Popular Garden and Landscape » General

Fire pit or chiminea?

Thu, 20 May 2010 05:00:20 +0000

We bought a farm with a woods and are planning a house. with outdoor patio We want to buy a portable fire pit or one of those stee/copper chiminea fireplaces. We will be using in fall so need to stay … Continue reading →

Fire pit or chiminea? is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

How to Choose a Garden Shed

admin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:09:13 +0000

Do you enjoy working in your garden, but want a place to store those tools and pot those plants? With a garden shed, you don’t have to go back and forth to the basement or garage. You are also more likely to take better care of your tools. If you follow the below points befors purchasing your garden shed you will end up with a product you are very happy with
1) Materials
Selecting your garden shed material is significant and can be affected by the area you live in. Medium Garden Sheds can be assembled using different materials like wood, metal and pvc.
Timber garden sheds have a natural look that quiet often blends in well with your backyard. However they need frequent maintenance like periodically re-staining or sealing the wood. Despite the durability of wood, over time it can rot, split, warp or become susceptible to mold and mildew, and can be vulnerable to termites – so wood garden sheds ought be treated for protection.
Another option is metal garden sheds. These normally arrive in pre-fab sheets and are more long-lasting and cheaper than wood. But they don’t look as natural as wood and can make the yard look a little dull.
Plastic garden shed kits utilizing heavy molded plastics such as PVC and polyethylene are less costly than sheet metal garden sheds. Plastic sheds are not susceptible to termite and wood-boring insect damage, and are just about maintenance-free. They can also come in several colours and styles to accommodate your present architecture. Plastic garden sheds are highly durable and very low maintenance.
2)Function
Before you decide on a garde shed you need to know what you are going to utilise it for. Will you use it for potting seedlings? Or simply as storage? Would you preferably use your garden shed as a workshop or a potting area? If you are considering using it as some form of potting area, you could consider using it as what is known as a potting shed. These are small structures that are the perfect size for potting up hundreds of delicate seedlings.
Consider about what materials or functions you’ll need from your garden shed. Will you need big bins to store compost, potting soil, mulch, and other bulky garden materials? Shelves that hold pots and indoor potting workbenches give you an easy place to re-pot your transplants even when it’s raining outside. A small, outdoor storage garden shed or potting shed can be a big plus.
Ensure you’ve enough space to work in. If you’ve to move out a lawn mower, garden cart, and other tools before you can work at your potting bench or screen your compost, your garden shed won’t be as effective as you had desired. Some gardeners choose a built-in potting bench, whilst others prefer a wheeled bench so they can work outdoors in good weather and indoors when it rains.
3)Design
You typically have three choices when it comes to building the garden shed. You are able to have it delivered pre-assembled, get a pre-fab kit where partial assembly is involved, or build it yourself. It all depends on your budget and your skills.
The easiest, least costly sheds are available in kit form. The assortment of sizes, shapes, styles and designs is virtually endless, ranging from a simple, small structure for keeping your gardening tools dry, to a back yard barn large enough to house a large lawn tractor, all the family’s bicycles, boating gear, and still allow enough room for other tools.
If you’re tight on space the garden hutch is good for small spaces for outdoor storage. If you’re only seeking a place to store tools an outside cupboard, in kit form perhaps all that’s necessary.
If you would like to go the entire distance, additional contingents such as barn-style doors, cedar shingles, shutters, windows and window boxes add style and charm.
Many garden sheds are modular to allow for easy extensions, peg-boards, shelving, attic-storage, windows, skylights, and other accessories to be added later.
Make sure any windows and doors you select are lockable. Also check that any doors or windows are placed to accommodate the situation where you want to put the garden shed.
As you can now tell their are many decisions to make before purchasing a garden shed. If you stick to these simple steps, that choice ought to become a good deal simpler, and most importantly you should have a garden sheds which you enjoy for numerous years to come.

How to Choose a Garden Shed is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

Garden sheds are really easy to purchase on the web. You really won’t have a problem buying what you require.

French Garden Style and Design

admin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:09:12 +0000

Horticulture, in simplest terms, is the cultivation of a garden. The word itself comes from Latin in two parts: Hortus, meaning garden, and cultura, meaning cultivation. Garden cultivation is considered a form of art and, like all art forms, it has different styles.

