Very often, I love to wake up in the morning holding my cup of coffee at the front of my garden seeing those lovely flowers, green grass, and trees, who doesn’t love to do it? Walking around looking at the full beautiful views in every corner and angle around the house.
Well, once have a garden in front of the house, the overall beauty will always give the mind a refreshing feeling and soothing touch. I believe, in every successful individual tends to keep these gardening ideas and keep themselves busy gardening to swipe away their stress.
Gardening needs always a team-up of proper work, enthusiasm, and the right skills. To make sure how to improve gardening skills, here some ideas to follow.
Checking Your Soil
Before planting, it is important to know if the soil can support the plant’s life. The first thing to know about the soil PH. Soil PH is a measure of the acidity of a soil. Soil that too alkaline or acidic keeps plants from absorbing key nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, so the plant suffers from malnutrition.
Go, check the soil, or consult a professional laboratory to have the soil a test. Although some people are Lucky or blessed with perfect soil. But poor soils can always improve its texture or fertility.
Garden Composting is an alternative fertilizer
The best soil mixture to add to our garden is compost. Compost is an excellent soil conditioner that improves the texture and nutrition level of all types of dirt. We can always use as compost our household garbage from the kitchen, it saves our money in two ways: It’s a free and natural alternative to chemical fertilizers.
Contrary to a popular belief, a well-tended compost pile isn’t stinky, and composting is not a hard skill to learn, as microbes and worms do the most of the work! Compost is made from 2 types of waste: green and brown. Green waste is made up of nitrogen-rich waste like grass clippings, and food waste. Brown waste is made up of carbon-rich waste like dead leaves, sawdust, or shredded paper. If the compost gets too stinky, add more brown waste to it. If the compost isn’t breaking down so quickly, add more green waste. Well, balanced compost has a nice loamy smell and texture.
Finding the Best Sunlight at the Garden Area
Most of the flowers and vegetables need plenty of suns to thrive, so if the garden area is shady year-round. You’ll not be happy with the harvests. How much sunlight needed in that area? gets determines what can grow. Because too much or too little light can quickly stress the plant, which makes them more prone to disease, pests, and premature death. However, finding optimal lightning for plant can’t take some trial and error, monitor them very often.
Pruning Time
This is when selectively remove branches from the tree or in certain plants. The goal is to remove unwanted branches and direct new healthy growth. Pruning is an essential gardening skill. It encourages healthy growth and flowering as well to look good. For most shrubs and trees, it helps to prune at the right time, ( like my bougainvillea plants I prune them only if they look too bigger). Whether a beginner or just a refresher, regular pruning enhances the look of the garden.
There are several reasons why we should leave tree pruning to the experts or to a professional, but pruning shrubs and other small plants are easy when knowing how to do it. Although most people think of pruning as decorative, proper pruning keeps plants healthy by removing dead or dying parts of plants that had been damaged by weather, disease, bugs, or animals. Pruning can also make a plant more productive by forcing the plants to put more energy into producing fruit or flowers.
Managing Pests at the Garden.
Here not all insects are bad. Insects such as parasitic wasps, ladybirds, spiders, and ground beetles are all beneficial to a garden they prey on pests. Healthy soil produces stronger plants that have better resistance to any damage incurred by the insects. Before doing planting turn over the soil and add organic matter like manure or compost to supply essential nutrients. Handpicking larger pets such as slugs, snails, and caterpillars can be quite efficient, especially in a small garden. You can always use gardening gloves if feeling squeamish.
I like the idea of Companion Planting. Other plants produce a natural insect repellent, which makes them very beneficial when planted next to crops, and this known as companion planting in the garden. Planting garlic among vegetables helps to deter Japanese beetles, aphids, and spider mites; and marigolds planted with squash or cucumbers repel cucumber beetles and nematodes.
I also use organic pesticides – No chemicals but still kills unwanted pests, I use this for my flowering plants and vegetables. These organic pesticides I find only in my Kitchen.
I also use Spray chemicals – a liquid form of pesticides with a handheld sprayer. They are ready and available in the nearest store. Ask at the store for the best product to buy for the plant.
Basic garden ideas for Transplanting
To arrange our own garden or starting with plants from a garden shop, some basic steps for transplanting are here:
a.) Remove the plant from its pot.
b.) Inspect the roots. If the roots completely cover the soil, tease them gently apart.
c.) Place the plant in a prepared hole. The plant should sit at the soil level or a little higher if the soil loose or sandy.
d.) Firm the soil around the plant with a hand.
e.) Water well. Watering will encourage the plant’s roots to grow into the soil. It also helps the plant settle firmly into its pot.
Watering the Plant is Important.
Avoiding plants from the heat of the sun, simply they need plenty of water. But how much or how often should they be watered? Keep them evenly moist. Most plants depend on even moisture. However, slight drying out before watering promotes root growth of the plants. During the summer when the sun is more intense, smaller succulents might need to be watered more regularly, about once every 2 weeks or so, compared to once a month.
Tips & Ideas: For large plants pour water and let it soak in. Repeat until the soil is saturated. Let it dry until watering again. For the smaller plants do a semi soak by placing the potted plant in a tray and pouring water over the soil until the tray has about 1/4 of an inch of water. Let the plant sit for 8 hours, then drain the water. If soil is left too wet for too long, it can cause root rot. That also means over watered. On the other hand, if the plant-soil is consistently too dry that means low watering. Letting the soil dry out before watering is key for plants to receive the perfect balance of water and oxygen. For most plants, only water when the soil is dry not just surface dry, but 2 inches deep dry. Use fingers to easily determine the soil moisture level.
Maintain and Care for Gardening Tools
Maintaining them just rub oil into the wooden handle to preserve them. After each use wipes the metal parts of the pruners and other tools with an oily rag. Alternately, can wipe tools with a dry clean rag and spray lightly with a penetrating oil such as WD40.
Keeping your clean tools and storing them properly after each use is essential if want them to last.
Gardening is needed Patient and Always Ready for the Change
Start with small changes and try something better and innovative every time you change or replace something. Always remember that the journey to the thousand steps, always start with one.
Conclusion
Although, gardening is fun it needs a lot of hard work as well. People will see success but you only know how hard or how much effort will give to achieve this. Be sure to all the effort you give doesn’t go the wrong way. Give importance to improve skills and ideas, this is why going through these tips to enhance gardening skills is always and always recommended.
I hope, you enjoy reading these articles and if you have any questions or something you can share about these articles, please leave your comments below and I’ll be happy to get back to you. Thank you so much and enjoy your gardening.