Rules in Successful Gardening

 If you haven't been successful in your first gardening attempt, there's no reason for you to feel so bad. People fail in gardening for two reasons: either they lack knowledge on gardening or they simply do not have enough interest in pursuing it.

The secret to fun, fulfilling, and successful gardening is faithfully observing basic gardening rules. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned gardener, you need to constantly remind yourself of the basic do's and don'ts of gardening.

Here are some of them:

Plant a garden you can grow

Do not plant or garden more than what you can handle or maintain. Just because you have a huge gardening space around your house doesn't mean that you should use up all that space for a garden. Gardening may be fun but it is not altogether easy. It requires time, patience, and skills.

Also, if you are a beginner, you need to master the basics of gardening and simultaneously put them into practice. This will take up much of your time and having a big garden may not be a good idea at all.

When deciding on the size of your garden, consider the time and gardening skills you have. Make an honest conclusion and then plant a garden that you can really take care of.

Make a schedule for regular maintenance

Sustain your garden's health and beauty by keeping your maintenance schedule. Think of this as drinking antibiotics. You cannot skip a dose or the medicine may not be just as effective.

Your garden is mainly composed of plants that are living things, and just like humans, they need to be taken care of regularly. Skipping or just delaying maintenance activities could create problems in your garden.

Water just enough

Watering your garden a lot does not actually result in a healthier, greener, and more abundant garden. Water your garden just once a week and it will be enough.

You don't have to water your plants by pouring a bucket of water on them. Just give them enough moist that they need for growth. To help you understand this rule better: Some trees need to extend their roots to moist soil.

This activity of finding water for themselves makes their roots grow deeper. If you water them a lot, you deprive these trees of the will and ability to search for water deep in the soil by themselves. Hence, their roots would only grow shallow.

Feed the soil

The soil needs nutrients to help your plants grow healthy. To feed your soil, you need to regularly put mulch, peat moss, or organic topsoil over it. Applying fertilizers is also a must. When using fertilizers, follow the instructions on the label to avoid overusing it, especially if it is non-organic. Too much fertilizer can hurt the soil.

Bond with your garden

Spend time with your garden. If you are really serious about growing a successful garden, visiting it often is a requirement. Walking in your garden in just a few minutes of your day will make you appreciate gardening and nature even more.

Moreover, each of your visits allows you to check up on the growth of your plants or immediately attend to plants needing serious attention or come up with more creative ideas for your garden.

How To Transform Your Garden With Tight Budget

Having a lush garden is what everyone dreams of, but maintaining it costs a lot. Although a splendid garden attracts everyone’s eye and makes the house look more beautiful, it can only be maintained by people with a strong aesthetic sense and the ability to spend more on garden-related products.

Apparently, this is the myth believed by most people. There are in fact several ways to transform a garden and that too staying within your tight budget.

1. Grow Topiary

Growing topiary is a horticultural practice that involves clipping and twisting of twigs and shrubs to create interestingly beautiful shapes out of the live trees and bushes. These shapes add an interesting touch to the decor of your garden.

An ideal border to a garden should be a creative mixture of shape, greenery, foliage, and texture, and the usage of topiary is the ideal way to achieve it. Strongly shaped topiaries would add the ultimate charm to the landscape, boxing up the finale look. The most common shapes are the box, holly, hornbeam, and beach.

2. Include late-season blooms in your garden

Another most economical way of giving your place the perfect look is to add the late-season flowers to it. What is better than to have your garden blooming after everyone’s garden has grown dull. Although having a colorful blooming garden is an amazingly satisfying experience, working on the garden during warm weather is trickier.

Going for the annual flowers is probably your best bet to keep your lawn blooming all around the year. Various types of flowers can be used for this purpose, e.g. cosmos, Tithonia rotundifolia, Nicotiana mutabilis, cornflowers, castor oil plant, and dahlias.

3. Buy garden tools directly from wholesale dealers

With flowers and different accessories coming to the market at reasonable rates, it is hardly anything that will cost you a lot of money. In fact, you have to make sure that you have found out the best places that have gardening tools to offer. If you spend some time and money to make sure that you have found the wholesale dealers, you will be able to take benefit from the following factors:

• You will be eliminating the middle man from this transaction, which means that you will have to pay far less than if you had bought it from a trading agent.
• You will be sure to get the latest and the most reliable tools from the dealer directly. This is quite important. It normally takes a few weeks for the product to come from the wholesale dealer to the merchant, and if you are passionate about your garden and want to get the best things before anyone else, approach the source!
• If you are someone who believes in bulk buying, doing so from the main source will save you a lot. Even if you save just a few dollars on a product, you still save quite a substantial amount after adding it all up.

4. Light up your garden

You can extend the usage of your garden effectively through proper lighting. Of course, the major purpose of lighting is to light the paths and avoid awkward moments when you or your guests tumble into bushes.

However, there is nothing comparable to the drama and ambiance created by a leafless tree when lit with colorful lighting. Its branches will create interesting patterns against the fence. It is a simple, easily achievable exercise, provided that you use some help from a professional technician.

5. Use pots

Normally, containers are troublesome. It is a harsh reality. They not only need regular feeding and watering, but also continuous cleaning and maintenance. However, they add a significant appeal and charm to your garden.

Try to make sure that your existing pots are full of colorful plants all the time. Opt for aluminum or zinc pots if you wish to add a contemporary look to your garden. For a traditional appearance, silvered oak and terracotta are ideal materials.

6. Battle the power of nature

For one thing, you need to understand what kind of plants can thrive in extreme conditions. For example, if you are going to plant a flower breed that requires large amounts of water and very little sunshine, they will obviously fail to survive in extreme heat conditions.

However, if you have the presence of mind to plant flowers that require very less moisture from the ground and extreme sunshine, you can have a lush, green garden even in summer. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that such plants do not require proper care and protection. If you do not employ techniques, such as putting up a fishnet or other shades, they will also, for lack of a better term, feel the heat!

7. Utilize every source

Another way to make sure that your garden is one of the best in the neighborhood is to make your British guile come into play! There are many things around the house that you normally consider as waste, but they can come in very handy provided that you understand how to use them in an inventive way.

If you have discarded tiles lying around in your store, thinking that you might not use them anymore is only limited by your own imagination. You can use these tiles to make a walkway on your lawn. You hardly need to call in someone to do the job since it is something you can do very easily yourself.

All you have to do is to strategically place the tiles on the walkway and add pressure to them from the top using a hammer or any other heavy object. Remember, grass does not mix well with concrete, so using that in your construction of a walkway is a big no-no.

By following these simple tips, you can make sure that your garden is exceptionally attractive and one of the best in the neighborhood and that too without spending too much money!