Flowers Of Happiness

By Paul Hata

 Compost serves as a growing medium,or a porous, absorbent material that holds moisture and soluble minerals, providing the support and nutrients in which most plants will flourish.Organic compost is the best material to grow your plants in. Compost is the type of soil plants really love to grow in, because it is made from lots of great organic material. It is the safest kind of material to grow your plants in.

How Do Make Organic Compost

1.You need to start with a base of material that is rich in carbon.You will need things like straw, dead flowers, shredded newspaper, and dried leaves. Some people forget to add these brown materials, but the are essential.

2.You need green materials that are high in nitrogen.These materials include things like kitchen waste from plants, animal manure, green garden clippings, and grass clippings. You can use all kinds of fruit and vegetable peelings and leftovers, but no meat!

3.You need a little bit of soil from your garden.It is important for you to remember that you should actually add a bit of natural soil to your compost to get it started. You cab start by putting down a layer of your brown material. This could be straw, dry leaves, or even shredded newspapers if you do not have anything else. On top of that, you can add some of your green stuff, then a layer of soil. Then you add more of your brown material to the top. Finally, you need to add water to these layers. Just moisten them, do not drown them!

4.Continue the above by adding layers until you have a compost pile that is around 3 feet wide and 3 feet high. You should probably have a ratio of about three parts brown material to one part of green material. If your pile is not 3 feet tall yet, just keep adding material to it whenever you have it available.

5.About once every week or two, you should turn your compost pile. This means using something like a garden fork (a pitchfork) to stir your pile. You want to work all of the stuff in the middle out toward the edges, and move the outer material inward toward the middle.

Be sure to keep your compost pile moist. It should never be soggy, but be sure not to let it dry out. If your compost pile gets too dry, it will stop decomposing properly. If you see steam coming up from your pile when you turn it, you can be pretty sure everything is decomposing properly.

You can add earthworms to your compost pile if you want. They find the pile on their own, but you can speed the process up a big by adding some to the pile yourself. You can buy earthworms at a fishing bait store and use those.

6.Build or buy a bin to house your compost pile.This can help keep your pile neat and tidy, so it does not pread out too much. You can also buy rotating compost bins that you can turn in order to mix your compost. These are not necessary, but they can make your job easier.

Once your compost turns into a rich, nearly black material, it will start to smell much better. Your new compost will smell a bit sweet. Once it turns black and starts to smell sweet, it is ready to be mixed with your regular garden soil. In fact, you can use this rich compost as potting soil, usually with nothing else added. You can even replace most of the soil in your garden with this material, or use it in raised beds.

Paul Hata is active in various social and community programs aimed at providing equal access to education,health and jobs to all.Paul has over 10 years experience in managing a multi-million dollar advertising company.Paul can be reached at - EarlyPlanet.com

Getting Your Garden Ready For Planting And What You Need To Know
By Vin DeWolfe

 First things first, pick out the right spot for the garden plot. Plants all possess their own brightness preferences, but as a general rule, they need some daily sun. Vegetable plots do better in full sun while some flowers and other plants favor shade. Sun loving plantlife command a minimum of six hours and sooner 8 or more hours of sunlight per day. Scout your yard for a sunny day and check what areas get the most sun. Avoid areas that are shadowed by houses or other foliage for long time periods.

The location your garden will grow best also depends on the soil. A clay dirt with little drainage or a dry sandlike soil are less inclined to produce than a robust, black, considerably drained earth. Check your location and check the character of the earth before strating. Test kits are easily found at yard and garden depots. If you find pitiful circumstances, debate improving the earth or fill containers with better soil and attempt raised bed gardening.

Once you’ve picked the area, it’s time to get to work. First, neaten the spot. Weeds and their roots ought be dispatched from your new garden plot. Pull them, dig them up, whatever you need to do to remove them completely. All the weeds you pick should be added to a compost heap. Even if you don’t have a compost pile, start one! The gains to your garden are wonderful. The heat from the cooking compost will off the weed seeds, making them unable to reproduce.

Later, as they break down, they develop into an organic fertilizer that you can use on all of your plants. Dead leaves, and old discards from the garden can also be added back into the compost as the vegetation grows. This way, the garden almost feeds itself.

