Gardening Tips and Care
Discover how to grow and maintain a garden with a few simple and well used gardening tips.
Here are some easy and basic tips to help you learn how to keep your gardens looking healthy, attractive, easily maintained, and more productive.
- Deadheading
- Dividing
- Pinching out tops
- Fertilizing
- Weeding
- Watering
- Not using chemicals!
- Wildlife and Birds
The Art of Dead Heading
Keep borders tidy and free from dried out wilting leaves and flowers. Dead heading is the process of taking off flower heads that have died to encourage plants to flower for a longer period during the season. There are many perennials that get some annual benefit from you spending a bit of time to remove spent blooms and flower heads, such as dahlias and geraniums.
Pinching Out
Some plants respond to their tops being pinched out by producing a spurt of new growth. This is especially true of some species such as Coleus. Pinching out will make the plant become bushier followed by the production of more blooms during the growing season. In fact, Fuchsias can be inclined to get rather leggy if they are not pinched out, and you will definitely see some improvement if you just pinch a few of the tops out.
Light Fertilizing
If you apply a small amount of fertiliser it will give a further boost to your plants growth and vegetation. You may already water your garden frequently; you also have to ensure you fertilize it regularly to prevent depletion of nutrients.
A regular schedule of applying liquid fertilizer every two weeks can be more beneficial if you use fertilizer granules as they are much more easily absorbed by plant foliage. Container plants do show considerable improvement in their health even when you apply half the recommended strength of liquid fertiliser solution at these two week periods through the growing season.
Weeding
This is one of the most important and also the best ways to preserve the health and beauty of your garden and plants.
If you remember that weeds are competing with your plants for both nutrients and for moisture, you’ll see why this is so important. If the weeds are young and not close to producing seeds, you can leave them on the bed to rot down as additional mulch.
I don’t recommend using a weed killer as I prefer to see organic gardening to be practiced, but if you do use weed killer wick applicators are much preferred over a spray. A wick applicator will prevent your lovely plants and flowers from getting some spray-drift which will no doubt kill them.
Watering
One of the best tips in relation to the task of watering a garden is to make sure you do provide it with a comprehensive soaking once every week. Make sure while you are watering that you don’t cause run-off as it may lead to soil erosion. If you practice deep watering methods it will undoubtedly encourage growth from the deeper roots and deep roots are in a better health to withstand any dry spells of weather.
Don’t Use Chemicals!
Chemicals and pesticides are very dangerous to all humans, wildlife, and pets. Chemicals will often kill all natural predators of garden pests that you don’t want, so it’s good advice to avoid the use of chemicals if at all possible. Organic alternatives often work as well as the chemical ones do, and they are less harmful to yourself and the environment we all live in.
If you try to follow these simple gardening tips, you’ll find your garden soon becomes the envy of friends and neighbours, your plants will be happy and healthy, and so will your family and pets.
Wildlife and Birds
Be considerate to wildlife in your garden.
Bird Feeders
Birds find it hard to get enough food in the winter particularly if there is a really cold spell; try to hang out some bird feed for them. You will not only enjoy watching the birds out of your window, you will also know that you are helping to preserve native species of wildlife. Don’t forget that they need fresh water too!
Books
Visit my gardening books page for lists of recommendations for reference books on a variety of gardening related topics and publications.
Other Gardening Tips and Tricks
Shade Tips
Additional tips specifically for creating a shade garden.
Choosing Shade Plants
Hyfertufa Projects
For information on how to make Hypertufa.
Organic Gardening
Starting and maintaining a garden that is grown and kept healthy by using organic methods.