The traditional French garden style was first developed during the Baroque and Rococo periods of the 17th and 18th centuries. The gardens of the era were majestic exhibitions of power and riches constructed by royalty and aristocrats for the purpose of impressing guests. Inspired in part by ancient classical gardens, traditional French garden style is formal. The garden design is geometric, organized and disciplined, and the gardens are almost always laid out on level ground. The terraces that are often a feature of such gardens are artificially created, and elaborately designed stairs are included to link one terrace to another. Because of the largely flat topography, traditional French gardens use large sheets of water for their reflective qualities or as impressive, artificial fountain displays. Below is a list of the main attributes of traditional French formal garden design.

* Yards are contained of square frames and constantly shuddered by neat, squared bushes

* Flowerbeds are also geometrical in shape rectangular, oval or circular.

* Parterres are an important feature of formal French gardens. These gorgeous, vast geometrically designed patterns on the ground were made with flowers, dirt, gravel and stones of all different colors. Parterres are often lined with boxwood, lavender, or rosemary. Parterres de broderies or rather, embroidery parterres, are magnificently elaborate. Visitors can view parterres from garden terraces.

* Water features are mostly canals and large, flat pools. Most of these water fountains have engines to operate them.

* Allees, meaning axes or rides, is the term used for the garden walks or pathways, bordered by trees or neatly clipped hedges that provided the framework of the French garden style. A fountain or accenting garden ornament of some kind is the usual destination of such straight pathways.

* French Garden Ornaments: In French garden designs, you will find a lot of statues, columns, trellises, sundials, birdbaths and more. Symmetrical placement occurs with these objects.

*Vegetation: Planting designs are most often created according to color. French gardens predominantly use pastel colors with a touches of yellow, red or orange and some lilac and blue. Ideally, gardeners should choose plants that bloom all year round.

* Primarily French in origin, and available as an optional feature, Orangerie is a large glass-enclosed room in the garden where you’ll find lemon, lime, and orange trees blooming during the cold winter months.

Many times, French gardens will have herb gardens in them. The French garden style is well-planned and organized, providing different locations for various gardens types such as fruit, rose or herb. The herb gardens are another feature of the garden and are not just herb patches. Paving is used in a specific pattern a chessboard pattern or a circular pattern, laid out like the spokes of a wheel. Seats are often placed in the center or in a corner of herb gardens. Some of the more common French herbs are lavender, rosemary, sage, marjoram, thyme and sweet bay.

A famous example of the traditional French formal garden style described above is the Versailles Gardens located just outside Paris. King Louis IV hired landscape architect André Le Nôtre to create the Versailles Gardens, in 1661. These gardens occupy an area of 800 hectares, very roughly about 400 acres, on the west side of the Chateau de Versailles. The gardens have meticulously manicured lawns, parterres of blooming flowers, and dozens of valuable statues and sculptures. The most impressive feature of the gardens, however are its 1,400 fountains. An enormous system of pumps and reservoirs, including fourteen water wheels, was built to bring the waters of the Seine River up to the garden. Still, there was never enough water to run all the fountains at once. While Louis IV walked through the garden the fountains would be turned on only as he approached. Today, they are only operated on Sundays.

If you aren’t planning a visit to France, you can still get an idea of the traditional formal French garden style by visiting the Conservatory Garden in the northern sector of New York City’s Central Park.

Despite the fact that traditional and formal gardening styles of France influenced the designs of gardens around the world, not all French gardens are traditional. France has many less formal gardens, including the Giverney garden overflowing with blooming flowers as shown in Monet’s beautiful paintings.
Browse here for articles full of information about Garden designs and Horticulture.

French Garden Style and Design is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

No related posts.

Winter Vegetable Gardening

admin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:56:17 +0000

When you think of gardening, chances are that you probably don’t consider winter the best time to do it. After all, very few plants can survive in the harsh, cold environment. Why else do the trees lose their leaves and such? However, there are a number of sturdy, rough plants that you can choose to grow for harvest in the springtime. Winter vegetable gardening does not really include actually growing these plants during the winter. Rather, most of the growing takes place in the fall before winter time, and the plants are merely sturdy enough to survive the cold better than other plants.

