GARDENING TIPS FOR SUMMER

Most of us are ready to invest huge amount for landscaping and gardening to give face lift for our home. But we failed to prune when the plants needed it, and then your highly invested landscape looks terrible than ever. So this is a high time to know about the gardening tips for better maintenance of your lawn. Do follow the following gardening tips for better life of your garden:

Gardening tips for pruning

Pruning plays an important role in the garden maintenance. If you commit any mistake while pruning, don’t lose your heart because it’s like a bad haircut, it is going to grow again.

Avoid watering in the evening

During summer, you may experience high humidity, which might result in lot of problems in your garden. To get your plants nice and dry, tuck them in for night. In addition to this watering in the evening may be avoided to prevent damage to the plants.

Get rid of Powdery mildew

Powdery mildew is the common fungus mostly affects your ornamental plants. This will create white film on the leaves of the plants in your garden. Even other ornamental plants such as Sand cherry and Dogwoods are also getting affected with this fungus. Efficient gardening is necessary to curtail the growth of this fungus. You can easily prevent this by spraying general fungicide in the garden center.

Prevention of Pythium Blight

If you’re in the north and also having perennial Rye grass, then you ought to be very careful not to leave your grass wet at night. A dreadful fungus called Pythium Blight may take its upper hand, if you leave your lawn wet in the night because this fungus love to grow in high humid condition mostly, in the night.

Pythium blight can easily be seen in the early morning. You can easily appreciate the fungus on the top of the lawn as white cotton candy. You can easily notice this fungus mainly along driveways and walks, where the soil is moist. Pythium blight can easily be controlled by watering in the day at the earliest possible time.

Fire Blight

Fire Blight, yet another culprit prefers to grow well during summer than any other season. This fungus prefers to attack Pyracantha, cotoneasters, crabapple trees, and Apple trees. The presence of Fire Blight can easily be visualized once the any one of the branches of the plant turns red and dies. This Fire Blight can be prevented little by pruning the affected branch and removing it from the main plant as far as possible.

It is also important that the cut branches should be burnt since Fire Blight is contagious and also wash or dip the projected shears by using alcohol in order to prevent the spread of the deadly fungus to other parts of the branch.

Shotgun fungus

A little gem like fungus, which prefers to grow in mulch and tends to swell, has been termed as “Short gun Fungus”. This fungus can fly up to 8 feet in the air and will spatter your house with tiny brown specks and once they stick to your house or windows, they stick like glue. Most of us suspect the spiders and aliens for this tiny brown speck. You can’t prevent this fungus, but can do something by keeping the mulch loose so air can circulate inside to keep this fungus out. Although mulch is great, don’t allow them to get packed, try to remove it at least once in a year and also rake it flat as if it will look like you’ve just mulched.

HOW TO CREATE A GLORIOUS GARDEN SPACE

Greetings,

My husband and I have moved to a smaller home. We have a planter box in front where we are putting rose bushes(last post) but we do not have room for a traditional garden. However, I will be doing a kitchen window herb garden. But for those of you who do have room, here are some helpful instructions on creating your own garden of earthly delights.

The first thing in garden making is the selection of a spot. Without a choice, it means simply doing the best one can with conditions. If you have limited space, try a box garden or a kitchen window herb garden

Nevertheless, we will now suppose that it is possible to really choose just the right site for the garden. The greatest determining factor is the sun. You would not choose a north corner, unless you had no other choice; because, while north corners do for ferns, certain wild flowers, and begonias, they are of little use as spots for a general garden.

If possible, choose the ideal spot a southern exposure. Here the sun lies warm all day long and the rows of vegetables and flowers should run north and south. Thus placed, the plants receive the sun's rays all the morning on the eastern side, and all the afternoon on the western side. Suppose the garden faces southeast. In this case, the western sun is out of the problem. In order to get the best distribution of sunlight run the rows northwest and southeast.

The idea is to get the most sunlight as evenly distributed as possible for the longest period. From the lopsided growth of window plants, it is easy enough to see the effect on plants of poorly distributed light. Therefore, if you use a little diagram remembering that you wish the sun to shine part of the day on one side of the plants and part on the other, you can juggle out any situation. The southern exposure gives the ideal case because the sun gives half time nearly to each side. A northern exposure may mean an almost entire cut-off from sunlight; while northeastern and southwestern places always get uneven distribution of sun's rays, no matter how carefully you planned.

If possible draw your garden plan on paper or you could use design a garden software and print it out. The plan is a great help when the real planting time comes. It saves time and unnecessary buying of seed. Next time I will cover how to prepare the soil for planting

Until Then

Debbie Christensen

SPRING IS IN THE AIR

Greetings
Spring is right around the corner.This is a good time to buy that new grill, get the lawn mower out and ready to go or buy some new gardening gloves. My tulip bulbs are coming up which makes me want to grab my spade and trusty trowel and begin creating rows to do some more planting however, I have to curb my bursting enthusiasm for gardening a little longer because the ground is still too cold for tender young plantings. I am going to plant some bare root roses this year, so way too early of course, I ordered 4 yellow roses bushes that smell like fruity chewing gum. They arrived earlier than expected and have taken up residence in the guest bathroom tub(you must keep the roots moist until planted). I tend them anxiously watching out for any signs of mold or rusty leaves that might sprout. Rust can grow on rose leaves if kept too wet and it will spread to other rose bushes the only way to cure them is to cut off all their leaves and discard but roses are not as delicate as they appear . They are fairly easy to grow and maintain. In the winter you cut them back and by spring in some places or summer in others, they will come right back with new growth and beautiful blooms. Aphids (small almost clear bugs} adore rose leaves but you can control them naturally by washing the bugs off the leaves with a solution of dish soap and water being careful to dry the leaves when finished. A small tip where ever you have ants in your yard you will usually find Aphids.

THE TRADITION OF GIVING VALENTINES DAY CARDS & GIFTS

During the medieval time of chivalry, the names of English maidens and bachelors were put into boxes and drawn out in pairs. Each couple exchanged gifts and the girl became the man's sweetheart for a year. He next put her name on his sleeve and was bound by honor to attend and protect her . This old custom of drawing names was considered a good omen for love and more often then not led to a wedding. In 1537, King Henry VIII declared, by Royal Charter, that all England would celebrate February 14 as "Saint Valentine's Day" and as time went on February 14 became the traditional date for exchanging love messages and simple gifts with Saint Valentine becoming the accepted Patron Saint of Lovers. This tradition evolved into giving cards as well as candy and flowers.