Gardening Bytes

Grow Your Own Vegetables Infographic

gardengeek — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:00:41 +0000

This UK gardening infographic gives you the lowdown on how to grow your own vegetable garden. Find out what the most typical vegetables are grown in a home garden, methods of growing vegetables, and statistics for UK gardening.

Click on the image below to get a close up look at the full sized gardening infographic.

Grow your own infographic from LoveTheGarden.com

Deer Resistant Groundcovers

gardengeek — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:00:03 +0000

Deer will eat just about anything if they are hungry enough, so be prepared to see nibbles on your plants if food is scare. Here are some plants and shrubs that will help keep the deer from being interested in eating them. Low growing heathers are a good choice because they always look good with only a trim of old flowers off the stems, they tend to be strong growing shrubs. Kramer’s Rote is a beautiful green leaf heather with abundant pink and cream flowers that looks good all year long and grows about a foot tall and twice as wide. Catnip may float cat’s boats but deer do not like the aroma of this plant. Blue Wonder is a dwarf catnip that grows about a foot tall. Periwinkle (Vinca minor) is another choice for planting that deters deer and always looks good in the garden. Lilyturf (Liriope spicata) is an ornamental grass that grows only 1 inch high and produces a spikey flower when blooming. Low growing herbs such as Thyme are a good choice for gardens and less appealing to Deer. Wooley Thyme (creeping thyme) is a good choice for a thicker version of thyme with a wooley texture that forms a wide mat when growing, keeping weeds down and looking attractive beneath the base of other plants. Lambs Ear Silver Carpet is a perfect low growing ground cover, give it a lot of room to grow. This non-flowering Lambs Ear creates a thick carpet of silvery shaped leaves that crowds out weeds and makes a great easy care groundcover for hard to plant areas.

Perennial Ground Covers For Shady Locations

gardengeek — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:00:16 +0000

Ground covers for shade are sometimes harder to come by, shade can be a difficult place for some plants to survive. Shade can be dry, such as under trees, or a damper environment, such as under large ferns. Keep your perennials planted in shade watered or you may notice a decrease in blooming. Provide extra water for plants near and under trees since trees use up great quantities of water. If plants are long and leggy they may have difficulty thriving in a tree’s shade. Check with your local nursery to see if the perennial shade plants you are interested in are hardy in your region.

This plant list is for shade and partial shade plants.

Ajuga
Alchemilla
Anemone
Astilbe
Brunnera
Convallaria
Cornus
Dicentra
Digitalis
Epimedium
Euonymus
Euphorbia
Ferns
Galium
Gaultheria
Geranium
Hedera
Hellebore
Heuchera
Hosta
Hypericum
Lamium
Lathyrus
Leptinella
Linnaea
Liriope
Meehania
Omphalodes
Oxalis
Phlox
Pulmonaria
Saxifraga
Symphytum
Vinca
Viola
Sedum

Unique Plants For Your Garden: Angel’s Trumpet

gardengeek — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:00:40 +0000

Brugmansia, also known as Angel’s Trumpets, is a striking flowering plant that grows to the size of a small tree. The plant has large leaves, a woody stem and huge dramatic pendulous tubular flowers in beautiful colors. Angels Trumpet are long lived plants that grow to 6 to 20 feet tall. Angel’s Trumpet flowers may be single or double and come in yellow, pink, white, orange or red, with a faint scent of lemon most noticeable in early evening. Angel’s Trumpet is a tropical plant that does best in frost-free climates and should be planted in fertile, moist, well-drained soil, in part shade to full sun. For those living on the coast I have seen specimens grow very well in the coastal climate so look for this plant in your local nursery. Angel’s Trumpet can be used as a wonderful focal point in your garden. Every part of the Angel’s Trumpet is highly poisonious if ingested to humans and animals so use caution when including this plant in your garden.

Unique Plants For Your Garden: Italian Arum

gardengeek — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:00:46 +0000

Italian Arum (Arum italicum) is a sturdy, easy to grow perennial garden plant with striking marbled green leaves and bright orange red berries in winter. Arum resembles the Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant. Italian Arum grows in partial to full shade and prefers moist but well-drained soil. These corms are easy to grow and do best in woodland areas, often forming colonies over time. In may green spathes grow one to one and a half feet tall, hosting modest but unusual flowers that appear in May, then the leaves die back in summer to reappear in fall. The real show stopper is the foot tall stems that features bright red 3-inch clusters of berries in winter. Italian Arum works well surrounding the shady base of trees or in shady parts of your yard, and is a deer-resistant plant. Italian Arum is a Mediterranean plant that is hardy in winter through most of zone 6. Italian Arum is poisonous when eaten, it is best to monitor children around these plants. To propogate from the Italian Arum colony divide corms in the summer.

