Preparing For Your Spring Color Explosion

I was in a home improvement store the other day and was thinking Wow the Christmas decorations should be going up in a week or so. I know that sounds a little bit crazy as it is only the 2nd week of September but I could not help to wonder as I was looking at all the Halloween merchandise on display. Seems like the stores are getting earlier and earlier when it comes to merchandising for the next big holiday. That is what led me to write this article.

The months of March Through May are usually the most colorful times of the year in the garden. The Spring flowering bulbs are a blaze with a riot of color. Early perennials are blooming and the early Spring flowering shrubs are wearing their coats of many colors. The only problem is that there are a lot of people that don't realize that the tulips, daffodils, crocus, hyacinth, Allium, and all the other spring flowering bulbs need to be planted just before Halloween to get that great spring color show. You would not believe the amount of times I get asked where you can get some of them flowers to plant every spring.

Just as impressive are the spring flowering shrubs azaleas and rhododendrons are well known as is one of the earliest to bloom with an explosion of bright yellow the forsythia. Vanhoutte spirea commonly called bridal veil puts on a spectacular show of pure white that looks like a giant snowball. The absolute most popular though has to be the lilac. It comes and a variety of colors and give off magnificent scents. Now is the time to be planting your shrubs in early fall where the cool wet weather will help them to get established roots before winter.

To plant your shrubs dig a hole twice as wide as the root ball then mix in a couple of shovel fulls of compost to the soil. Set the plant in the ground with the top of the root ball even with the soil line. Back-fill with the soil tamping to eliminate air pockets and water well. Be sure the plant stays moist till the ground freezes.

To prepare your flower beds for spring bulbs work up the soil and mix in a couple of inches of compost. Dig it in at least 6 ". Once the bed is prepared you are ready to plant your bulbs. A good rule of thumb is to multiply the width of the bulb by 2 to get the right depth to plant the bulbs at. Remember to consider height of the plant when planting don't hide the crocus behind the daffodils or you won't be able to enjoy them. Another hint is to plant bulbs in cluster they look more natural and are more interesting that way.

So now is the time to get started on your spring flowering garden.

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Planting Window Boxes and Baskets

Window boxes, troughs and hanging plants are an ideal way of adding color and interest to all parts of the garden in summer. They can also be used to brighten up the dull, dark days of winter by planting them with evergreens and winter flowering perennials. When you are choosing a basket, opt for the biggest you can find, ideally 16 inches, because this holds twice as much compost soil mix as the most popular size, 12 inches.

It will also weigh twice as much, so make sure you buy suitable brackets and have a system of watering that does not involve lifting the hanging basket down each time. There are basically two types of hanging basket, open mesh wire baskets and solid sided plastic baskets. The open mesh style, which includes wrought iron types, is the most common but in many ways the most difficult to master. The wire mesh is plastic coated to prevent corrosion, and the large holes make planting the sides easy.

However, they will dry out more quickly than solid sided baskets, although this can be overcome by using a waterproof liner. Solid sided plastic baskets cannot be planted at the sides, so the display is less appealing, but they need watering less often, especially is there is a built in water reservoir. Open mesh baskets need to be lines before they can be planted to stop the compost soil mix falling out. Traditionally, a 2 inches thick layer of sphagnum moss was used, but this is expensive, and many gardeners have turned to alternatives on environmental grounds.

This has led to the appearance of manufactured liners in a variety of materials, including recycled wool and cotton, coconut fiber and foam. The type of window box you choose should fit comfortable with the style of your house. There is a wide range of materials and styles to choose from, stone and terracotta look attractive as they age but they are fairly heavy. Plastic, wood and galvanized tin window boxes are all lighter options.

Linings gathered from the garden are just as good as shop bought lining and also have the advantage of being free. Moss raked from the lawn can be used to line your summer baskets, providing the lawn has not been treated with chemicals recently. For autumn and winter baskets use conifer prunings or conifer hedge clippings lined with polythene instead. They will stay green and look good throughout the winter.

