Creative Gardening

For a lot of people, there just is not enough time throughout the year to plant and grow the garden that they would really like to have. And this is often caused by their location in the country as a lot of parts have snow on the ground for a good bit of the year. But something that not too many people consider is winter gardening. Winter gardening is something that has been done for many years but is not something that comes to mind for many when gardening is mentioned. But, believe it or not, winter gardening happens a lot and it may be even happening right now in your neighbor’s home.

Winter gardening is done basically during the winter months as one may assume and it is done within the comfort of your home or another building that you may have. Some people even have separate storage houses or winter gardening buildings set up so that they may continue to grow their plants all year long. This works out well for those people who have to rely on their own resources to get them through the winter. Winter gardening is what gets a lot of the population who resides in the middle of nowhere through some of the roughest of the winter months.

Cons of Winter Gardening

Unlike during the summer months, there is not enough heat to naturally keep the plants alive and growing. So when attempting winter gardening, one must supplement the natural light and heat that the plants would have during the summer months. The gardener must make sure that he or she completely reads up on winter gardening and must make sure that the right amount of heat and light are given. Too much or not enough of something can make for terrible results and a lot of wasted food and time.

Winter gardening takes not only a lot of energy out of you but also a lot of money out of your wallet sometimes as the energy costs for heating and lighting the building cannot be cheap. But, if you are simply growing a small garden in your home, the expenses of the heat and light may not be so bad and still be beneficial to you. Winter gardening can be not only a good way to supply yourself and other with food, but also a good way to get your exercise in during those cold months when usually you relax more.

You want to do something different with your backyard this year. Rather than just doing the standard garden, you would like to do something more unique. Thus, you have given it some thought, and have decided that water gardening might be a unique concept.

Water Gardening: What is it?

When you tell your family and friends about your plan to attempt water gardening, you are met with confusion. Specifically, water gardening is using water and plants in such a way as to give a garden-like effect. One of the most plausible forms of water gardening is creating a small pond in your backyard and adding plants to it.

The first step in creating a backyard pond is to decide how big a pond you would like to have. To start, it is best if you make a pond that is only slightly larger than a moderately-sized birdbath. It is important to note that the size of the pond can always be made larger later.

The next step is finding a liner for your pond. You cannot simply dig out a section of your backyard, because when you attempt to fill it with water it will seep back into the soil. So, you will need to go to your local garden center and find liner, which generally looks like a small version of a swimming pool.

When you have the liner ready, make sure that it easily fits into the hole that you have made in your lawn. Place it in the hole, and fill it with water. Your small pond is now ready for water gardening! For this part, consider using water lilies.

Water lilies are very lovely and make for beautiful water gardening. Perhaps you have seen water lilies on display at your garden center during the summer months. They have a unique root system which supports itself on the surface of the water, and they are available in a variety of different colors. However, it is important to note that water lilies are delicate and only thrive in warm weather.

Water lilies are just one example of water gardening. Other ideas will depend on several factors, including the kind of water you have in your pond, as well as your overall climate. Something else that you should do is make sure that you properly protect your backyard against mosquitoes, since mosquitoes are drawn to water. You are sure to find the right water gardening materials with the proper research.

One outdoor hobby that can be rewarding is vegetable gardening and the type and amount of plants you tend can help with meal planning throughout the year. Different plants have different times to reach maturity and some will require different spacing, but they all require food, water and air. Making sure they receive all of their needs as well as have a means of being pollinated can insure success in your attempts at vegetable gardening.

One of the common crops for vegetable gardening is sweet corn, planted in rows about 18-inches apart. While they will sometimes grow well in small lots, three rows of about two dozen stalks will insure proper pollination allowing them to grow large, succulent kernels. While corn is a difficult crop to weed, vegetable gardening should be more about the productivity of the plants and less about the manual labor needed to get them to grow.

Many different types of tomatoes can be planted when vegetable gardening and they can be used for sandwiches, made into tomato sauce or eaten fresh off the vine. A traditional blend of fertilizer will usually provide all the food tomatoes require but for a juicier crop when vegetable gardening, they must receive sufficient water and sun to grow into large ripe orbs.

First Time Planters Should Follow Directions

Many seed plants, such as beans, peas and cucumbers all have planting directions on the package and regardless of how easy you think they are to grow, successful vegetable gardening is more than shoving a seed in to the soil and hoping for the best. That is why all seed packages offer tips on how far apart to plant the rows and how deep to plant the seeds. Failing to follow these simple instructions may place the plants too far apart for pollination or too close together to give their root the room they need to grow.

