Garden Tips

More Bang For Your Buck

Create more bang for your buck in flower pots, planters and hanging baskets by remembering to add a "thriller" to the center of the container.

Typically the "thriller" plant has been a large grass or other type of foliage plant. Get more bang out of your "thriller" by choosing a tall plant that flowers such as Angelonia.

Some of the new varieties available from Proven Winners have larger flowers than older varieties.

Angelonia is not your only choice as a "thriller." Try Buddelia (butterfly bush) or other small flowering shrubs. If you have a large container, you could even plant a Hollyhock as a "thriller," or give Delphiniums a try.

What ever your choice is, remember to have fun. Mix colors. Choose hot colors for instant wow or pick cool colors that soothe.

Once your "thriller" plant is chosen, remember to choose a trailing plant and a filler plant for maximum effect.

Reduce Your Lawn

Grass requires a lot of care in order to look good. It requires fertilizer, weed control products, lots of water, and frequent mowing, making it one of the most high-maintenance items in a yard.

To make your home (environmentally) greener, eliminate some or all grass. In its place, try planting low-growing herbs, a wildflower meadow, or an edible garden (more on that later). Another option is to replace your grass with a water feature or woodland landscape.



Depending on how your lawn was cared for in the past, you might want to used raised beds or heavily amend the soil. Don't forget that plants take up whatever's in the soil.

Orchard Weed Control

Keeping weeds down in your orchard may be an issue, however there are many ways to easily solve this problem. Some people choose to plant their fruit and nut trees in raised beds. This allows you to control the soil, the moisture in the soil and the nutrients much easier than growing in the ground.

When creating raised beds, be sure to use some type of weed blocking material underneath. Stacks of newspaper, cardboard or weed cloth will help keep the weeds down. To keep weeds from establishing themselves in the new soil it is important to keep them pulled out. Weed seed can live in soil for up to seven years. Some gardeners put the same weed blocking material on top of their raised beds as they put underneath of it. While this may not be attractive, the weed blocking material can be covered with mulch.

Another method of weed control that some gardeners like better is to plant under the trees. Strawberries are an excellent choice for planting around fruit trees or in young orchards. If you are looking for something a little less labor intensive, try chives or mint.

Both of these plants are beneficial to fruit trees. Mint will spread and can be invasive. Chives will reseed. Neither plant will choke out your fruit trees. However, until these plants are established you will need to remove the weeds around them.

For natural weed control, try poultry. Not only will they eat the grass around your fruit trees helping to keep it low, but they will eat insects and their eggs. If fruit falls on the ground, this will get devoured too.

Low growing plants such as strawberries, blueberries or raspberries will need to be fenced off or you will not have any fruit left. Be aware that some poultry can fly. They may fly into your trees to eat the fruit. Early spring before the trees fruit and late fall after you have harvested the fruit may be the best time to use poultry for weed control.

Grow Your Own Food

Growing fruits and vegetables is a great way to save money on your grocery bill. Getting set up may take some time and a bit of a financial investment, but once you learn how to grow and preserve your own food, you will not believe the savings.

If you decide to plant fruit trees, it is important to remember that your return will not be immediate. Most fruit trees take five years before they really begin producing enough to store. This is not always the case, just the basic rule of thumb.

Vegetables on the other hand will produce in the same season. By using various planting techniques such as intercropping and two level planting you can get a large enough harvest from even a tiny piece of land to eat fresh produce as it becomes available and still have enough to preserve for winter use.

Growing your own herbs is another way to save money. Herbs can be expensive and the ones from the store are often old. There is no way to know when you buy bottled herbs how old they are. If you grow and dry your own, you will know. Herbs should be used up within a year for maximum taste. If you just want to use your herbs fresh when they are in season, there is nothing wrong with this either. For the price you would pay for one bottle of herbs you can have an entire plant that will grow, multiply and produce numerous bottles of herbs over many years.

Tips To Replenish The Soil

If you have a garden that is used for vegetables like tomatoes, corn, squash and cucumbers, give your planting areas a rest by rotating crops. In the fall, after harvest, roto-til the planting site, then lay down sheets of newspaper. Dampen the sheets of newspaper with water once they are laid down. Then cover the sheets of newspaper with several inches of compost and chopped leaves. On top of this, add three to four inches of fresh topsoil. Earthworms will help work these nutrients into the tired earth. Over the winter months you can add kitchen scraps by tossing them on top of the soil. If animal pests are a problem, dig a small hole and bury the scraps.

A second popular method of replenishing the soil is to grow a cover crop or living mulch. Cover crops are typically grown over the winter, then roto-tilled into the earth in the spring. However this is not the only option. Cover crops can be grown as a cash crop during the regular gardening season. Some cover crops make excellent living mulches. These living mulches are planted between rows of the main crop to help reduce the leaching of nutrients. Cover crops have several purposes. The first thing they do is improve the soil tilth. In addition cover crops control erosion, weeds and help maintain the organic matter in the soil.

Replenishing the soil is important in both conventional and organic gardening. When gardening organically, this is the method used. Along with replenishing the soil remember to rotate your crops.