When people say they want to live the ‛American dream’ the first thing that comes to their mind is not an expensive car or a big fat paycheck. The dream itself is represented in having a house instead of living in the apartment. The house represents a happy, almost fairy tale family and is a symbol of warmth and joy. And the best thing about having a house, the thing you’re the proudest of, is certainly your garden. The garden is always in sight to every passerby and it kind of represents you to your neighbors, so it’s important to keep it tidy and clean. Everybody who has had a garden knows that’s not easy as it sounds. There are a lot of situations when a budding garden goes bad and it happens even to the most experienced gardeners. There can be a lot of reasons for that and it’s important to figure out which one is in question so you can start with resuscitation.
Back to the roots
Like with all things in life, when trying to find a cause for the gaunt look of your garden you need to look deeper. In most cases, the problem is not in the plants but in the soil underneath. If you spend large amounts of fertilizer or pesticides without a result then the soil is in a bad shape. The problem can also be in the wrong mixture of fertilizers and pesticides – to know the right mixture for your soil you need to have it tested.
The circle of life
Before you get into shop-till-you-drop routine searching for the best possible fertilizers, take a good look around you. Wherever you live there is a big possibility that the perfect fertilizers are waiting for you just around the corner. The easiest way is just to use animal manure – all you need is an animal and even someone’s pet rabbit will do the job. You can also start saving up your wood ashes and try sharing your coffee grounds.
Time to live, time to die
Like every living organism, plants’ growth and blooming also depend on a wide range of conditions, mainly the weather ones. If you have determined that your soil needs some work and that you’ll probably need to reseed you have to get started in late winter or by early spring. If you wait until summer your plants will die from heat and no amount of water will be able to save them.
Bring out your dead
The usual mistake that people make when cleaning their garden is to think they only need to take out the weeds. They leave all kind of garden debris, including branches and fallen leaves because it’s well-known that everything that’s not a plastic bag will decompose. You should always get rid of every dead or dying plant – you have a garden, not a cemetery.
Make friends
Plants can affect each other’s growth because some nutrients lost by one plant can be replenished by another one. Use that ‛friendship’ to engage in companion planting and let the plants take on the part of work. Some combinations can even result in keeping the pests away effectively.
Too much of that will kill ya
Growing plants can seem like a pretty easy job at first glance – you just need to provide them with enough sunlight and enough water. But the thing you probably didn’t know is that plants can be spoiled just as humans. Some are withering and crispy and need more water but less sunlight. Other that doesn’t seem to grow properly and have the tips of their leaves yellow or white are trying to tell you to cut on the water and give them more sunlight. You’re not the creator of the world to control the sun, so those who desire a tan you’ll just have to move, but fortunately water you can control pretty easily. You’ll just have to equip yourself with the right Hoselink sprinklers, choose the right program according to your plants’ needs and let the technology be a babysitter. Yes, people who installed sprinklers in their gardens are not lazy, they just figured out certain thing before you did.
Roses are red, violets are blue, shovels are green
And the last but not the least, you need to manage your tools. Just as you can get lost in the vast sea of gardening advice, you can also lose your tools in the sea of plants. It’s important to have the right shovels, but it’s also important to know where you’ve left them. In order to keep your tools visible at all times, it’s a good idea to color their handles with bright and saturated colors. Just remember not to actually color them green.
