Turn Your Thumb Green With These Gardening Tips

Does everyone else's grass always seem to look greener? You may think your neighbor is harboring a secret about having such a healthy garden. Planting a garden does not have to be an elaborate effort of backbreaking work. All you need is the knowledge about how to care for your plants the right way. Begin your search for gardening knowledge with the tips below and get ready to develop an even greener thumb.

Properly put down your sod. You want to prepare the soil before you lay down the sod. Get rid of weeds and tilth the soil finely. Flatten the soil back into place, gently but firmly. Water the soil until it is saturated. Then lay the sod in staggered rows so the joints are offset. Firm the sod down to form a flat, even surface, and fill in any gaps between the sod with a little soil. Water the sod everyday for the first two weeks until the roots grow enough.

Bulbs will give you wonderful flowers that you can enjoy in early spring and right through the summer. Typically, bulbs are simple to grow, and they'll grow every single year. You can select bulbs that bloom at many different times, so with a little work, you could have flowers popping up all the way from the start of spring to the end of summer.

The handles on your gardening tools can be used as a convenient measuring instrument. Handles of things such as rakes, hoes or shovels make excellent measuring instruments. Lay the handles of said tools on the ground where it is flat and there is no interference, such as gravel, and stretch a measuring tape along one side. You can label distances using a permanent marker. When the need arises to measure something while in your garden, the measuring tool you need will literally be “on hand,” sketched into the handles of your tools.

When fall is here, you need to plant autumn edibles. Rather than putting standard clay vessels into use when planting crops of lettuce and kale, think about using pumpkins instead. Simply cut the pumpkin open at the top, so you can remove the seeds and insides. After that, spray Wilt-Pruf along the edges and on the inside of the pumpkin, so it doesn't rot. When you finish this, you can plant!

Knee Pads

If you have many low-growing plants in your garden, get yourself a pair of horticulture knee pads. Without pads, you may have pain in your knees from spending too much time kneeling on the hard ground. Your knees can get supported with a decent pair of gardening knee pads.

Slug-proof your garden with smart perennial choices. If slugs or snails find their favorite perennials in your garden, they'll snack all night. When you wake up in the morning, there will be very little left of your plants. These garden pests prefer perennials with thin, flat, delicate leaves, particularly if the plant is not yet mature. There are perennials that slugs do not want to eat, the ones that they hate have hairy leaves, or are unappealing to their taste. Some of the best varieties of these include achillea, campanula, euphorbia, and heuchera.

Do you love fresh mint leaves but hate how they quickly grow to take over your garden? Instead of planting mint in the ground, confine it to a large pot. If you prefer, you can even place the container in the ground, but the pot's walls will prevent the mint from spreading and being a nuisance in your garden.

In order to rid your garden of pests, take advantage of plant materials and other organic matter. Slugs who want to enter a vegetable garden, for example, can be repelled by a simple border of marigolds and onions. Wood ash also makes a great insect deterrent; simply use it as mulch around your shrub and tree seedlings. Natural materials and plants can be just as effective as chemical pesticides at keeping unwanted visitors out of your garden!

The techniques discussed here have been pretty straight-forward and easy to follow. You just need some basic education on gardening techniques, then you can put that education to good use. Observe the response of your plants to the various techniques you try. When something doesn't work, then go ahead and try out new strategies. Be patient, and before long, your garden will be the envy of your neighbors.

Having healthy soil in your garden is your number one defense against pests! Healthier plants are stronger, which in turn can help the plants you grow to become more resistant to disease and bugs that can harm them. If you want to get the best plants, begin with a soil that has hardly any chemicals, and that will bring salts.