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The Benefits of Worm Farming - Organic Farmers

Organic Gardening and Farming have a synonymous connection with Composting and Worm Farming. Organic gardeners have known the benefits of compost since times when domestic gardening first made an appearance. The benefits worms have to the soil have been known in some circles for centuries though some have written they felt worms would eat a plants roots and should therefore be eliminated from a garden environment. This logic proved false. Worms now hold a place in all garden environments. In fact, a large amount of worms in a test area would be a sign of an active healthy soil with ample organic matter to please both plant and worm.

Organic Farmers are in an excellent position to use worm farming for the natural feed source for their crops and pasture with an abundant supply of greenery, manures, hay, straw and of course household scraps.

Organic farmers are in an excellent position to use worm farming as a supplemental income stream to their regular farming income. Organic Farmers who venture into worm farming as an income stream will typically offer vermicast (worm castings) and breeding or composting worms for sale, though organic farmers could easily participate in all aspects of worm farming for profit.

As a general rule, Organic Farmers will use worms for 2 purposes.
To compost left over plant material and other farm based waste products.To create a growing medium and fertiliser for propagating seedlings and for conditioning and fertilising before and during a crops growth cycle.

Containing Options for Large Scale Worm Farming

Organic farmers are able to use many things at their immediate disposal for holding their worm farms. Simple things like old bath tubs have been used for smaller scale farms while 200Litre drums split in half have been used on others. Old crates used to hold and transport bread make excellent containers as these can be stacked allowing worms to move up each level as they have completed working each crate. This allows for easy separation of worms and castings - when worms have migrated to the top container it can be moved to become the bottom crate for the next batch. Castings in the bottom crates can be harvested and bagged or used as required.

Pasture worms

Worms in pasture are excellent for soil aeration and transporting nutrients to various parts of the topsoil. There are various figures used to estimate the required number of worms per metre of pasture but a good measure is to aim for at least 1000 worms per metre of pasture.

Breeding worms allows you to increase the number of worms per metre. You could add worms directly to the soil but many prefer to add capsules to the soil allowing them to hatch and populate themselves. Casting worms would also be a good secondary measure to increase immediate populations.

Certified Organic Farmers will need to ensure the supplementary food given to their worms was derived from within the property or it was purchased from Certified Organic growers to ensure compliance with strict and worthwhile testing criteria.

? Eric J. Smith.

Eric J. Smith writes about his interest in many areas of Environmental concern including the Health impact of Toxic Chemicals in our Community. As an experienced Horticulturist, Eric has a passion for Organic Gardening and Permaculture with an emphasis on the sustainable use of environmental systems. Becoming a representative for ONE Groups Certified Organic Miessence range of Skin, Body, Health, Oral and Home care products was a natural follow on from his interest in Organics and The Environment. Miessence Representative enquiries are welcome by visiting http://www.lifestyle-advantage.com/ or for product enquiries visit http://www.buy-organic-products.com/.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_J_Smith

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Indoor Gardens Need Grow Room Ventilation

If you are gardening indoors, you know that your plants need water, food and light to flourish. Because sunlight is not available indoors, indoor gardeners have to provide a light source for their plants and they do this with grow lights. If you are using HID lights, or high intensity discharge lights, one of the side effects that you will notice is that the light bulbs will heat up with use. If you have several grow lights in your indoor garden, as would commonly be found in a greenhouse setting, all of those lights are creating a tremendous amount of heat. While some heat is good for plants, an excess of heat can kill them very rapidly, and so greenhouse growers and other indoor gardeners will need some type of grow room ventilation system, so the excess heat is exhausted outside.

A key component in any grow ventilation setup are the grow room fans. Fantech Fans is a top manufacturer of grow room fans, and they offer several popular models, including duct fans and inline fans. Fantech fans are made from galvanized steel and come with ball bearings that are permanently sealed. You can fully control the speed, and they make the connection easy for you because the wiring on their grow room fans is external. The grow fans come in six-inch, eight-inch, ten- and twelve-inch sizes, and a speed control unit is also available.

In addition to grow room fans, there are other parts that you will need to complete your grow ventilation setup. While the fans are used to move the air around the greenhouse, you will also need a couple of exhaust fans to enable your grow room ventilation to remove stale air from indoors to outdoors. Duct pipe is also used to move air where you want it to go, and this comes in flexible varieties so that it is easy to work with.

