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Plan Before Starting A Flower Garden
from:Flower gardening can be an extremely rewarding hobby. But it is a hobby that requires work and dedication. Following a few flower gardening tips will ensure that you enjoy yourself, product a healthy flower garden, and that you avoid any harm to natural ecosystems.
Among their flower gardening tips, many expert gardeners recommend keeping a gardening journal in which the first entry is a sketch or diagram of your new gardening project. Your diagram should show where you're going to place your garden, the shape of your garden, and a rough idea of what flowers you're going to plant and in what arrangement. Then, as time goes by, you can write down how successful (or unsuccessful) you were with certain flowers and include pictures of your garden and any individual flowers.
You'll be astonished at how far a little planning can go. If you do your homework and follow some useful flower gardening tips found in garden catalogs and guides, you can have a garden displaying color in all seasons. All you have to do is mix and match early-season bloomers, mid-season bloomers and late bloomers. Plant early blooming perennials in a group next to a group of later bloomers, between groups of perennials, plant groups of bulbs. The leaves of perennials can also be used to give color to your garden, once all flowers have finished blooming. Indeed, green is not the only color leaves come in. Pay attention to those plants whose leaves are burgundy or silver-like, and use them as space fillers when flowers are not in bloom.
Make sure you know what hardiness zone you're in. The USDA has divided the US and lower Canada into hardiness zones based on a 10 degree Fahrenheit difference in average minimum temperature. Certain plants can only be grown in certain hardiness zones. This information is usually located on seed packets or flower guides. Make sure you buy appropriate plants for your zone.
You can actually start your gardening a little earlier than when you should if you start plants from seeds in the house. Jiffy pots made of compressed peat moss are handy. You put starting mix or potting soil, let the plants grow for a few weeks in sunlight (until they reach about 4 inches) and then put outside. The jiffy pots will rot and the plant roots will grow into the soil. Also check the back of seed packages for flower gardening tips and information on when to plant seeds in your area, how to plant them and how close to sow the seeds. If you get seedlings, be prepared to have to put them in the ground as soon as possible.
You've done your research, you've written in your journal, you've bought your plants. When planting, it's a good idea to place smaller plants up front and the larger ones in the back. Make sure your flowers are about 3 feet away from any buildings or fences, 20 feet away from large trees and 5 feet away from any large bush. Also make sure to avoid shallow, rocky soil, any areas where water tends to stand, and steep slopes.
After you've planted your flowers, lay down some mulch (compost that isn't completely decayed) over the soil but make sure it doesn't touch the stems of your plants. As with all organic matter, mulch adds nutrients to the soil, blocks the growth of weeds, maintains a stable soil temperature and increases the soil's water retaining capacity. Keeping a constant 2 to 3 inches of mulch around your plants in the growing season is a good idea. As an added bonus, you could place layers of damp newspaper under the mulch to block the growth of weeds, which could be very detrimental to your flowers.
Some gardeners will use chemical pesticides and other highly synthetic substances to create a successful garden. The majority of gardeners, however, will tell you that organic gardening is the way to go. No chemical pesticides, just a focus on improving soil quality and using plants wisely. Indeed, there are some plants that, when grown in combination, can actually benefit the garden (like rose and garlic).
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