Diversity of orchids is absolutely amazing. Orchids belong to Orchidaceae family, which is the largest family of flowering plants, with at least 24,000 different species. It is not surprising, that orchid flowers are extremely various; they could be of any colour you can imagine, and their shape and size may very much differ among different species and genera as well. Flowers of a great number of orchids look really gorgeous.
In addition, many of them have very nice fragrance, which is also different among different species. Some orchids, for example Stanhopea, are so fragrant that their owners have to keep them outside when those orchids are blooming, because the fragrance is tremendously strong. Some orchids, for instance Brassavola orchids, smell at nocturnal time, which is wonderful. It is also interesting that the flower smell of certain orchids, for example Bulbophyllum, is quite repulsive, because natural pollinators of these orchids are flies feeding on rotten meat. Nevertheless, many of such orchids are valuable items for many orchid collectors.
Moreover, different orchids bloom in different seasons. It is possible to collect a combination of certain species or
Most avocado trees are grown in tropical climates, primarily in Mexico (the world's leading producer of avocado), California, Hawaii, and Florida. California is the number one producer of avocados in the United States, with most of the crop being of the Hass variety. But why not growing an avocado tree at home?
Growing an avocado from seed...
To grow an avocado tree, you need to get an avocado seed, clean it off and poke three toothpicks into the side of it. Then immerse the seed halfway in the water while the three sticks rest on the rim of a drinking glass. Set the seed with the wider portion down.
Place the glass with the seed somewhere warm with not too much direct light. The water should be changed at least every couple of weeks, before it gets dirty and depleted of oxygen.
In four to six weeks, the seed should split and out should come roots and a sprout. Once the stem has grown a few inches, place it in a pot with soil. Avocados have been known to grow large,
I know what you're thinking: gardening is too hard, it takes too much time, and how can anyone like me go about growing a garden when I know nothing about the subject? This is most people's view on gardening, and is completely wrong! Gardening is easy and anyone can do it!
Imagine needing to make a salad, and walking out to your garden where you have fresh lettuce growing. You pick a head of lettuce, get it washed, and then realize you need some more ingredients.
Back out to the garden you pick some tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, onion, and peppers as well. Throwing this in your salad, you realize you are eating the tastiest salad you have ever had in your life! This is because you are growing the highest quality of fruits and vegetables, as well as getting it as fresh as possibly can be!
How to Start a Garden
But how can you start a garden? It's simple! All you need is a spot of ground, some water, seeds, and some determination.
Start with tilling your garden.
If you are a person living in any part of the globe except Antarctica and your area faces drought and scarcity of water, you would baulk at the idea of starting a garden at this time. The extreme heat in climate and shortage of water had even the authorities wondering whether the plants in government-laid gardens would survive. Now, that is the crux of this article? How to save water and start a new garden? It is possible - some sacrifices and smart actions, when made, will help us to start a garden in our home.
However, there are some points that always have to be remembered. Expert gardeners have clearly specified that more plants are lost or become dead as a result of overwatering than by providing the required amount of water or underwatering. The points given below can assist if you are a fresher in gardening:
Every gardener, with a common sense, can easily know that water poured on soil can evaporate easily. You can dig a small area around the plant, cover with stones and rocks where water can percolate
A well crafted small garden design could be desirable to people for a number of reasons. First, the outdoor space suitable for being turned into a garden could be rather small. Alternatively there could be plenty of outdoor space, but the person may not want to make a large garden. Also if the garden space is set in an urban setting there may only be a balcony or small patio available for a garden installation.
Those are all good reasons to desire a small garden space, but designing one for those applications can be tricky. It takes forethought and careful planning to make a garden of this type really work.
Here are a few small garden design ideas that anyone can use to get the most out of any space.
First, a person needs to consider what the purpose of the garden is: Decorative, functional, or a hybrid.
A decorative garden is one that focuses on plants that will have the largest visual impact per square foot without any consideration for edible, or in some other way functional plant. A
When mulling over garden fencing ideas it is important to consider a simple question. Why do you feel you need it? Is the garden fencing for security, privacy of your house, is it a garden accessory or purely for decorative purposes or indeed shelter. This a key question as the garden fencing you decide on will also determine the type of material and work involved plus of course cost. It is always advisable to talk with the experts in your local fencing supplier or garden centre and also to spend time driving around looking at fencing that appeals to you and would from your perspective tick all the boxes if in your garden. It always helps to arrive at an informed decision.
Whether you want to give your garden a more decorative look or you simply want a protective barrier then fencing is without question a very worthwhile addition to your garden. Garden fencing plays many roles. It defines the boundary of your property, can act as a partition to keep neighbours or unwelcome guests out and children and animals in. Where possible garden
You can create your own successful and healthy wildlife habitat, which provides water, shelter, food, and room for wildlife families to grow with organic and sustainable conservation and preservation practices. Your own healthy wildlife habitat benefits can be immediate and long-term. How can you begin creating your own healthy wildlife habitat?
