EZ Gardening For Beginners

Gardening can add a new dimension of immeasurable beauty to your yard and life. But perhaps you don’t think you have enough time to dedicate to your garden. Even if you think you are too busy to dedicate spare time to gardening, you would be surprised how much you can do with just a couple of hours on the weekend a few minutes throughout the working week. If you crave a garden, but don’t think you have enough time for one, here are some simple tips and instructions on how to plant a low maintenance garden.

Designate a Space for Your Gardening

Gardening does not need to take up hours of your time. The easiest way to brighten up your yard or outdoor living space without exerting a lot of time, money and effort is to designate a specific space for your garden. A lot of gardens are time-consuming because the plants are scattered throughout a large outdoor area. If you limit your gardening space to one raised bed, for instance, you will not have to worry about watering several garden beds or maintaining a large garden. Start by focusing one area in your yard that needs space and work from there.

Container Gardening Adds Easy Color and Texture to Any Space

Do you want to brighten your yard with color and texture, but don’t have the time or money for a whole garden bed? Consider container gardening, an easy way to add flowers or plants to any part of your home. Moreover, if you are working with malnourished soil, or simply don’t have the space for a full planting, container gardening can fill this void with minimal effort. You can opt for one large planter, a variety of container sizes, or a small-scale container garden. Container gardening is a cost-effective and easy way to satisfy your craving for a garden without having to do the full-scale plant bed preparation, seeding and transplanting.

Choose Hardy Perennials for Easy Year-Round Color

Do you wish you had a garden that boasts year-round color? You don’t have to be a gardening whiz to ensure that your garden is rich in color and texture on a year-round basis. There are many hardy perennials that, once planted and become well established, will present you with blooms throughout the growing season. Perennials are plants that continue to bloom season after season. For this reason, perennials will usually cost you more, but the investment in a long-lasting garden is well worth it. Make sure that you understand which perennials thrive in your climate. You will want to choose the hardiest perennials available in your area for the best low-maintenance garden. Visit your local nursery and ask which plants do best in your area despite minimal care and attention.

Install a Drip Irrigation System for Easy Plant Care

Do you wish you had a healthy, thriving garden, but don’t have the time it takes to water your plants on a regular schedule? A drip irrigation schedule can take care of this for you. Drip irrigation systems are becoming increasingly popular because, once properly installed, they water your garden with maximum efficiency. This system works by dripping water on a continuous basis, thus avoiding over-watering and loss of evaporation. A drip irrigation system can help keep your plants properly watered without you having to lift the hose ever again. Moreover, these systems can help save you water and time, making them an environmentally friendly option for the modern gardener. Visit your local nursery or home improvement store to take a look at the latest drip irrigation systems. They can be tricky to install, so you may want to enlist the help of a professional.

You don’t have to get down and dirty to get that beautiful garden you have always wanted. With raised garden beds, gardening is simpler and more comfortable than it has ever been before. Raised garden beds have a lot of advantages over traditional gardens, and they can be the perfect choice for you if you are looking for unique ideas for your garden design.

What exactly is a raised garden bed? Instead of planting plants directly into the ground, a raised garden bed is an enclosed platform that raises your plants a few inches off of the ground. These raised garden beds are usually enclosed with wood, so you essentially have little mini gardens instead of one larger garden directly in your soil. For this reason, many people turn to raised garden beds for reasons of lawn design. The raised garden beds can be designed in any geometric shape you like, so they can be used to create a pleasing design in your yard.

But there are many other benefits to using raised garden beds. One of the most important benefits is that they help you plants grow better. Every plant needs some air to get to its roots to grow properly. With a traditional garden, even though you make allowances for this fact and try to keep the soil loose enough so that air can flow down the roots, you can’t help but compact the soil in some areas as you move around the garden tending your plants. It is impossible to not compact the soil at all when working in a regular garden, and so your plants will be losing precious oxygen. With a raised garden bed, you don’t have to walk around your garden when you are working on it, so your soil is never overly compressed and your plants can thrive.

