Gardening is a fun and interesting hobby that has the potential to improve the life of you, your family, or your business. Don’t waste money on equipment, plants or seeds without first figuring out exactly what you need.
Clay soil makes working with a shovel difficult. The clay is hard and sticks to the shovel. To make working in clay easier, rub the shovel with floor or car wax and then buff it with a cloth. This causes the clay to slide rather than stick, and prevents rust as a side effect.
Select plants that produce a relatively high yield. In most circumstances, a cold-tolerant or disease-resistant hybrid will have a higher yield when compared to a more traditional variety.
The first thing you can do to ward off garden pests is to ensure you are using healthy soil in your garden. Healthier plants are stronger, which in turn can help the plants you grow to become more resistant to disease and bugs that can harm them. Begin with a high-quality soil with less chemicals to avoid salt accumulation, and you give your garden an excellent chance of growing healthy plants.
Before you begin to plant your garden you will need to check the soil. Pay a small fee to have your soil analyzed, and you’ll be glad that you did when you understand what nutrients your soil is lacking. Many Cooperative Extension offices will provide this service, and it is well worth knowing exactly what the soil needs to avoid ruining a crop or two.
All plants need an adequate supply of carbon dioxide in order to thrive. A major portion of plants grow their best in an environment with a saturated level of CO2. The best way to expose your plants to a high level of carbon dioxide is by growing them in a greenhouse. For the best growing conditions you should keep the CO2 levels high.
If you want to grow vegetables in you backyard, it is vital that you place them in an area where they could get roughly six hours of sun on a daily basis. Most vegetables need that much sun to grow rapidly and successfully. Some flowers have the same requirement for growth.
Invest in a kneeling stool, and a wheelbarrow to work in the garden. You can make gardening much more comfortable on your knees by using a portable garden stool. In addition, maintaining a garden typically means moving around heavy dirt and other objects, which makes buying a wheelbarrow a very smart purchase.
If little ones live in your home, consider including everbearing strawberries in the garden plot. Your children will enjoy being able to pick strawberries and will be ready to help you if they can get something sweet to eat.
Use equal parts dried and green plant material for your own compost. Examples of green plant material are spent flowers, fruit and vegetable waste, grass clippings, weeds, and leaves. Dried plant materials are things like shredded newspaper, cardboard, sawdust, straw, and any cut up wood materials. Never use ashes, meat, charcoal, diseased plants or carnivorous animal manure in your compost pile.
A beer trap can help to eradicate slugs. Bury a jar in the garden with it’s mouth open and level to the ground. Pour enough beer into the jar to fill it below an inch from the top. Slugs will crawl into the jar to get the beer and not be able to get out again.
If you’d like to create a raised bed, use materials like brick, stone, or untreated wood. If you are to use wood, you should make sure that the wood is not treated and is also naturally rot resistant. Several species of trees yield suitable wood. Locust, cypress, and cedar are among the more commonly used rot resitent woods. Treated wood can leach chemicals into any soil it rests against, so don’t use it in a garden with vegetables. In the event your vegetable garden already has treated wood as part of its enclosure, consider replacing it, or painting it, or wrapping the treated wood in some protective covering. Keep in mind that if any of the untreated wood is below the ground, you should dig it up to make sure that you completely protect your vegetable garden from the chemicals in the treated wood.
It is a good idea to get organic garden certification so as to reaffirm your claims that your products really are organic. This should boost your sales while proving to your customers that they are getting healthy products.
Organic gardening can be more difficult than horticulture with chemicals, but the end result makes it worth it. While chemical-based gardening products make bold claims, it is hard to dispute that organic gardening consistently produces superior results.
All it takes is a little knowledge, a bit of work, and a whole lot of patience. Your efforts will pay off when you experience the joy of watching something that you created grow.