Some types of tomatoes, for example can grow plants over eight-feet tall and three to four feet in diameter. If they are planted less than the recommended four-feet apart, they can be difficult to maintain and end up with one plant choking the other. With vegetable gardening, it is important the plants have the room to grow and less competition for the food in the ground.

Beans, peas, carrots and some of the leafy plants can be arranged when vegetable gardening to offer not only prime growing conditions but also a good looking patch of plants. However, taller plants should be placed further from the line of the sun to insure the shorter plants receive an appropriate amount of sunlight for growth.

Raised bed gardening has several advantages. One of which is less erosion of the soil which you need to grow the plants on. There are many ideas of how to build a raised bed garden and how to maintain it. Raised bed gardening may need a frame that will hold together your garden and keep the plants from spreading around too much.

Building A Frame For Raised Bed Gardening

A frame for raised bed gardening usually consists of a wooden frame that is either bolted together or nailed together. All you will need for a raised bed gardening frame are four planks of wood, preferably untreated to avoid the chemicals from getting to your vegetable plants, four smaller posts of wood to act as corners, some bolts or nails that coordinate with the thickness of your planks and some carpentry tools such as a hammer or a wood drill.

Have the planks you have chosen precut to the sizes that are ideal for building a frame for raised bed gardening. If you have the capacity and the inclination to cut the lumber yourself, make sure that you know what you are doing and have the necessary safety equipment to do so. A rectangular raised bed gardening frame is better than a square one. Make sure that the shorter sides will allow you to reach all parts of the raised bed garden when it is finished. A frame four feet wide and five to seven feet in length will be ideal. Make sure the raised bed gardening frame will fit your assigned garden spot.

On the longer lengths of wood, you can measure where you wish to drill holes for the bolts on the planks and posts. Place a post on both ends and either nail or bolt these on the pieces of lumber with longer length. Attach the shorter pieces of wood pretty much the same way as the longer pieces to make a frame. The posts will act as a support for the nails or bolts to make the frame more stable and sturdy.

It is actually better to use bolts for your raised bed gardening frame. You can loosely screw them when you are still in the process of forming the frame. These can be tightened accordingly when you are satisfied with your frame.

A raised bed gardening frame will help you organize your gardening and help to reduce the pests that may crawl up to your garden.

Indoor gardening is a popular hobby, and one that can actually improve your décor and your health. Glossy green living plants are an unbeatable decorating accessory, whether you favor the bold statement a snake plant makes or the ethereal lightness of an asparagus fern. By surrounding yourself with healthy green plants, you oxygenate your living environment and gain more energy.

Grow Houseplants Organically

You can do some organic indoor gardening with houseplants. Growing organically means you don’t use chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers in your gardening routine. Organic indoor gardening also means not using genetically modified seeds, cuttings, or other elements.

Indoor Gardening The Organic Way

If you’re serious about indoor organic gardening, you might want to purchase Indoor Gardening the Organic Way: How to Create a Natural and Sustaining Environment for Your Houseplants, by Julie Bawden Davis.

The beginning of the book explains how houseplants are grown and shipped to your local garden center. Young house plants are fed the equivalent of a fast food diet to pump them up so they’ll look good in the garden center. When you bring your new house plants home, they may have a bit of a chemical fertilizer hangover at first. Be patient with them, and soon they will become accustomed to an organic lifestyle.

Organic Fertilizers

The best organic fertilizer is homemade compost. Even if you live in an apartment, you can make organic compost for gardening indoors.

Use a coffee can or another metallic container with a tight fitting lid. Make a few ventilation holes around the side of the coffee can with a nail or a drill. Fill the can with alternating layers of crisp, dry ingredients and wet ingredients.

For the crisp, dry ingredients, use dry leaves if you have access to them. Otherwise, you can use shredded newspaper or crumpled up paper bags.

For the wet ingredients, you can use raw vegetable scraps – nothing with oil or butter on it – and coffee grounds.

Keeping the compost can indoors will heat the compost up fast and help process it quickly. You can get the compost to make itself more quickly by stirring it periodically.

When one coffee can is full, start another. Turn the first can upside down every day to mix the ingredients and keep the compost cooking. Soon the first can will be full of rich, crumbly compost – the key to indoor organic gardening.

Mix a little bit of compost in with your plants’ soil to provide long-lasting nutrients. You can grow almost any houseplant with this indoor organic gardening trick.