Are you using chemical fertilizers and pesticides in your yard? Do you have invasive species taking over? Is your yard lacking signs of wildlife such as birds, mammals, butterflies, or bees? Do you have dead plants everywhere? Is your soil compacted and unhealthy? Do you wish your garden looked like your neighbor's - full of blooms and wildlife? There must be a better way. Perhaps your garden needs some life - wildlife that is.
All wildlife needs water to drink and bathe in whether it is a small bowl or pan of water with pebbles, a pond, stream, creek, puddles, or a clean bird bath or fountain.
The sound of water will draw wildlife whether it is gurgling or dripping. The hummingbirds flock to my gurgling fountain in the front
Foundation plantings make for the basis of landscape design, not only in looks but also in purpose. Good planning results in foundation plantings that compliment, balance, take up excess water keeping it off of the foundation, screen, and block the home from sun and wind. The curb appeal that good foundation planting provides increases the home's value and desirability when selling. In some neighborhoods, they are required by covenant bylaws to not only exist around the home, but to look kept and beautiful. If you're installing, adding to, or completely redoing your foundation and are looking for plant choices that are going to be absolutely low maintenance, look no further.
Here are some suggestions for you that will require little work and provide beauty, all while adding function and purpose.
Evergreen plants are absolutely vital in a beautiful foundation design. They are functional and are beautiful year round. They also offer native songbirds and other animals respite, all while they do what foundation plantings should be doing and being absolutely simple to maintain. Not all evergreens are suitable. Here are some of
A lot of people think that hanging out a quick hummingbird feeder is enough to encourage hummers into their gardens. While hummingbirds will stop by and eat from these feeders, they tend to quickly move on to more welcoming gardens. Creating an ideal garden for hummingbirds offers more than just food. They offer all of the basic essentials for bird life. Hummingbirds come and stay in gardens that are perfectly suited for them. Here's what you need to create an ideal garden for hummingbirds.
Many hummingbirds are a migratory species of bird that spend the winters in South and Central America, and in the spring travel all the way up to North America and even into parts of Canada where they spend the warm season breeding, raising young, and preparing to fly south again. Hummingbirds rely on the nectar found in flowers, which they get plenty of in South America. But, they need the abundant insects found in the spring and summer in the lands of North America and Canada to successfully raise healthy babies. They also spend a lot of time
Gardening for some, no matter the amount of work goes into it, is a very enjoyable task - from hauling the dirt, to cutting the brambles, to pulling the weeds - it's all good stuff. But for many of us, we love our gardens and don't mind a little weekend upkeep, but we certainly don't find the idea of making it a full time job enjoyable. Thankfully, there are some pretty awesome gardening hacks that make gardening a whole lot easier. Great tools and time saving materials and habits like putting down a good mulch regularly are a couple of hacks that help, but one is so simply obvious yet dismissed that it might boggle the mind. Simply put, if you plant the right perennials in your garden, your life will be a lot easier. It's true - many perennial plants make gardening easy.
Here are some of our favorite perennials that make gardening easier with the biggest amount of "WOW" factor to boot!
Perennials in their own right save you a lot of time and headache. Once established, they come back year
Watering the garden is one of those things that many gardeners think they are getting right, but they probably are not. The most common mistake that gardeners make is watering their plants too quickly.
Typically gardeners might either turn on a sprinkler system or just use a hose. They see puddles of water everywhere and think they are getting the job done, but in reality water is being wasted and it's not even making it down deep to the plant's roots.
What's really happening is that the water is being spread out due to runoff. When water is applied too quickly the soil doesn't have a chance to soak it in. So the water that can't be soaked in gets spread to surrounding areas.
Instead of the water only being used for the intended plant, it spreads out and waters weeds. This can waste quite a bit of your gardening time, because you'll be spending it weeding.
With this big mess of water everywhere it may seem like the plants are really getting hydrated; however, if you take a shovel and
Growing a Rose of Sharon hedge in Your Garden is an excellent way of creating a private garden area during the summer season. Changing the appearance of your garden can be easily done. Regardless of the size of your garden, you don't have to spend more time, money, and effort in improving its appearance. With your knowledge about Rose of Sharon shrubs, your problem can be easily solved.
Like other homeowners, you shouldn't miss to ignore the benefits of Rose of Sharon bushes. These are the common names of the different species of flowering plants, hardy hibiscus, hibiscus syriacus, and althea. They are one of the few shrubs that bloom in the summer garden. Compared to others, they are low maintenance and the Rose of Sharon shrubs can grow upward to 12 feet. Therefore, if you want the shrub to appear as a tree, just prune away the lower branches in early spring.
One of our favorite things about Rose of Sharon bushes is their appearances. Their flowers have beautifully distinct colors such
There are a number of greenhouse designs to consider with regards to your needs and characteristics of your backyard. Some of these designs are relatively simple to construct while others are more complex. Some designs will be better suited for properties with limited space available. Other designs will fit in well if they are constructed on larger properties with established gardens. Let us consider some of these designs.
