Your Container Garden Is Easy - With A Little Planning!

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Partial view of container garden in Park Seed Company GardensImage via Wikipedia

by Tom Johnson

The first thing you need to decide when planning a container garden is whether you’d prefer to grow your plants indoors or outdoors. A lot of people think container gardening is only for indoor growing and patios, but containers can actually be useful for any garden situation.

One of the advantages of a container garden is the ability to move it around if the need arises, something you can’t do with a traditional garden. You can also grow just about any type of plant in a container.

If you’re expecting very bad weather, you can temporarily move containers to a safer location, like indoors or into a garage or basement. But there isn’t much you can do for a traditional garden.

If you find your plants aren’t doing well because the space you chose is too sunny or too shady, there isn’t much you can do with a traditional garden, but you can easily move potted plants to a better location.

If you choose to have your container garden outdoors, you need to be sure to choose a good location for it. You’ll want to choose a place that has the proper amount of sun for the plants you wish to grow, but it also needs to be a place that’s very accessible. It’s easy to lose motivation to work on your garden if it’s several hundred yards away from the house!

Pollution from road traffic is to be avoided as much as possible by planting your garden as far away from the street as possible. This will reduce the amount of contamination to your plants and in turn reduce the effects of pollution on your family when they eat some of your produce.

What about your indoor plants? Choose a good, warm position for your plants, especially if you use air conditioning. Most plants prefer to be warm and a nice spot with filtered sunlight is often best.

Many plants won’t do well in very chilly homes, so you might need to choose a room for your plants and keep the vent closed in that room so it stays warmer there. If you can, choose a sunny room with a lot of natural sunlight.

Try to avoid some of the more delicate or exotic plants, unless that’s what you want, because they will often require high or low humidity. This means investing in special humidity equipment that can raise or lower the amount of moisture in the air to suit the plants.

Next, you’ll need to choose which plants you want to grow. Be careful! Too many people choose to plant far too many varieties, and end up frustrated. Don’t grow anything you can easily pick up cheaply at the grocery store!

As an example, tomatoes are often of poor quality or expensive in the stores, so they’re a great plant to grow yourself. So the rule of thumb is, if it’s expensive, hard to get or low quality, try growing it at home in a container.

A final consideration is if you would like your container garden to be organic. Indoors it’s fairly easy to do, but outdoors, in an uncontrolled environment, it can be harder to control pests. All you have to do is take some time to learn the best organic methods for your garden and you’ll be really happy with the results.

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Small Backyards and Choosing Garden Trees

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
by Martin Reid

Garden Trees have always been extremely popular for use in gardens of a large size where they can be allowed grow to their full potential and appear in their full brilliance. When we take a look at our own gardens they are usually pretty small and, therefore, our choice of Garden Trees is rather limited.

Deciding which are the most suitable trees and shrubs to grow in such small spaces requires a small amount of study and learning. You should take a some amount of care and attention when deciding upon which kinds of plants to use in your garden but when it comes to planting trees and shrubs you may be surprised to learn that even more care is needed.

Generally it is best to pick garden trees that are not likely to grow beyond a height of around 20ft (6m) in height. If your are planning to place a tree or shrub near to your home then you should really pick even shorter problems with your house’s foundations. Furthermore the branches and twigs can grow to block windows or doorways. An even more horrible scenario would be if the Garden Trees were to grow such long branches that they could push against walls or overhanging roofs to such an amount that it caused structural damage.

When deciding where, in your small garden, you will be growing your Garden Trees you will have to take special notice of the immediate area taking special note of any overhanging wires or anything else that encroaches upon the space in which your plant will eventually grow, recalling that you should allow for around 6m (20ft) in height.

Another point to keep in mind is your neighbor. If you will be planting Landscaping Trees along a boundary fence you will need to consider the fact that it is more than likely that the branches will encroach into his/her space. Not only should you consider the branches you should also consider the roots of the plant which will, most probably grow much further and could possibly create damage.

Trees and Shrubs grown in Small Spaces can often become a nuisance for a neighbor when the Trees and Shrubs grow too big and block out the sun from his or her garden or window. This type of problem often leads to legal action between neighbors and many places have bye-laws which disallow the growing of certain types of tree. It is well worth checking first before you plant any Trees and Shrubs.

Once you have picked which Trees and Shrubs you are going to plant in your garden you will need learn a little about Caring For Trees and especially for the species of tree or shrub you are growing. It is crucially important that, in the case of grafted Trees and Shrubs you watch closely for shoots which may spring from under the grafting point as these will be of a different type of tree or shrub (the same species as the rootstock) and, in the case of dwarf trees and shrubs, these can sometimes be much larger and longer than the main plant.

When pruning your garden trees you should ensure that it is done very carefully. You should never, unless you fully understand pruning, cut off the top of a tree just to keep them short. Chopping off the tops of any garden tree can cause it to suffer deadly damage. Always follow the correct directions and if pruning small trees take extra care as they can sometimes be more open infection. All garden trees look at their best when their shape is of a natural habit so try not to change the shape of your tree too drastically, unless, off course, you understand what you are doing and have a planned shape or design in mind.

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