Flower Gardening
I confess I start a lot of my own seeds for my personal flower gardening now that I’ve shut down my nursery and I think that’s the cheapest and most interesting way to get a lot of new plants. Seed starting is easy once you understand the basics.
Seed Starting
Annual seed starting here are the instructions for starting annual seeds
Growing your seedlings on right here. - how to grow them after you start them.
Annual Flowers
Don’t think for a minute because I grow mostly perennials that I don’t like annual flowers. There’s a special spot in the garden for these gaudy, brazen beasties. Any plant that can bloom almost all summer and shout across the garden, “Look at me!” because of its splendid colour or flower size has to get full marks.
Container gardening is a particularly popular and an easy way to grow almost any plant. While perennials gently sway through their growing seasons, annuals bound into the gardener’s world, shouting and bouncing with great delight. It is the difference between a bouncing five year old and a suddenly grown up teenager.
Moonlight Gardening is particularly important if you have to work for a living (like most of us) Use these tips and plant lists to have your garden sparkle in the evening as well as the daytime.
Buying Bedding Plants is one of those things most gardeners take for granted. Run out and pick up a few boxes - but here are a few tips that will make that shopping trip much more efficient and save you money.
Why isn't this plant flowering? One of the biggest questions of the mid-summer garden. Here are a few options.
How to Prune Petunias (video) is a simple little garden trick that will help you keep your plants looking good all summer - no long and stringy petunias if you use this simple gardening tip.
Difficult Conditions
Clay soils. There are also few things more frustrating to discover that you have clay soils. Here's what you can do to amend those soils.
Perennials that will live on clay soils. Here's a good list if you have a clay soil problem.
Q&A - can you mulch clay soil?
Raised bed gardening. One of the solutions is to grow your plants is to raise the garden beds - great for bad backs as well as specialty plants.
Here's a list of plants for under black walnutsthat will thrive in the presence of the hormone juglone (secreted by black walnuts to kill off plant competition).
Killing Plants
How to kill plants you don't want. Sometimes you even need to know how to kill plants or how to kill dandelions or how to kill weeds in your garden. Funny thing that! :-)Q&A: Folks want to know how long it takes to kill grass using organic systems. Here's the answer.
Edibles
And if you can't kill them, you might want to eat them. Here's an article on harvesting and eating edible flowers. Why anybody would want to eat a friend is beyond me. :-)Winterizing
Sometimes you have trouble winterizing evergreen shrubs and you turn an evergreen into an everbrown with burlap. Here's a few alternatives for you to consider.Insects
Butterflies are not brown like some winter-burned shrubs are but they are gorgeous insects. If you want them in your garden, you simply have to plant butterfly plants.Ground Covers
What about mulching groundcovers? Do I have to do this to establish the plants?Growing Techniques
Deadheading Sometimes it is difficult to understand just what a term means. And one of those is figuring out just how far to make cuts we call deadheading .Got a Problem with General Flower Gardening?
If you have a question about general flower gardening, sthen feel free to ask it using this form.
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See what other gardeners have asked
Click below to see what other gardeners have asked about growing flowers
Plants around Pine or Cedar trees
What plants will grow under Pine or Cedar trees?
Doug says - "around" cedar or pine. Darn near anything will grow around them if you give them some ...
what would grow best on this clay soil hillside? I live halfway up/down a hill. The soil is 98% clay (Tennessee Red Clay). I have found Sweet Williams, Zinnias, Marigolds, Gypsophilia, Alyssum, Bachelor ...
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