1. Lean-To Style Greenhouse - This greenhouse design is ideally suited for those whose live on properties with small backyards or no backyards at all. The structure is relatively simple to build. It generally resemble an a-frame building cut in half from the top of its roof to the ground below. As the name suggests it will lean up against the side of your home with access generally achieved through your patio door. the optimal location should be on the side of the home with receives the most sunlight. This type of structure is simple in design but will require some insight of how to fasten it securely to the side of a building such as
Many of us are concerned about how safe our home garden's fertilizer is. We want to grow our own healthy veggies, but don't want to add to the problem of illness and pesticide poisoning. This can be a challenging task. It seems like all the great gardeners, the ones that bring in the mega harvests, have an awesome fertilizer by their side. Who knows what this fertilizer contains? All we really know is the amazing effect it has on our plants.
What if I told you there was a fertilizer you could be sure about? One that will give the plants in your garden all the nutrients they need, but in a natural one. Yes, I'm sure you want a fertilizer that can explain itself, and list an honest disclosure of all the ingredients it posses. If this is your wish, then you're looking for an Organic fertilizer.
Organic fertilizers aren't hard to find. I'm not saying that you'll be able to find them in the garden section of Walmart, but if you go to a gardening store, you should be able to find at least one
If you like to grow African violets and other indoor flowers, herbs and fruits, good thing is that such plants don't require much space to grow. Depending on the violet plant size, common 5-12 cm (2 - 5 inch) plastic flower pots are usually more than large enough. Sometimes, such pots are even too big.
Violets vary in size from micro African violets, with plant width less than 7.6 cm (3 inches) to giant and trailing violets with plant width larger than 40cm (16 inches). Standard African violets width is between 20 and 40 cm (8 - 16 inches) and these plants are most common violets.
Herbs like parsley, celery and chives have very short growing period and their requirements for space are also very modest. Fruits like strawberries are grown yearlong and they have similar requirements like all other indoor plants, but they also require hand-pollination.
For plants to grow, bloom and even bear fruits, they require proper light and temperature, adequate humidity, enough, but not too much water and good growing medium.
Room and office temperatures suit violets very much, but light
Zoysia is a particular variety of hardy grass that grows well in a wide range of conditions. This type of grass also requires far less watering and mowing than most grasses. This particular variety of grass can also create a natural thick and soft carpet that feels great for bare feet. Zoysia is also ideal because it actually grows differently. It expands sideways and doesn't grow higher in a short span of time. Because of this, this type of grass can become so dense and becomes effective at choking out most summer weeds and replacing existing grass that you don't want on your lawn anymore.
Although Zoysia is a low-maintenance type of grass, it still needs proper care and maintenance to make sure they maintain their appeal and good condition. Below are some useful tips you can follow to maintain your Zoysia grass:
Fertilize. All well-maintained lawns are fertilized with the right amount and kind needed for that particular grass and on a schedule based on the growing season. When you fertilize, you keep the grass healthy and enable
A walk through the woods off of the beaten path, or paved path in the case of city parks, will point out the ease of composting. Take a look at the big birch or maple or ash or oak or whatever other tree grows beside the path in your neighborhood. Depending upon the time of year, the tree is covered with leaves, losing leaves or bare of leaves. All those leaves fall to the ground. If you have a similar tree in your yard, every year you rake up what seems to be at least a foot of leaves. Why are there not at least thirty feet of leaves under the trees in the woods accumulated over the last thirty years of growth? Surely the wind has not blown all of them away.
The answer is found beneath the few leaves left under the tree. A quick scuff of the foot reveals black earth full of organic matter, compost. First a layer of last year's leaves with the general detritus of a woodland floor, then that layer of black matter, the leaves of past years broken down by bacteria,
With attention paid to the plight of diminishing wildlife, especially populations of pollinators such as native bees and butterflies, people have responded with an interest in ways they can help keep what pollinators are left and even help increase populations.
This has resulted in a heavy interest in native plants as alternative choices in landscapes, and has changed much of the approaches we take when designing landscapes, as to make benefitting wildlife a priority in design. Ultimately, creating gardens and landscapes that resemble a healthy, established native ecosystem is the ultimate goal, but doing so takes a lot of space, money, and time. So what's the typical eco-conscious gardener living in the urban jungle to do?
Many gardeners are falling in love with the ideas of mini-meadows. While it's not acres of native restored prairie gardens, it's still a beautiful way to enjoy wonderful, healthy plants in the landscape while helping out the bees and butterflies (and birds and a plethora of other native wildlife).
Native prairie plants have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in tough climate conditions. They can handle a wide
Choosing the best supplies is the key determinant of healthy, quality and outstanding plants thus, giving your garden a more pleasant look. There are varieties of garden supplies that will help you give your plants all the necessary care required during growth. The hydroponic supplies are meant to improve your plant's performance as well as making your organic gardening work easier and fun.
The aim of this article is to provide you with more insight that will help you make better decisions based on the following gardening categories
Water Filtering Systems: It ensures that your plants remain healthy by pre-treating your water. Water that is used to water your plants is passed through these filters that remove any chlorine from water that can cause adverse effect to soil and plants in your organic gardening. Water filters eliminates the chlorine which could have otherwise killed soil microbiology in the soil. Therefore, purchasing a good water filter system will ensure that your garden soil remains fertile by providing the much needed minerals and vitamins that ensure your plants grow healthier in your garden.
Soil Treatment: Treating your