Because you are watering plants in an indoor environment, often on impermeable surfaces, plants can also be exposed to too much moisture in an indoor gardening setting. This is not good, because plants can develop fungal diseases if they are exposed to too much water in the atmosphere for an extended period of time. Your grow room ventilation will help to keep good air circulation in the gardening room, so that the water does not have time to sit on the plants' leaves for long, thereby helping to prevent these types of plant problems.

You can learn more about ventilation systems for grow rooms by visiting an online discount gardening supplier.

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Buying Garden Greenhouse Plans - The 5 Golden Rules

The rules of buying garden greenhouse plans you bear in mind, never put aside, would be the Golden rules that always apply. Like stars to guide us, they shine brilliantly, keeping us on course and always moving in a good direction.

As soon as you define your goals, begin searching for the Golden Rules that connect with it. Chart your course by these Golden Rules and let them show you to achievement and success.

Allow me to share my 5 best Golden Rules to buying garden greenhouse plans.

Rule # 1, Your plans must be easy to understand and use. The tried and tested reason behind doing it like this is if you can't understand the plans you can't build the greenhouse. It's as simple as that. Remember, find garden greenhouse plans that make sense to you. Don't worry about what anyone else says or thinks. YOU will be building your dream greenhouse not them..

Rule # 2, Your garden greenhouse plans shouldn't require any exotic equipment or tools. It would be best to manage this carefully because it will save you a TON of time and money Remember that if specialized tools are needed you'll have to buy or rent them before you can build your garden greenhouse.

Rule # 3, Your plans should allow you to make as many copies as you wish. Why this is important is because you'll want to give copies of your greenhouse plans to all the folks helping you with your project. This will save you time. Even if you're working alone you'll want to insist on this feature because when you get them dirty or loose them you just print off another copy and you're back in business

Golden Rule # 4, Your plans must truly allow you to do it yourself. One can find various ways of accomplishing this, including Because you'll save at least 50% by building your greenhouse yourself instead of contracting it out

Rule # 5, Your plans must teach you all about using your new greenhouse Ways to achieve this step include you'll end up with a lovely building but you'll fail at your ultimate goal of growing lovely plants. You'll want to do that carefully. It should tell you all about preventing mold growth, how to set up proper ventilation, how to pick the right lighting for the kind of plants you want to grow, etc.

When you follow these golden rules to buying garden greenhouse plans, you'll find your life easier, your progress speedier and your successes more pronounced and frequent.

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Five Tips For How to Make Money Gardening

Who doesn't love to make money? And who wouldn't love to make money, while at the same time, doing it with something that they love? Making money gardening is just as profitable as many other home-based businesses: if your cards are played right, that is. Let's take a quick look at some prospects for gardening for profit.

1 - Getting started: preparation is paramount

Making money gardening can be such a lucrative and fun endeavor. However, like most business propositions, you've got to literally know the produce/plant market inside-out in your community and even in your state. If you're looking to sell homegrown produce, visit your local farmer's market. Observe and record the going prices, as well as what's hot and what's not.

Research your community and determine your key demographic. Determine what most people will pay for any given plant or crop, and which crops perform better than others. These are just a few hints. It's good to keep in mind that-depending on where you will do business-you may be required to apply for a business permit and register a tax ID number.

2 - Herb garden marketing: one of the latest sensations

Herb gardens are one of latest crazes to sweep the gardening/produce market. Getting starting making money gardening with herbs generally entails producing strategies to sell what you already have. Make a list of the herb-related products that you have, or intend on buying, and figure out how you can convert them into products that actually hold value to customers.

Begin growing herbs around early spring. Start out simple and grow the products that you're the most familiar with. It might even entail micromanaging seedlings for optimum results. Bring customers to your business in a variety of cheap (or even free) ways. Utilize the internet - craigslist is one of the best bets among many these days. In print newspaper ads still garner a lot of attention, and word-of-mouth advertising is also very advantageous when you know the right people.

