep notes about common diseases or pests, watering and soil requirements, and so much more.

A garden journal can be used for so much more than just simple record keeping and maintenance though. In fact, it can become a treasured scrapbook and historical journal of your personal gardening adventures.

When you come across a beautiful young plant at the store for instance, and buy it on impulse, you can take a quick picture of it and place that into your garden journal. Then you can add the required growth information of course, because these details will help you three months down the road when you can’t quite remember that particular plant’s name. So record the latin and common names in your journal. Note what the soil, sunlight and water requirements are, and if you can find more information such as diseases and pests to watch for then put that into your garden journal too.

Now the fun part is the regular updates. How often you do these will of course depend on you, but once a month is usually nice. Take a new picture of the plant every month or two. Make additional notes about how it seems to be doing in it’s present location. If you prune it, then get before and after pictures then note down how well (or badly) it seems to respond to trimming.

Write in your garden journal how you feel about the plant too. Do you absolutely adore it? Is it driving you nuts because it tries to spread out too fast? Do you think in restrospect that it would have been better off planted in another location? All of these thoughts occur to every gardener as they’re tending their flowers and bushes, but many of us tend to forget them. By keeping a garden journal though, we can note down these thoughts along with any others as needed.

Garden journals can be used to sketch out ideas for new garden bed designs too, or hold pictures of other gardens and plants we like too. You can clip pictures from magazines, or insert pictures you’ve taken while on vacation or exploring someone else’s garden too.

And one of the best things about keeping a garden journal is the winter time. If you live in an area which gets quite cold and dreary during the winter months, and you long for the beauty of your gardens, you can open the journal and revisit your ideas, plans, and how far your various plants, flowers, and specific gardens have come since the beginning.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hosta plants are most well known for their ability to grow in shady areas, and their amazing variety of colors and textures. Not everyone knows this, but many types of hosta plants actually produce flowers too, and these flowers can be quite beautiful in and of themselves.

Flowering hosta plants usually need a little more sunlight than non flowering ones though, and this is particularly true for hostas which produce flowers that have a nice scent to them. How much sunlight these plants need will depend on the strength of sun in your own garden zone though, and there may be a bit of trial and error involved before you discover just the right location for them.

In most cases, it’s safe to plant flowering hostas in a location which receives morning sunlight, and shade in the afternoon. The morning sun is not as strong as the afternoon sun is, and the light doesn’t last as long either.

For the most part though, hosta plants are generally grown for their gorgeous colorful foilage instead of their flowers. And a basic rule of thumb is: The darker the foilage, the more shade the plant can handle. Sometimes however, the best planting location will depend more on the color of the hosta’s foilage than the darkness of that color.

Hosta plants which have golden colored leaves for instance, tend to do better with a bit more sun. The sun actually helps bring out the color of the foilage in all it’s glory. A hosta plant which has blue colored leaves though, will do much better in shady areas. It can live in mostly shaded locations, or fully shaded locations.

Many hosta plants actually have variagated foilage though, and a general rule of thumb is that they should be grown in partial to full shade. You’ll find some have lighter colors in the center of their leaves, while others have the lightest colors at the outer edges.

If you live in a climate which has a fairly hot or strong sunlight, then partial shade might still be a bit too much sun for many types of hosta plants. What you’ll want to look for is a location that has heavily filtered sunlight, or light shade all day long.

Hostas are fairly easy to care for too, because their growth habits tend to choke out weeds. They’re also quite useful as lawn or garden border plants, and they can even be used as all purpose ground covers in some areas too. Hosta plants do need plenty of water and good drainage though, and this can make growing them in hot climates a bit difficult.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!