Sturdy Plants

Which kinds of plants can cling to life when the temperature dips to zero? There are still enough that you can undertake winter vegetable gardening. You have such varieties as carrots, cauliflower, and beets to grow over the winter. While surely not as numerable as plants designed for growth during the normal gardening season, these vegetable gardening seeds will grow during some of the harshest winters that we experience as far north as states like Oregon and Pennsylvania, which tend to be temperate in the summer and can experience some very cold winters.

However, winter vegetable gardening also incorporates some other tools to help you grow during the off-season. Consider building walls or windbreaks to help keep the temperature around ten degrees warmer on the coldest days, and exterior greenhouses can help keep the plants in temperate weather even when there is ice on the ground. On same days, you may even need to ventilate greenhouses to prevent an excessive amount of heat from harming your plants. Considering that the ground can freeze up to half a foot deep depending on the temperature, you should take every precaution available to give your plants a fighting chance. By following these tips, winter vegetable gardening should never be a problem.

As previously stated, winter vegetable gardening doesn’t really involve growing plants in the winter, when they will grow very slowly, if at all. Instead, it simply helps these plants to survive so that you can pick them in the spring for delicious vegetables like beets, carrots, and cauliflower. It does take a little more work and is slightly more expensive than traditional gardening, but there is no reason why a season should stop you from practicing one of your favorite hobbies. It can be a challenge at times, surely, but winter vegetable gardening is an incredibly rewarding experience.

For more about gardening please visit www.organicgardeningzone.com

Winter Vegetable Gardening is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

No related posts.

Bean Plant Growth

admin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:28:09 +0000

If you are planning a garden, knowing the full cycle of the bean plant growth can enable you to maximize it’s growing season and increase the amount of crop you get. All types of beans, ranging from the common snap pea to soy beans, are a healthy addition to any diet. High in protein, the bean is one of the base ingredients in a vegetarian’s diet, as well as an excellent side dish for those with a preference for meat.

When growing beans the beginning growth stages are important and you will need to only use good, healthy seeds for planting in your garden. High quality seeds have a much higher chance of the plant taking root, which will result in a higher yield in your garden. While these seeds may be slightly more expensive, the overall increase of bean plant growth is worth the investment, especially if you intend on having a larger garden.

The best plant growth conditions for beans range in temperature from no lower than 61 degrees Fahrenheit or 16 degrees Celsius. Temperatures below these levels will endanger the growth for the plant and in fact may even cause it to die.

Once your seeds are planted, the time it takes for the plant to reach the seedling stage can range from three to approximately forty days, with the average being eleven days. At this point, the bean plant growth stage is termed as a seedling because the plant is at a very young stage in its development. This phase of the bean plant growth cycle is vital, as a healthy seedling will mature into a robust plant. If your seedlings are dehydrated or over watered, as well as planted too early, your crops will suffer and the amount of beans gathered later in the cycle will be diminished.

From the point that your plant has become a seedling, it takes an average of at least fifty days for your plant to produce pods and be ready for harvest. For most gardeners, the full cycle of bean growth can only be accomplish once per season. The season in which you plant your seeds should be no earlier than March, because they need enough time to complete the growth cycle before the colder months arrive and frost sets in. Frost can cause serious damage to bean plants and should be avoided in order for the plants survival. Greenhouses are sometimes used in colder climates for help in ensuring the growing stages of the bean plant are successful.

The bean plant is an annual plant, which means that it can renew itself for at least three growing seasons. Bean plants can be overtaken easily by weeds, so it is suggested to use a strong mulching material in the garden and clearing a six-inch swath to sow the seeds. The soil should be thoroughly cultivated and seeds should be sown about 1 1/2 inches deep into the soil.

Bean Plant Growth is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

No related posts.

House Plant Care For Black Thumbs

admin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:52:11 +0000

Commonly found in homes across the world, plants are one of the small pleasures people seek out for their homes or office. With an endless supply of types available for purchase, there is a type for everyone. Unlike many things, adding the living touch of a plant to your home or office can be very inexpensive, with little to no cost to keep. As water, fertilizer and sunlight are the only requirements for a plant’s survival, it comes as no surprise that many people have tried to grow plants.

