Multiply Your Plants With Propagation

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Multiply Your Plants With Propagation

Did you know that you can grow an entire garden starting with just one plant? It’s true. By buying and caring for just one small plant, over time and with the proper care, you can end up with many, many more… all at no additional cost. It’s done with techniques known as propogation, and dividing.

Many common indoor and outdoor plants can be multiplied easily using basic dividing and propogation techniques. And once you know how it’s done, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing this before now.

Dividing a plant simply means to break it up into smaller pieces. This is often done when a plant becomes too large for a container it’s growing in, or too large for the garden space it’s planted in. You can divide a plant almost anytime though, as long as it is healthy and not too small.
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The Beauty of Topiary Gardening

The Beauty of Topiary Gardening

The term topiary?which is the practice and art of pruning and shaping trees and shrubs to create living sculptures?comes from the Greek word meaning ?places?. Gardeners who specialize in topiary choose evergreen plants with small needles and leaves, dense foliage and a relatively compact growth habit.

Wire frames or cages are sometimes used to provide a template for the design and add support to the finished product. Topiary sizes range from small ball-shaped ivy plants grown in six-inch pots to large privet hedges carefully trimmed into animal or human forms. Not for the beginning gardener with rare exceptions, practice of topiary demands a steady hand, perseverance and the willingness and ability to keep the topiary plant trimmed to the desired shape.

The earliest European topiaries date from the time of ancient Rome. After some years spent in obscurity, they regained popularity in the 16th century, when they began showing up in multiple forms in the formal terraced gardens and parterres of wealthy European families, and as single objects in smaller cottage gardens of the less affluent.
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Tips to Grow Your Own Plants from Seed

Tips to Grow Your Own Plants from Seed

One of the most rewarding parts of gardening is to start something beautiful completely from scratch. And while you can do this by purchasing a starter seedling plant, it’s actually quite easy to grow many plants and flowers from seeds too.

Many popular flowers and plants grow easily from seeds, and once you have at least one growing you can often collect the seeds each year and start new plants from them as often as you’d like. There are various ways to grow plants from seeds, and here we’ll look at some of the most common.

Keep in mind that you can buy seeds from a store if you don’t have any plants to harvest them from to start with.
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Pruning and Shaping Trees and Bushes Creatively

Pruning and Shaping Trees and Bushes Creatively

Many inexperienced gardeners are hesitant to prune or clip back branches on the trees and bushes in their yards, because they don’t know it’s quite easy to do, and they don’t realize it’s very helpful for the grow and vitality of the plants too.

Trimming and pruning has practical and safety purposes first of all. If a tree branch is dead, you risk having it fall on your roof, a car, or even a person. So trimming it off is the safest thing to do. The same applies to bushes… if you have one with branches sneaking into your rain spouts, the best option is to trim those before they create damages that could lead to further problems.

Trimming and pruning will also allow you to shape your bushes and trees nicely though. Some people don’t like a manicured, neatly trimmed look however, and would rather keep everything as natural looking as possible. Unfortunately if you don’t trim and shape a bush or tree in its younger years, it can have growth problems and safety issues as it matures.
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Tips to Help With Shopping for Plants

Tips to Help With Shopping for Plants

When shopping for plants, sometimes things can become a bit confusing. It’s not uncommong to come home with too much or too little, and you might even find that you purchased things which weren’t overly compatible either. Then of course, there is the quality of the plants themselves… did you pick a dud that can’t be revived, or did you pick a very slow growing plant while it’s too small for your tastes and needs?

While none of us is perfect, there are some things you can do to help make your plant shopping trips more productive, so we’ll create a general checklist for you which may help.

