Articles Index

How Much to Plant Per Person in the Vegetable Garden

It's time to plan the vegetable garden, but how much should you plant per person? Here are some guidelines for how much to plant, but remember that they're just guidelines. How much to plant depends on a number of factors.

Deciding What Vegetables to Grow in Your Vegetable Garden

Everything sounds so tempting, how do you decide what to grow in your vegetable garden? You’re first consideration should always be to plant what you like to eat. Still, you’ll need to compromise because some crops simply won’t grow in all areas. Weigh in the following considerations before making your final list of what vegetables to grow in your vegetable garden.

Ornamental Grasses - How to Choose an Ornamental Grass

Ornamental grasses add texture, form, motion and sound to a garden, not to mention the array of colors. They will look good all season long with minimal care. But deciding which one or two to include in your garden is a tough decision. There are so many attractive ornamental grasses to choose from.

Growing Lavender

You can be successful growing lavender if you choose the right variety, even if you don't live in the Mediterranean region. Lavender plants, with their fragrant flowers, can be used to make lavender soaps and lotions. Or maybe you'd like to cook with lavender. Even gardeners who need deer resistant plants can grow lavender.

Top Choices for Cut Flowers

Repeat blooming annuals are favored for cutting gardens, but many perennial flowers do wonderfully well as cut flowers. What makes for a good cut flower is a stem that is long enough and sturdy enough to hold the flower in an arrangement and a flower that lasts and looks good for several days. That gives the gardener a wide choice for choosing flowers to grow in a cutting garden. The following lists offer suggestions for great cut flowers.

When To Prune Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are popular old fashioned flowering shrubs. Regular hydrangea garden maintenance involves pruning the shrubs to keep them in shape and flowering profusely. But when to prune hydrangeas determines how well they will flower or if they will flower at all.

USDA Hardiness Zone Maps

The USDA Hardiness Zone Map has been used by gardeners to determine what plants will survive in their garden climate. The latest revisions by the American Horticulture Society, add zones and take into consideration more than just annual low temperatures. Other hardiness measures include: length of cold spells in the winter, airflow patterns, the effect of large bodies of water like oceans and lakes and heat factors and how these things effect garden plants.

Flower and Garden Shows

Just when we need it most, horticultural societies across the country provide us with a breath of spring in the form of flower and garden shows. Whichever you attend, you can expect garden landscape displays, competitions, a vendor area, seminars by garden experts and floral displays. Here is a listing of some of the most popular spring flower and garden shows.

Tomato Blossom Drop

Blossom drop is a common tomato growing problem that can be extremely frustrating to the home gardener. Otherwise healthy looking tomato plants set flower blossoms, only to have them dry up and fall off the plant before a fruit is formed. Blossom drop can be attributed to several causes, most often related to either temperature and / or stress.

New Impatiens Introductions: Simply Beautiful Fusion & Fanfare Impatiens Series

Impatiens are the most reliable flowers for shady areas of the garden. Now there are more choices than ever in varieties of Impatiens. Simply Beautiful flowers has come out with the tropical looking Fusion Impatiens series, including a yellow Impatiens, as well as the trailing and cascading Fanfare Impatiens series.

Garden Catalogs - Plants and Seeds

Gardening catalogs are a great way to learn about new plants, tools and supplies. Many garden catalogs are so full of information, reading them is like reading a book. Garden catalog shopping isn't quite as much fun as gardening, but it's very close. Here is a list of gardening favorites and what they have to offer the gardener.

A Long Producing Vegetable Garden

You can have a long producing vegetable garden with minimal effort. Keep harvesting in your vegetable garden into the fall and maybe even winter months. A long producing vegetable garden is possible, if you heed some simple, but key gardening rules.

Deer Resistant Gardens - Listings of Deer Resistant Plants

If deer are in your area, sooner or later they will find your garden. Plant wisely by choosing deer resistant plants. Use the lists here to help find plants deer don't like.

A Winter Garden of Blooms

There's not much gardening to do in winter, but gardeners can still enjoy a breath of spring with cut flowers. Have some fun here finding out your floral signature and creating flower recipes.

Growing Rhubarb

Is rhubarb a vegetable? A fruit? An ornamental plant? It’s a very ornamental vegetable that is usually prepared and eaten much like a fruit. All that and it’s perennial in many areas. Rhubarb is a cool season crop that is grown for its fibrous leaf stalks, which are a wonderful sweet-tart treat. These tips should help you get your rhubarb started right and growing well.

Vegetable Garden Maintenance

Vegetables don’t really require more care than ornamental plants, but they will be less forgiving of neglect. Our job as gardeners is to make sure the vegetables we grow have the necessary health and vigor to keep on producing. Keeping your vegetable plants healthy and growing at a steady rate is the best insurance for a high yielding and delicious vegetable garden. Here are some tips.

Passion Flowers

Passion flowers are exotic looking topical plants that can actually be grown in much milder areas. There are many different passion flower plants. Some passion flowers are vines, some produce edible fruits. Here are some tips for growing passion flowers at home.

Designing a Vegetable Garden

Vegetable gardening is easy, but creating the initial vegetable garden takes some work. Be sure to put some thought into designing your vegetable garden before you start digging.

Starting a Vegetable Garden - Which is Better, Seeds or Seedlings?

How do you decide whether to plant your vegetable garden from seed or from transplants? The choice between direct seeding and transplanting seedlings into your vegetable garden comes down to 2 basic questions: Does the vegetable transplant well? And is your growing season long enough for the vegetables to mature when planted from seed? Here are some tips.

Starting a Vegetable Garden

Growing vegetables is a unique form of gardening. Most vegetables are annuals, so you’ll be starting from scratch every year. You’ll probably be re-planting throughout the season, too. Designing a vegetable garden is more about which vegetables grow well near each other, than about how things look. The good news is that most vegetables have similar growing requirements, so when you are deciding where to put your vegetable garden, you can follow these guidelines:

Making Hypertufa

Hypertufa planters are a wonderful way to bring the look of stone into your garden, without the weight. Hypertufa is easy to make yourself at home. Although it can be messy, it’s also a lot of fun. Here are some basic recipes and some creative suggestions for hypertufa toughs and garden decorations.

Garden Pest Control

Integrated pest management (IPM) can be used for controlling garden pests and diseases in the vegetable garden. Controlling vegetable garden pests and problems is a process that blends with the flow of the seasons in a vegetable garden. Garden pests and problems come and go. What gardeners need to keep in mind about IPM is:

The Dirt on Soil

Soil is often viewed as the boring part of gardening. While garden soil will never be glamourous or even as interesting as choosing plants, there is a whole world under our Wellingtons that literally and figuratively is the foundation for our gardens. New gardeners are cautioned to put money and effort into improving their soil before they even consider planting, but few appreciate this wisdom. Here's why you should.

When to Plant What

How do you know when to plant? Well, there are no guarantees, but if you let nature tell you when it’s safe to plant seeds or put your plants out, you’re probably on the right track. Nature sends certain signals that will let gardeners know how the weather and climate are progressing. There’s a science devoted to this, called phenology. It is useful to gardeners, as a guide for when to plant. For instance, plant your peas when the forsythia blooms. Here are a few more phenology tips.

Growing Blueberries

Blueberry Growing Tips: Blueberries are popular to grow in home gardens because they can grow in a small space, even in containers, and have very few problems. There are three main types of blueberries: highbush, rabbiteye, and southern highbush, with different varieties doing better or worse in various areas. Here are some tips for growing your own blueberries.