Author: David and Alissa Dewitt
HEATHER GARDENS - Mass plantings of heather, either planted with one of each variety or one hundred, can be ideal for a sunny area. Spaced appropriately, the plants will mature into a tapestry with drifts of foliage and flower color.
By Tom Ogren
Like most people who grow deciduous fruit trees (apples, peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, etc.) I used to do lots of serious heavy pruning every winter.Each winter I would head back dozens of those long, tall canes that had grown the year before. On some trees, plums in particular, each year I’d often find myself cutting back a huge number of new branches, many of them well over six feet in length. I occasionally wondered: Isn’t this hard pruning cycle putting a big workload on the tree? Each summer the tree pours all its energy into growing those overly long new branches, and then each winter I’d chop them back, trying to keep the tree’s overall height under some semblance of control. And then too, despite my best intentions and hours of work spent pruning, each season the trees still seemed to be a bit taller than the year before. However, each winter for decades I kept up this hard winter pruning, working with the standard conventional wisdom that it was necessary in order to have a decent tree and a good set of fruit. At the time it made perfect sense to me. Because of apical dominance, when a tip is cut off, the next bud back from what is now the tip, this bud will normally sprout next. The topmost bud on any strong branch has high concentrations of the natural growth hormone, indole acetic acid (IAA). When we prune grapes (which unlike most pomes and stone fruits, set fruit only on new wood) we have to prune the last year’s wood hard. We cut back to a few large, strong buds. The lower down on the branch a bud is, the larger and stronger it is. Thus, heavy pruning makes plenty of sense with grapes, or others that bloom on new wood, figs, mulberries, and roses. But does this same sort of hard pruning make sense with most fruit trees, trees that do not set their fruit on the current season’s wood?
By Mary Hanna © 2005 All rights reserved
This article is dedicated to planning a successful herb garden. If you have planted herb gardens in previous years this will help to revamp and refresh one already have.
Author: David Chandler
All too often, soil composition is neglected. Every season, our plants and gardens rob the soil of it nutrients. All gardeners are to be custodians of the soil, taking the time to replace food and other elements as they are used. Since our soil is so important, we need to treat it, as we want to be treated, not like dirt.
Author: Rose Smith
Japanese gardens have become popular choices when choosing to landscape a yard. The entire garden concept is designed to create an experience, invoke feelings and provide a haven where one can be relaxed, calm and peruse inner-thoughts. Therefore, it is important that the rocks and plants meld together within the landscape, and that the relationship and placement between rocks, plants and water is well thought out within the design.
Author: Paul Duxbury
When I was a child, I loved to pick Dandelions. The pretty yellow flowers were small, colorful, and looked nice tucked behind my ear! However, if one had popped up in the front yard, my hair accessory would have been considered an atrocity! I often feel sorry for weeds. They are plants too. In fact, if you flipped through a botany field guide, you may be surprised at the plants you find classified as weeds! But simply put, a weed is really defined as a plant out of place.
Author: Christopher Chase
As you go through the history of Japanese bonsai trees (among others), you will note that this term is used to refer to a ‘plant in a pot’. As per the information provided on Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum site, “the ancient Chinese were the first to miniaturize trees for ornamental purposes, around A.D. 200. Later, the Japanese, who used it to create beautiful gardens, adopted the bonsai technique.
Author: Josh Gray
Summer is just around the corner, and your lawn could probably use a little maintenance before the summer season of backyard BBQs and swimming in the pool. So what are you doing now to get your lawn ready? Lawn care is often feared as a difficult and time intensive process, but with a few guidelines and tips, you can easily have a healthy green lawn in time for the first backyard party of the season.
Author: Karen Gross
One of the biggest challenges for vegetable gardeners is pest control. Anyone who has tried to keep a determined deer from eating the sweet corn knows how difficult it can be to deter animals, including insects, birds, rabbits and other wildlife from what, for them is a natural smorgasbord. From their perspective, there sit these wonderful veggies, all neat and weeded, almost as if you placed the plants there just for them. And so animals that we might otherwise enjoy can become a nuisance when it comes to the garden.
Author: Michael J. McGroarty
Spring means that the garden centers are packed with people, and car trunks are packed with plants. Everybody has dirt on their knees, dirt under their nails, and is excited about gardening. To make certain that this excitement yields positive results, let’s discuss the basics in this article of spring planting tips.
Installing new plants and having them grow successfully is not difficult, nor is it as complicated as some would have you think. Is it as easy as just digging a hole and setting the plant in? Yes, it certainly can be. I won’t get into bed preparation, as I have covered that in other articles that are available at http://www.freeplants.com
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