1. Where do you intend to put the new plants? If you’re shopping for new plants which will be kept in pots inside your house, try to decide where you think the new plants will actually reside. This will allow you to know how much or how little sunlight that specific place in your home has available.
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Sprinklers, Soakers and Drip Systems

Sprinklers, Soakers and Drip Systems

Whether you’re landscaping a yard or you’re creating brand new flower beds, one of the basic things you should plan for and decide in advance is what type of watering system you’ll use. Many new gardeners are so happy to have new plants and garden supplies, that they simply start putting everything into the ground without much thought about how well the location and preparation will work for them in future months or years. When this happens though, watering can become a real chore over time if it hasn’t been prepared for in advance.

Some flower bed locations for instance, may not be easily accessible by your garden hose. If this is the case, you’ll need to find alternative ways to water the flowers in that bed if there isn’t enough natural rainfall to take care of the job for you. The same applies to landscaping too though: Some parts of your yard might not be easy to access with a standard water hose, and the grass in that area could shrivel up and die if you don’t carry buckets out to it regularly.

An excellent way to solve this problem though, and help save on your home water bill at the same time, is to install an automated or semi-automated watering system in your yard or garden bed areas. Here we’ll look at three popular options:
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Natural Pest and Insect Control in your Garden: Organic is Effective

Natural Pest and Insect Control in your Garden: Organic is Effective

Unfortunately, our gardens abound with pests as often as they abound with flowers and vegetables. However, you don?t have to resort to chemical means to get rid of the little insect beasties that want to dine on your plants. For every pest, there?s a natural pest control solution, one that doesn?t require inundating your garden environment with poisonous pesticides. And there?s more good news: natural pest control costs less than pesticides and is much safer for your garden, your pets, children, wildlife and the environment.
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Did you know that each year, North Americans use approximately 136 million pounds of pesticides on lawns and gardens, and inside the home? North American homeowners actually use almost three times the amount of pesticides that farmers use. Most of the wildlife pest poisonings that occur?and most of the surface water contamination from pesticides?come from single family homes.

As we look to more environmentally friendly solutions to rid our lawns and gardens of pesky insects, enthusiastic gardeners should be especially careful to use control methods that are not only effective but kind to Mother Earth and the air that we breathe.
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How to Get Flower Seeds and Cuttings for Little to No Cost

How to Get Flower Seeds and Cuttings for Little to No Cost

Did you know there are simple and easy ways to get most - or even sometimes all - of the plants and seeds you want completely free? It’s true. It takes a little work on your end, but if you like to try out a variety of different plants or you love starting new flowers and plants from seeds, then you should learn more about seed and plant exchanges.

A seed exchange is easiest to find, and there are even various groups and communities around the Internet which are devoted to this garden related hobby. With seed exchanges, when someone has extra flower and plant seeds, they offer to trade them for something else. Usually the post will state what kinds of seeds they have, and what kinds of seeds they’re wanting to trade for.

If you have the seeds wanted, and you want what they’re offering, you contact them and make arrangements to send your seeds to them in the mail, and they’ll send thiers to you.
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Water Garden Plant Ideas

Water Garden Plant Ideas

When you’re ready to create a lush water garden in your own yard… it doesn’t matter whether you’re creating a small container based water garden or you’re putting in a full fledged garden pond: One of the biggest problems you’ll have is that there are so many gorgeous plants you can choose from to put in it.

Water garden plants are simply beautiful. Almost always lush and colorful, they come in all shapes, sizes and textures. And you’ll quickly find that you’re able to try new plants and flowers in your water garden, that you’ve never been able to try growing before. So a whole new world of gardening opens up to you.

Everyone has to start somewhere of course, so here we’ll look at several different types of water garden plants that you might like to try growing:
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A Beginners Guide to Plant Disease

A Beginners Guide to Plant Disease

Plant diseases are caused by organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. While disease-resistant plant strains are available for almost any species of plant today, plant diseases still occur in even the best gardens. Once plant infections become well established, they can be extremely difficult to control, so it is wise to monitor your plants frequently for signs of problems.

Removing a section of a plant or sometimes even the entire plant may be necessary to keep diseases in check. If the entire plant must go, gardeners should also replace the topsoil as it may be infected as well.

Here are a few common plant diseases and the methods used to treat them:
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