Container Gardening Tips for Newbies

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. You can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colorful pots of annuals, or fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you'll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another. Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants. Find out more at EASY GARDENING

Looking for a great site?

If you love Gardening as much as I do, you need to check out a great new web site "Easy Gardening".  Everything you need to know, just click on this link to be instantly transported there!

Vegetable Garden Secrets!

So If you've read this blog a while you know that I am way into my plants. I've found some one who is like about his vegetable garden.
He is Frank Rockwell and he has been way into vegetable gardening for over 30 years. I've He has so many ideas and insights into gardens that I've never heard before. He has tips on everything, for instance:

• Mulching: He has "eight benefits of mulching" to share.
• Techniques on Drainage
• Picking the right spot for a vegetable garden
• Working with clay soil.
• Repelling worms and pest.
• The best seeds and where to get them.
• The 4 rules of crop rotation

I'll tell you it just goes on, this guy knows everything! He's got a great personality too. His website is cute. He talks about how kids love to see his vegetables and how much he likes that. Explaining how he has manged to get gardening down to such a simple science, he says: "Frankly, I'm cheap... I'm lazy... and to tell the truth... I ain't that bright!"
(D'oh!... I hope my wife isn't going to read this!)"

Check if out if you get the chance!: Home Vegetable Garden Secrets

The Gardener's Handbook: "And Other Plants"

I am the type who has to go read and research everything. "Looking into" things is a hobby of mine. So when my plants look a little off or a brown spot develops I go right to my plant library and start looking. Of course, there is the internet , where all answers live. Sometimes though I can't just "find" my answer. For instance right now I have some brown spots and leaf wilt that could be a couple of different things. It makes me wish I had grown up gardening or that I was a farm girl. I hate not knowing the answer. I wish I had some all knowing master gardener friend who would tell me what to do. I wish there really were a "plant Doctor" and that he would come right out!

I am a city girl and was always an apartment dweller. What I know i picked up throughout the years. I was not raised gardening But lately I can't stay out of the dirt. This excerpt sums it up:


The Gardener's Handbook: "And Other Plants"
The Simple Pleasures Of Flowers
And Other Plants

A flower garden provides you with a magnificent retreat where you can relax after a stressful day. Similarly, it adds beauty and value to your home when done right.

Not only that, you can actually take care of problem areas in your yard with a little creativity and a few flowers, shrubs, and trees.

Whether you are planting a flower garden or a vegetable garden, planting trees or strawberries, from my gardening and planting tips you will discover that one of the great satisfactions of gardening is just getting out there and getting your hands dirty.

Gardening is a great activity for reducing anxiety and reducing stress as you feel yourself getting closer to nature."

Ferns

I have never had success with ferns. It really annoys me. I mean they grow naturally on the forrest floor and do not seem to be very fragile in nature. They're like a dime a dozen around here. Not in my house though. For some reason they just brown and keel over when I get near. I bought a beautiful "Squirrels Foot Fern" (they have little fuzzy brown shoots that grow on the bottom)- it was a real splurge, it wasn't marked down or anything. Within two weeks the leaves started to go. I misted it for while and when it still declined I moved it to the basement so it was in a humid environment. I checked the Internet, my books, my friends, the guy at a local nursery, they all gave me usual fern advice. Keep them in a humid environment, spray them, they like it cooler, etc. Nothing worked! The poor thing died a slow death. My mother gave me one of those great ferns in a hanging basket and advised me to hang it in my bathroom with low light. Dead. There is one growing outside, under my porch. I stay away from it and it comes back year after year.
Its like knowing someone doesn't like you and not being able to figure out why. I tried to let the "squirrels foot" see that all my other plants like me and appreciate my care, he didn't see it. I am understanding too. I really have no problem adjusting things to help a plant be comfortable. If they want to northern light, fine, a little afternoon sun, no problem. I can water once a week or twice, its all right. I watch for who prefers to be alone and who likes company. My african violet does better near the TV- I can deal with that. But there is no communicating with a fern once it has given up. They really just kind of surrender and can't be rallied. I don't give up that easy and I wish my plant wouldn't either.

Terrocotta or Plastic Pots?

I do believe that once you get to a big pot size, say over 10", plastic is better. I know, I know. I dislike plastic in general. It ruined soda, has chemicals, doesn't decompose. I know.
Here's my argument: The big terracotta pots have there own needs. They want water and have temperature issues. The pot will actually absorb the water and take it from the soil and the plant. I am challenged with the task of keeping the pot watered enough that the plant gets what it needs. I tend to be a once a week waterer. I keep most of my plants in a room with my turtle tank so the room is pretty humid. The big pots will still dry out though. So the watering schedule can be affected. It is a little much to be taking care of a pot too. Soaking the pot becomes an issue when they are heavy. It makes it difficult when there is water left in the saucer that must be emptied. I always try not to move the climbing plants too often. They always loses leaves and break when you move them. The porous pots will also absorb the minerals from foods. This makes me worry that the plant might be shortchanged. I am always worried about over feeding and underfeeding.
That is why plastic is better for big plants. Sometimes it is easier to just deal with the plant alone. Once you get into the big sizes plants have so much to say on there own, the terracotta pots just hold up the conversation.

Houseplant Information

I like to pretend that I came by green thumb naturally; that I just look at a plant and it grows by feet. This isn't true. Actually I work pretty hard at my collection. I research all the time and I am vigilant in my look out for bugs and pests and leaf droop etc. I once had a spider mite infestation and I lost a couple of good specimen. I am still annoyed at the lady who gave me that plant. It was a sweet potato vine that brought the bugs in and my first lesson in infestations and the need for a speedy reaction. I have an old Readers Digest book collection that I find very informative. I bought it at a garage sale. It is one of the those mail order things where they would have sent someone binders and pages over a period of time. Lucky for me whoever bought it originally really put it together right and took care of it. Unfortunately they did it twenty-five years ago so there are some gaps in knowledge. Also houseplants change, evolve go in and out of favor etc. and I'll run into some plants that they just didn't list in the series.
Sometimes I can search a gardening forum but, they can be hard to navigate or just suck you in and cost time. I find that outside gardening prompts a lot more discussion than houseplants too. So my next best resource is Houseplant Secrets (How To Care For Any Type Of House Plant. Answers To 1001 Questions). I like having the instant information right on my desktop.
With the case of the Sweet Potato Vine, everything seemed fine at first. Then it started dropping leaves, which I figured was a light or watering issue. Almost overnight the plant was almost bare and a few others in the house started to drop leaves too. In less than a week everyone in the vines vicinity was showing signs. I ended up throwing it out and managed to save everyone else. Since then, I quarantine any new plant. I keep it away from everybody for a month or so and watch for signs that something is wrong before I put it in general population. You can't trust anyone!