Time is moving rapidly and before you know it spring will be here. The time is now to start preparing the soil in your garden. Soil preparation is the most important step of spring planting because without good soil your plants will not thrive. Many gardeners, including me, learned this lesson the hard way. As a first time gardener and not knowing what I was doing, I skipped the soil preparation step for my flower garden and lost many plants. Needless to say, this was an expense that I didn’t need not to mention the disheartening experience this caused.

Start by cleaning your garden site thoroughly by removing stumps, dead leaves or plants, sticks, rocks and old mulch. If you have any weeds, get rid of them. Once your garden area is clean, use a tiller and turn the soil to promote drainage. Get some organic material and mix it with the soil in your garden. Organic material can be as simple as getting some peat moss, compost or aged manure. I usually buy compost and it works very well in all my gardens. You may also want to add some plant food to the organic matter and mix it all together with the soil.

If you have drainage problems as a result of having hard soil, get some gypsum and added to the soil. This is a natural product that will improve your soil by flushing out salt buildups that can cause drainage problems in your flower garden. There is another product you can use called perlite. Have you noticed those white specks when you buy potting soil? That is perlite which is an organic material to help keep hard soil from compacting. It also increases the oxygen level down to the root of your plants.

Once your garden soil is ready, go ahead and buy your plants. Before you start planting, set all the new plants in the garden on top of the soil. Take a good look and make sure that you are happy with the look of your garden, the color scheme of the plants and overall design. What you can do is plant taller plants as a backdrop or against a wall. Plant medium size plants in front of the tall ones and short plants in front of the medium ones. This will give you a very nice design as all your plants will be visible in your flower garden.

As stated before, your soil preparation is the most important step for spring flower gardening. While we know that the soil preparation step is essential at any time of the year, it is a must for spring gardening. Planning your spring flower gardening and preparing the soil properly will ensure that you will have strong, healthy and gorgeous looking plants all summer long.

Here are some other flower gardening sites that I found for you to browse. Thanks for visiting Best Flower Gardening!

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Technorati Tags: compost, Gardening, gypsum, peat moss, perlite, spring gardening

Maybe it is wishful thinking on my part, but spring is around the corner and time to start thinking about your spring flower gardening. My apologies and sympathies to all of you that are still buried in snow as we speak but think spring flower gardening and you will feel better. If you are a beginner gardener and are serious about starting a garden, I am here to tell you that it is not difficult to have that flower garden that you’ve been dreaming of. The first step for you is to find the location for your garden. The next step is to decide the types of plants and flower color scheme that you want. And think about the design you want for your garden keeping in mind that tall plants should be planted as a backdrop to the rest of your garden.

Once you know where you want your garden, start preparing the area carefully. This is a good time to start getting the necessary gardening tools that you will need. You can buy gardening tools at any nursery or any store that sells gardening supplies. For starters get a tiller because you need to turn the soil in the garden area and it will be easier using a tiller. If you are going to plant tall plants and shrubs you may want to get a round point shovel in order to dig deep into the soil. You may also want to get a large spade for digging into the soil when you are ready to plant your regular flowering plants.

Let’s talk about the soil in the garden area. Good nutrient rich soil is a must! What I mean here is that if you don’t have good soil, your garden will not prosper and your plants will not survive. Keep in mind that soil is not just dirt. Soil is a live matter that needs to be fed in order for it to feed your plants. So go ahead and add some fertilizer to the soil to feed the soil microbes. This controls the flow of nitrogen, sulfur and other nutrients that are essential for plant growth. Start by turning the soil in the area where you want your garden and mix it with some compost.

As soon as your garden area is ready and the soil has been treated, start shopping for the flowering plants you want in your garden. Make sure you choose plants with similar care instructions. What I mean here is that you should buy plants that need to be fertilized and watered about the same time. Remember, not all plants are made equal. Place them all in the garden area just to see if the design and color scheme is what you want. If you are satisfied with the way your plants look, go ahead and start planting them. I also recommend that you read the planting instructions included with each plant.

There you have it! Before you know it you will have a gorgeous garden to be proud of. What I’ve given you here are just simple gardening tips. My recommendation for you is to get The Gardeners Handbook for detailed information on creating the flower garden of your dreams. This gardening handbook is full of great ideas on how to create a garden that won’t take all your spare time or cost you a fortune.

Here are some other flower gardening sites that I found for you to browse. Thanks for visiting Best Flower Gardening!