Additionally, consider the dried herb market. Why dried herbs? Many customers don't purchase fresh herbs, simple because they don't realize that a dried herb is actually the same as a fresh one-only dried, of course. Most herbs look totally different in their dried phase and once they're stuffed in a jar.

3 - Making money gardening with anything from vegetables to fruits and to shrubbery and flowers

There's an exhaustive list of methods where gardening can be profitable. Fruits, veggies, flora and other items sell en masse at farmers' markets. You can acquire anyone from total strangers to friends and family as customers, and you don't even have to have an elaborate setup (like most farmers' market tends to be). Growing specialty flora and general plants usually commands even higher prices-therefore, bigger profits. With the latter, though, the tradeoff is that you'll likely do less business.

4 - Utilize friends' gardens

Making money gardening may be an exciting startup business, but many people just don't have the time (or energy!) to sustain a garden of their own. Or they'll start a garden and eventually realize they don't have time to tend to it-money down the drain. Using someone else's garden will definitely be a time and money saver, but sometimes the owner will want royalties for each of your sales. Nonetheless, it really doesn't matter what your situation is; there are opportunities for practically anyone who loves gardening and/or growing produce.

5 - Your own garden

Not too thrilled with the prospect of using someone else's property to capitalize on your plants? Start your small garden if you've got sufficient time to tend to it. The garden plot really doesn't even have to exceed 20 by 25 feet in size. Even at that size, you can grow a good variety of plants, produce, fruits, flowers, and any mixture of, therein. Just make sure you have a sound business plan, the time and energy to sustain not only the garden but also the business side of your operation, and a big enough customer base to make the whole thing worth it.

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How to Shade Roses and Still Grow Them Successfully?

Having lovely shade trees inside the garden can be a wonderful experience. If you take a walk in the morning and / or evening in your yard you will feel rejuvenated with the fresh fragrances of various flowers in the air. However, it is not very easy to grow flowers, particularly roses, in shady areas because those plants require adequate exposure to sunlight. Nevertheless, if you are ingenious you can successfully shade roses and still have a stunningly beautiful yard. Since you would grow various plants in your garden, it is important to pay attention to the placement of the plants and the shades that they cast. A critical component of growing plants properly is sunshine. If a person considers the example of a forest he would find that the high trees / plants overshadow their shorter counterparts.

The growth of smaller plants is thus stifled by the lack of light under the tall trees. In such conditions, it is very difficult to shade roses and grow them. Hence, even though various wild flowers, bushes, mosses, and ferns grow here and there, there is total absence of rose plants in those regions. A rose plant can enhance the beauty of any garden manifold times. There are different varieties of roses and each type of plant has its own requirement of light. In order to get a bounty of lovely blossoms, a gardener needs to make sure that sufficient sunlight is being received by the rose plants. You must select an appropriate location for your rose flowers so that a minimum of four hours of sunshine is received.

Though it is possible to shade roses and grow them, complete shade is simply not going to work. The rose plants would not survive in such conditions, just like any other plant. If you do not have any option and need to shade roses, trim the trees and the plants in the vicinity so that excess shade is avoided. You can select either climbers or rose bushes but in both cases take into account the period for which the plants would be under the shade. The location of your city also influences the amount of sunshine received throughout the day. Another factor that determines the location of the rose plants is the hue of their blossoms.

An inexperienced gardener can obviously feel confused about all these. In such scenarios, it is better to consult with experienced gardeners and experts in local nurseries. Some of the varieties that can grow in shades are floribundas, shrub roses, and roses. Among floribundas Marmalade Skies, Iceberg, Seafoam, Passionate Kisses, and Gruss an Aachen are very popular. Among the shrub roses Ballerina, Anthony Meilland, Playboy, Mary Rose, and Carefree Wonder are planted extensively. Among the actual roses, Eden Climber, Golden Showers, Zepherine Drouhin, and New Dawn are in vogue. The Zepherine Drouhin is a climber-rose without any thorns and it can be conveniently trellised. Notably, Hybrid Masks are capable of tolerating a significant amount of shade for many hours and these plants are resistant to diseases as well.

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