Unique Plants For Your Garden: Beautyberry

gardengeek — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:00:54 +0000

Beautyberry (Callicarpa) is a woody shrub or tree that hosts tightly clustered magenta colored berries on bare stems in winter, making this a standout plant for cold months in the garden. Beautyberry prefers to be planted in sun or light shade as long as it has well-drained soil. Beautyberry flowers in June through August then fruits form in September, the leaves drop, and the brilliant colored berries line up along the bare stems of the shrub, making for a lovely winter display. Beautyberry is a native southeastern American plant that can reach 3 to 6 feet in height. Interestingly enough beautyberry is a natural insect repellent, simply rub leaves on the skin to chase away pests. Planting a few of these shrubs in your garden may help with keeping pesky mosquitoes out of your garden. Beautyberry berries are a source of survival food for birds in winter although they are not their first choice due to the astringent flavor of the berries. Beautyberry shrubs will provide bright color and shape to your winter garden.

Unique Plants For Your Garden: Thanksgiving Cactus

gardengeek — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:00:42 +0000

Thanksgiving Cactus (Schlumbergera) is an unusual looking houseplant originally from Brazil that blooms in late fall. The stems of the plant are segmented and flat and has brightly colored pink, yellow, white, red, orange, pink, yellow, or purple flowers on the end of the stems. The Thanksgiving Cactus prefers moderate room humidity and bright indirect light. When ready to bloom do not move the plant from it’s location. Care for blooming is similar to the Poinsettia plant, the Thanksgiving Cactus requires at least eight days with 16 hours of darkness at 61 degrees should cause flower buds to form. The Thanksgiving Cactus can be keep indoors at the temperatures mentioned below, or left outdoors in a shady location starting in fall to help set flowers, then brought back in before the first frost. To set buds in time for the holidays the Thanksgiving Cactus needs cool temps of 60-65 degrees during the day and 45-55 degrees during the night. This plant does not like wet feet, water the soil so it is evenly moist during the growing season then water sparingly the rest of the year until new growth appears in spring. The plant can be damaged by over or underwatering, or too much light. Propagate Thanksgiving Cactus by twisting off a stem segment in spring and place it upright in moistened perlite.

Gardening Article: Bringing Your Gardening Inside

gardengeek — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:00:58 +0000

Here’s a neat little project that you can do to bring a taste of your gardening inside. While silk and artificial flowers can certainly brighten up a room, there is really nothing that can compare to a real flower garden. Would you be interested in growing a small one of these inside your home? Read on to see if you have the specific requirements necessary to put one of these in place. If not, there is an alternative mentioned at the bottom of this article.

House Requirements

You’ll have to have some sort of half wall or wall that has an opening in it. A half wall is a wall that only goes up partway from the wall to the ceiling. This wall will have to be as thick as the rest of the walls in your home.

Many homes have this type of wall in the front hall, while an opening in a wall is usually placed between a kitchen and dining room. These walls are often used as a ledge and can often end up as a dumping ground for papers and such. You can transform this wall from a ledge to a garden very easily.

Hire A Renovator

This won’t cost much. All that needs to get done is a hole installed into this ledge. A big rectangular hole that can accomodate a large plant tray. To envision this, imagine looking down at your wall from above. There will be a hole in the shape of a rectangle inside it.

Then you will need to get your renovator to build a ledge inside the wall about 6″ down from the top of the hole. This ledge will hold up a planter box and will also prevent any possible damage to the wall underneath it.

This is a view of what it would look like inside the wall.

This is an example of a planter tray you could fit into this wall.

Whenever you plan on cutting open a wall, for any reason, make sure that you are working with a professional that knows what he is doing! You certainly don’t want to end up with a wire being cut behind the wall or any other type of damage!

You can pick out any plants or flowers you want for this indoor gardening project based on how much sunlight the area receives.

If you don’t have a half wall in your home or a wall with a hole in it, you can get a wooden planter made that looks like a half wall and place it between two open concept rooms or right up against a wall. Any carpenter can make one up for you at little cost. You can even get a designer plant holder made that runs along the length of a wall and then continues around a corner.