Its a fact that many people are taking home plants a step further and taking up home hydroponics.

Hydroponic growing is the hobby of growing plants indoors without the need for soil and is now very popular.

However, quite a few individuals have convinced themselves they have black thumbs because they somehow manage to kill the plant they have tried to care for. This common problem stems from a lack of knowledge of what a plant needs in order to thrive. With a few small changes to how you tend to your plants can help alter that black thumb into a green one.

Knowing how much you must water your plant is the first step in caring for it. Over and under watering plants is the leading cause of fatalities in plants. This is something that is extremely easy to correct. All you need to do is find knowledge about your plant, and learn how they are watered. Some plants like to always remain moist. In this case, you should water your plant frequently, but in low amounts. Some plants like to be drenched in water and then have their soil dry out. There are some varieties of plants that only like to be watered once a month! By altering how you water your plant, you should be able to extend the plant’s lifespan by a wide margin.

The absence of sunlight is the second most common cause of death in a plant. Sunlight is needed by plants in order to photosynthesize. Photosynthesis, combined with the nutrients of water and dirt, is how a plant survives. If you expose a plant with too much sun, the leaves will be burnt. Burnt leaves are unable to photosynthesize properly, which results in their death. A plant without sun starves to death.

Soil should be researched next once you have addressed the problems of water and sunlight. is your plant’s soil. Without proper soil, your plant cannot live. By nourishing the soil, you can ensure the roots of your plant has access to all things required to keep your plant living and well.

If you are still having issues keeping your plants alive, you should look for other reasons that your plant is dying. Things like bottled water may be the cause of plant death, as some variants strip the water of all nutrients, which your plants need to survive. Another common cause of plant death is the presence of pets or children. Pets and children can damage the leaves, which can result in plant fatality.

Even if you have always thought you have a black thumb, it is not impossible to become experienced in how to keep plants thriving. You could even try growing your own with home hydroponics one day!

House Plant Care For Black Thumbs is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

No related posts.

Home Vegetable Gardening for Great Home-Grown Food

admin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:52:10 +0000

There used to be a time when literally everyone had their own garden. Of course, the grocery store changed all of that, and now the trend is that most people don’t have any garden at all. This is a sad statistic because home vegetable gardening can save you hundreds of dollars a year, as millions of people still appreciate each year. As if that weren’t persuasion enough, you can also grow one hundred percent organic food with no extra chemicals which can have harmful side effects. Home vegetable gardening is more widely practiced in countries like France where it seems like literally everyone has a garden, but it is still fairly popular over in the United States.

Self-Sufficient

Home vegetable gardening is a great way to supplement what you purchase at the grocery store. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t grow enough corn, carrots, beets, and other veggies to last the entire year for your family, and those are hundreds of your own dollars that you won’t need to spend. Not only that, but you can go completely organic for a fraction of the price of organic food in stores while getting the same benefits. Organic foods tend to be tastier and more nutritional, but they can be pretty expensive if you go to a health foods store.

However, you can also grow food in the winter time by practicing what is known as winter vegetable gardening. The selection of plants that can grow during the winter is somewhat limited, but you can still grow vegetables like beets, cauliflower, and carrots for an early spring harvest after the ground completely thaws. You’ll need to practice some different methods of home vegetable gardening, but being able to pick those vegetables in the spring can be well worth the effort. Be warned that you might need to spend a little extra on supplies like greenhouses and raised gardening beds, but even these supplies won’t set you back too much.

It’s a wonder that more people don’t practice home vegetable gardening. It is incredibly simple to pick up, even if you are a novice, and you don’t need that many tools to do it. In fact, it is pretty difficult for a garden to turn out a failure, although lack of maintenance can harm the vitality of your plants (i.e. forgetting to mix plant food, compost, or manure into the soil before planting seeds or not watering them enough). Home vegetable gardening is a great hobby that will save you money and give you some very delicious food in the process.

For more about gardening please visit www.organicgardeningzone.com

Home Vegetable Gardening for Great Home-Grown Food is a post from: Popular Garden and Landscape

Wood Shutters to Accentuate Your Home