Choosing Plants For Your Shade Garden

Shopping at the nursery for plants for your shade garden, you should look for flowers with bright green leaves and foliage. For example, hostas will definitely flourish in shade gardens, and some ferns will grow in even the poorest shade conditions.

Some annual plants love shade, such as impatiens and violas, and when they are planted every year, they can give your garden a splash of color.

Being aware of the part of the country you live in, can help your shade garden, as these gardens grow best in northern climates, because there are more definite changes in the season.

Shade flowers also grow well in cool areas, but you must water these plants regularly, to maintain healthy plants in healthy soil.

A shade garden can also provide a number of decorative advantages. This garden will improve the overall landscape of your garden, and could even help to increase your property value, so keep this in mind if you plan to sell your home.

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Making Insect Treatment With Natural Ingredients

Basil is a key ingredient in insect treatment. You can buy a small amount of basil at your local grocery store in its green original form, or you can grow basil in your own herb garden in your backyard or even in an indoor herb garden.

Mosquitoes do not like basil, and the herb is also good to use in your cooking, because it will help to boost your immune system. This way, even if you get a bug bite during the summer, you will be more inclined to protect yourself against the symptoms.

It is easy to create your own natural insect treatment. You can place basil leaves in a few ounces of water and let the leaves steep for about half an hour.

If you do not want to use fresh basil, you can buy potent basil oil from your local health food store - to add any additional oil that will make the natural bug repellent smell like lavender or bergamot oil.

Your next step is to strain the green liquid, and then add four ounces of vodka. Put the mixture into a spray bottle and you’re ready to use the concoction on your skin and your plants.

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Attracting Wild Birds With Homemade Bird Feeders

For example, a number of wild bird species will eat rodents and insects that may otherwise infest your home. You would be creating a natural extermination system for your home and avoiding the use of insecticides, ghastly rat traps and rat poison.

When you construct wild bird feeders, you should choose the type of food that you put into the feeder carefully, and also the location of the feeder. Homemade bird feeders in your garden will provide a significant amount of food for wild birds, some people believe that birds that migrate will share your food with the birds in the area all year round.

However, once you observe the frequency of the birds’ visits, you will be able to adequately provide food all year round for different species of birds, coming to your yard.

You may wonder about the kind of food you should place in your wild bird feeder. Your decision depends on the birds attracted to your yard. For example, if you have hummingbirds in your garden, then you can fill the feeder with plant nectar, small soft insects, and sugar water.

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Choosing Better Container Garden Soil

Plants growing in containers often use nutrients very quickly, so you should add fertilizer or compost regularly. You can buy water-soluble compounds or liquid fertilizers such as fish emulsion. With watering and drainage every day, you may need to fertilize about once a week.

Read the packaging of the soil mixtures carefully, as they vary in composition depending on the type of plants you will be growing. For example, you would not use an African violet soil mix, for tomato plants.

You can create your own container garden soil mixture by purchasing a bag of potting soil from the garden center. One general example of a good soil mix, is one part potting soil, one part peat moss and one part coarse sand.

This basic recipe can be adjusted depending on the types of plants you intend to include in your containers. For example, certain fruit, like tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes and peppers, are considered heavy feeders, so for every three gallons of soil recipe, you may add half a cup each of fish meal, bone meal, kelp meal, and garden lime.

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A Better Garden With Home Composting

There are now many places where municipalities or larger bodies of government have made it mandatory for people to compost. They have done this by providing both funds and by punishing those who put out too much household garbage that includes compostable and recyclable materials.

Though it may be difficult to adjust at first, remember that composting is really something that can benefit you and your garden. These benefits can also be direct, something you will see more immediate than other initiatives.

Home composting can save you money, as many collection services begin to charge people who put out too much rubbish. Their reason is to reduce costs, but also to encourage people to use other disposal methods that are more beneficial to the environment, like recycling.

Money comes back in your pocket in other ways. Creating more compost means less waste, means less garbage with compostable and recyclable materials.

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Growing Plants Indoors With Hydroponics Gardening

You need to find out which plants will grow well in this type of environment for your gardening success. Vegetables such as cucumbers and peppers are usually a good choice, and you can grow a variety of herbs with hydroponics gardening.

Growing you own herbs and vegetables can add a special touch to your cooking with fresh produce when you need it, and you will definitely taste the difference when growing your own fresh produce.

To start hydroponics gardening, you need a hydroculture pot with double walls. You also need a ceramic container or a container made of opaque glass. If you need to display one plant at a time, you can place the plants in a colored glass vase or a glass that is filled with decorative gravel or marbles.

Now, you need to anchor the roots of these plants, and one option is to use vermiculite. If you cannot find vermiculite at your local gardening store, you can anchor the stems of plants in a sheet of thin plastic and let the roots hang freely.

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Maintaining Your Tree With Bonsai Tools

As your tree grows, the roots, which sit at the bottom of the pot, often become tangled. This is where you’ll need to add a root hook to your collection of bonsai tools.

You can dig in the soil with this tool, without damaging the plant, to untangle the roots and properly repot the plant. If you are growing a very small tree, you can also use a chopstick.

If you are growing an untrained potted plant, then you may need a root cutter. The bigger, thicker roots must be cut in order to properly house the plant in the pot, and the concave pruner can also be used for this job.

Wire cutters are the third tool you need. When you train the tree to grow in a certain way, wiring the tree is one of the more reliable methods.

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