Imagine opening your front door every day to a garden in your home! It’s time to grow some real plants inside! Move your silk and artificial flowers over to your bathroom that receives no sunlight at all and grow some real flowers in your kitchen, hallway or any other room that has a half wall and available sunlight.

About the author: Robert works for silkflowerswarehouse.com, a company that specializes in artificial flowers. Robert is a gardener and writer who enjoys writing about gardening.

Gardening Article: How to Grow Garlic

gardengeek — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:00:45 +0000

Garlic has some great characteristics, for one it’s easy to grow and doesn’t require special treatment and secondly all varieties are delicious, offering a far superior taste to shop bought garlic. With so many varieties available, I love growing a few of each type every year so my family and I can enjoy the subtle differences in flavour at every meal. Below you’ll find a few of my personal recommendations and a step by step guide of how to grow and when to harvest your garlic yields.

Garlic is one of the easiest crops to grow and because of its simplicity you know it’s always going to be a great crop.

Recommended Varieties

• ‘Solent Wight’
• ‘Purple Wight’
• ‘Albigensian Wight’
• Elephant garlic

The best time to plant garlic is autumn as the crops benefit from the cold weather that helps encourage a hearty bulb formation. I would suggest buying your early autumn varieties from garden centres or specialist growers, but not from the supermarket. This is really important as shop bought garlics are more than likely to have been grown abroad. If that is the case that variety is sure to have a difficult time trying to grow in the UK climate.

How To Grow Garlic

1. Split up the bulbs into individual cloves and plant with the pointed end uppermost

2. Plant approximately 2.5cm-5cm deep and 15cm apart

3. If your soil is heavy clay and in time gets waterlogged, wait until February to plant your bulbs or alternatively add horticultural sand

4. In spring add a nitrogen feed to encourage growth

5. Garlic likes plenty of water during the growing period, but reduce the amount of watering from about May

Notes

• If you’ve planted your garlic cloves in October/November you should begin to see shoots by January.

• In spring, you may want to use a high nitrogen feed or small application of sulphur as this can encourage good growth.

• You will notice the bulbs have finished growing when the foliage begins to die back.

Harvesting

Harvesting should take place between May and June when the foliage has almost completely yellowed and withered. When harvesting you want to choose a day when the weather is dry as you will be laying out your yields to dry them out for a couple of days. If it does begin to rain move the lifted bulbs into a greenhouse or cold frame.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia public domain image

About the author: Mr McGregor is a guest writer for the popular garden centre Notcutts and has been spreading his horticultural experiences to his loyal readers. Mr. McGregor is a talented gardener and through his blog he takes his readers on a journey to self sufficiency, changing the way they view their gardens.

Gardening Article: Store Up On Eco-Logs For The Winter By Recycling Autumn Leaves

gardengeek — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:00:26 +0000

Autumn is a fantastic season to see nature’s awesome beauty as green leaves turn all shades of red, orange and yellow before falling to the floor in a seemingly endless cavalcade. It’s also a great opportunity to make the most of nature’s bounty by turning those very same leaves – which may otherwise be bound for landfill – into carbon neutral eco-logs for the winter season.

So this year rather than simply raking up those leaves and bagging them up into refuse sacks, do something with them which is both economical and carbon neutral. The trick is to get your hands on a logmaker which are available from good garden centres and online stories specialising in environmentally friendly goods. These simple tools can turn that mound of rotting leaves into eco-fuel by the simple process of compacting them.

Logmakers come in two varieties: dry and wet. Dry logmakers turn dry leaves (and other dry household and garden waste) into perfectly shaped logs, whereas wet logmakers are used to turn wet leaves into them. You simply insert the leaves into the logmaker, push the plunger down so the waste is compacted (and the excess water removed) and, hey presto, you have yourself an eco-log which is perfect for throwing on the fire, stove, chiminea or firebowl.

The average tree could provide enough logs for quite a few fires over the winter, which will certainly help to save a few pennies and a few trips to the garden centre to stock up on other types of logs. Also as the carbon emitted from the logs when burnt is equal to the amount they absorbed before the fell from the tree the logs are completely carbon-neutral. Logs you buy from the garden centre or supermarket may have been chopped down and transported from hundreds of miles away, which leaves a pretty big carbon footprint.

As already mentioned above logmakers are not restricted to autumn leaves, but can be used to recycle all manner of household waste (leftover food, paper, cardboard etc) and other garden waste throughout the year – so you can make the use of them year round to provide fuel for your fire.

DIY The Dry Logmaker Video

About the author: Lewis is an outdoor living eco-living enthusiast and writes for Chiminea UK.