The soil in your garden plot requires to be loosened before you plant. The total area should be dug to a depth of several inches. Spade fulls of earth get turned over and all the clods should be broken up. Use a rake to help break up the soil and even out the surface. Keep doing this until the garden plot is altogether free of weeds, stones, sticks and debris. This takes a bit of time, but it’s considerably worth it. The fewer weeds that stay, the easier time your seedlings will have in getting started. likewise, the more effective job you do now in removing weeds and other undesirable plants, the lighter weeding will be later on.

Now that the soil is groomed, it’s time to plan the layout of your garden. Even in conventional garden bed planting, there are variants. Some folks like to sow their seeds in neat, long courses. Others choose tightly planted, shorter rows arranged in groups. Either way, lay out how you want the garden to be; spuds here, onions there, a row of carrots over there, etc. Draw it out on a paper or mark it out right on the garden plot.

It’s not all about how you want the garden to look though. Garden plants, particularly vegetables, develop in a potpourri of sizes, heights and widths. Some plants like squash and pumpkin are vines that spread in all directions and overtake adjacent plants. Corn can get very tall and shade out shorter plants next to them. These are just two cases, but you get the idea. In order for your garden plants to all get along, they must to be sown so their compatible.

The hardiness zone you live in will also influence what types of things you can raise. Some plants need more sunshine, higher or lower temperatures or more rainfall than your zone grants. Check your hardiness zone and purchase plants that are known to produce within it. Seed packages and seed plants typically will have a label telling the hardiness zone right for them.

When buying your seeds or spouts, keep in mind the rest of your garden design and seek out the correct plants. Ask questions at the home & garden center and do your research. A well designed garden truly is a thing of splendor.

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Getting Rid of Weeds in Flowerbeds
By rwakefield

 You have a prized flower bed, with a wide variety of colours of flowers, timed so that there is always something pretty to look at throughout the year, and it is looking perfect. Why is it that weeds always come to spoil all the hard work that you put in? Weeds are the gardener’s nightmare.

Part of the problem with weeds on a flower bed is that the soil is almost always of very high quality you have used fertilizer and compost to make a great growing environment. Then, you also cleared the area to make way for your new prized flowers and plants. Add to that your daily watering and regular nourishment of the soil and what you get is not only the ideal environment for your geraniums, delphiniums and peonies, but also the ideal area for fast growing weeds too!

Avid gardeners, who are regularly in the garden, will be able to spot the different growths of plants, and can quickly take out the unwanted young growths of weeds in a flower border. However, to the untrained eye, it is very difficult to spot the difference between a weed and the young shoots of your favourite plant. This is made ten times worse if you have gone for a random or un-ordered layout of flowers, or if you have mixed your plant types together to give a stunning flower bed.

What is the gardener to do? Weeds should be removed at the earliest possible opportunity, and this may be when the leaves start to take shape the more common weeds have very distinctive leaves and should be weeded out as soon as possible to allow the wanted flowers to grow through. It is vitally important to remove as much (all!) of the roots as possible, as even the smallest amount of root left in the ground can quickly grow back again.

Many weeds can leave seeds which are able to lie dormant for many years. Disturbing the ground by tilling may loosen these seeds and allow them to grow again. Think twice before digging deeply into the ground on a flower bed which was heavily covered in weed a year ago. One trick is to cover the ground in thick newspaper and then put a thick layer of top soil and compost on top. This way, the weeds underneath are unable to grow up through, yet you have not damaged the environment with any plastic layer.

Sometimes however, weeding by hand just isn’t enough. Once a flowerbed has many weeds in it, your only recourse will be to turn to chemical weed killers. Many of these are advanced enough to target only a specific type of plant you should look for weed killers which are designed for use on the flower bed, as these can leave your prized flowers untouched and yet still remove weeds.

It is important to be as careful as possible when using weed killers ensure that you only spray weeds ,as even the best weed killer will damage a wanted flower if you spray directly onto it.

Try to use a systemic weed killer, as this will help you greatly in the future. Systemic weed killers remove the top growth AND the root systems of weeds. This means that they are not able to grow back.

Fighting weeds is an ongoing task you will never completely win the battle against unwanted plants in the garden. Focus on removing the really damaging plants such as Japanese knotweed and bindweed at all costs, as these will come back year after year, if not dealt with effectively. You should also consider dealing with weeds as they come out. A garden is for enjoyment, and part of this enjoyment is taking a close look at your flower beds if you spot a weed, then out it comes!

Mr R.Wakefield is an author and publisher who writes content for for Japanese Knotweed Solutions, (http://www.jksl.com), specialists in Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.