Because you don’t have to fret about leaving enough space around your plants to walk around (and you don’t have to worry about the soil becoming compressed), you can plant more plants in a smaller area. This also means you will have less weeding to do, because you can cut down on the area available for weeds to grow.

Raised garden beds can also help the health of your plants through efficient soil drainage. As any gardener knows, having soil that is too wet can be more dangerous to some plants than having soil that is too dry. Drying out the soil is a major concern for gardeners after heavy periods of rain, and in some areas of the Deep South, the soil may too wet all the time to plant certain types of plants. However, with a raised garden bed, moisture drains out quickly, meaning a hard rain is no problem at all. Further, a raised garden bed can make the soil that is too wet to grow anything into soil that has just the right amount of moisture for certain plants.

Another benefit of raised garden beds is that you can change your mixtures of fertilizers and other growing agents from bed to bed. There is no more trying to find the middle of the road combination that will give all of your plants some of what they need. You can group plants into beds with other plants that have similar fertilizer requirements, so that each plant is getting exactly what it needs to thrive. Likewise, you can cut down on the use of pesticides because you only have to apply them to the garden bed, instead of spreading them out over a large area.

All of these benefits of raised garden beds translate into plant growth that is around two times as productive as traditional gardens. If you are serious about your garden, consider raised garden beds.

Gardening can be a healthy and fun way to beautify your environment and get some exercise. But it is nearly impossible to get anything done in the garden with efficiency if you do not spend some time organizing your gardening tools and materials. If you have a shed that is full of clutter, this alone is probably costing you a lot of valuable gardening time. Here are some tips for conquering the clutter in your shed in order to make gardening easier.

What’s in that Old Shed, Anyways?

If you haven’t peeked in that shed for a while, chances are that this is question worth asking. What is in that old shed? Is it a place where you have stored old tools, planting soil or building materials? Chances are that you might even have a few hidden treasures in that old shed that you completely forgot you had. The first step to organizing your gardening so that it becomes a more efficient and pleasant practice is to take a full inventory of what is in your gardening shed. Cross off a whole afternoon for this task, or (depending on the size of the shed) a whole day. Wear thick work gloves and begin to remove items so that you can get a close look at all those things you’ve had stored away.

Determine Whether Your Shed Needs Repair

You may find that your old shed is need of repair. Depending on the type of building materials, sheds are often prone to rust, wood rot, roof problems or other types of repairs. Are you willing to invest the money and time for a proper repair? Decide whether the shed is still viable, and whether it would be more cost-effective to repair or replace it. In many cases, your shed may just need a thorough sweeping and clearing out. Now is the time to get that project done.

Decide What’s Useful and What’s Not

Once you have dragged out all those things in your gardening shed and taken stock of what you have, it is time to decide what is useful and what’s not. Many of us store old tools in our garden sheds that aren’t quite what they used to be. Decide which tools are still useful to you, and which are well past their prime. Separate your old tools into two piles: tools that can be repaired, and tools that would be better off being discarded. If you find that you have accumulated a lot of tools that are in need of repair, make an appointment to get them fixed and stick to this day. You can get axes and old-fashioned mowers re-sharpened at home repair shops. Conversely, make a date to get rid of the tools that you do not need anymore, or those that are well beyond repair, and stick to this date.

Designate Space and Corners

Once you have cleared out your shed, it is time to organize for maximum efficiency. You want to make your shed as user-friendly as possible. That is, ask yourself: what can I do to make my shed work for me? If you haven’t stepped foot into your shed before now, why did you avoid it? Was it too dirty, too cluttered or just too unpleasant? Use these guidelines to determine how you should organize your shed. Designate space for your tools, pots, gardening material and leave enough space so that you can easily enter and exit the shed. To prevent future clutter, set a new rule: every time you store something new in your gardening shed, one item must come out (and stay out). Make your garden shed work for you, and you will find that gardening will become much more efficient.