Flower Garden Design
Why gardening is good for your health - CNN.com
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Outdoor container gardening: Planting a beautiful pot of flowers
AOL.com Video - 30 Minute Flower Garden

Technorati Tags: beginner gardener, compost, flower garden, Flowering Plants, garden design, gardening tools

Creating a raised bed in your flower garden can be a challenge when you have plants that require good water drainage. I know how frustrating it can be to have a yard that just won’t cooperate when some plants can handle the excess water in an area that doesn’t drain properly but some will not. The plants that do well will benefit from the excess water and it might help them bloom quicker and more beautiful. But other plants just don’t cope as well and these may die quickly. What I normally do when I buy plants for my garden is to check the drainage required for each plant and figure out the area where they will be planted so they get proper drainage and there is no conflict with other plants.

To figure out how much water your designated patch of soil retains, dig a hole about ten inches deep. Fill it with water and check it in a day when all the water has disappeared. Fill the hole again with water and if the second time the hole is full of water, your soil has a low saturation point. This is not good for almost any plant to survive and you need to fix it. The method for improving drainage in your garden is to create a raised bed. You can create a small border for a raised bed and add enough soil and compost to raise it above the rest of the level of the yard by at least 7 inches. Just doing this small border will improve drainage significantly.

The two main areas that you would want to build a raised bed are on grass or dirt. Both of these situations should be built slightly different. If you want a raised garden in a non grassy area, this will be easy to build. Just find some type of border to retain the dirt you will be adding. What really works for me are the good old two by fours. Just grab a few and place them around the area where you want your raised bed. Once the two by fours are in place, add some soil and maybe some manure. I normally wait a while before planting on the raised bed just to make sure there is no deterioration taking place.

If you are planning to build a raised bed where sod already exists, this may be a little more difficult to do. For starters, you need to cut the sod around the perimeter of the garden and then flip it over. This is not as simple as it sounds and you need something that has a very sharp edge to slice the edges of the soil and be able to get under it. Once the sod is turned upside down, you can add a layer of straw to prevent the grass from growing back up. On top of the layer of straw, you can add all the soil and manure that a normal garden would need.

After your raised beds are built, you can start planting your plants the same way you’ve planted them before in any other areas of your garden. Be careful and make sure that the roots don’t extend too far into the original ground level. Keep in mind that the whole point of creating a raised bed is to keep the roots out of that ground level that saturates easily. The beauty of a raised bed is that you will notice a great improvement almost immediately after planting you new plants. The new soil added facilitates better root development, evaporation is prevented and decomposition is completely discouraged. Combine all these things and it makes a perfect environment for almost any plant to grow beautifully. So go ahead and start building that raised bed and you will see that the results are worth every bit of work you’ve put into it.

Here are some other flower gardening sites that I found for you to browse. Thanks for visiting Best Flower Gardening!

flower gardening - a set on Flickr
annual: Definition from Answers.com
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Let a Billion Wildflowers Bloom : People.com
Flower Gardening Tips : How to Grow Delphinium - YouTube
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Technorati Tags: compost, garden raised bed, garden sod, garden water, manure, proper drainage, raised bed, Soil

I just love African Violets and growing up my mother always had them all over the house. Saintpaulia, commonly known as African Violets are in the Gesneriaceae family and it is native to Tanzania and southeastern Kenya in Africa. The history behind this beautiful flower is fascinating.

The African Violet genus is named after Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire dating back to 1860 who was a district commissioner of the Tanga province and discovered the plant in Tanganyika now called Tanzania in Africa in 1892. It is said that the Baron then sent seeds of the plant to his father who was an amateur botanist in Germany.

In 1884 and 1887, Sir John Kirk and Reverend W.E. Taylor who were British plant enthusiasts, had collected and submitted specimens to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew but the quality of the specimens was not good enough to permit scientific description of the plant at that time. The genus Saintpaulia was scientifically described by J.C. Wendland in 1893.

African Violets are cultivated as house plants and usually kept in the house. I remember mother buying very pretty pots for her African Violets and placing them in window sills all over the house.  These come in different colors such as white, pink, violet and hard to find dark red and yellow. The flowers can be either single with five petals or double which has more than five petals. (photo courtesy of Park Seed Co.)

 

African Violets prefer temperatures between 65-75 Fahrenheit and thrive best if planted in well drained rich soil. Compost is also good as it promotes good drainage. You can plant them in hanging baskets, containers or flower pots but it is best to keep them in the house in colder regions.

 

Although you can start African Violets from seeds, my recommendation is to get already established plants at your local nursery. These are easy to care for and all you need to do is keep them moist and give them indirect sun light. Be careful not to over water African Violets as they do not like to be swimming in water and excess water may damage the roots.

 

To your gardening success,
Diana

Here are some other flower gardening sites that I found for you to browse. Thanks for visiting Best Flower Gardening!

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Technorati Tags: African Violets, compost, container plants, flower pots, Flowering Plants, growing african violets, hanging baskets, House Plants, indoor plants, rich soil