Skip the quick weight loss diets talk and let’s talk flowers!

Marigolds: These annual beauties grow easily, last a long time and you can plant them almost anywhere. Make a whole bed of different varieties of marigolds in your yard.

Sunflowers: Although most people envision the hugely tall, nodding sunflowers, there are also many smaller varieties that you can mix and match in a sunflower garden.

Morning Glories: Got room to spare along a fence or trellis? Put these standard beauties in for a long-lasting and easy summer display that will go on and on throughout the growing season. What’s more, these guys will volunteer and will be back the next season, too!

Daylilies: Although they have their name for a reason, what they lack in longitude they more than make up for in their bright hues and sheer number of blossoms.

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

Have you ever included a child or children actively in the planning and execution of a garden? Create a love of gardening in children while they are yet children and teach them to garden along with you. As they grow in their gardening know-how, you can even give them their own little plot to tend and cultivate.

No, we are not engaging in any diet pill reviews here – we’re creating gardeners!

Gather a pencil and paper and show a child how to plan a garden on paper. Let the child choose what he or she wants to grow. Teach a child how to plant seeds and coax them to grow. Share their eagerness and excitement as those first seeds germinate and sprout.

Even a small child will enjoy digging in the dirt just for the sake of digging.

Show children how to create a hummingbird garden or a sunflower house with seeds. The love of gardening you instill will last a lifetime.

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

As the bees buzz around flowers and vegetables in home gardens, one’s mind turns to the miraculous creation of these tiny workers. Time to wander away from cares about such things as acne treatments and focus on the lowly honeybee for a moment or two.

Honeybees live in colonies and make honey. During the winter months, they snuggle together to keep warm. There is one queen in each colony, who lays all the eggs. Drones mate with the queen. Female workers make the honey.

Only honeybees die when they use their stingers. All other bee varieties will go on to sting another day. This is due to a barbed stinger that pulls away from the bees abdomen when it stings, causing the bee to die.

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

You sure don’t need to worry about nuphedragen when you have a garden producing. We ate from the garden for the first time this season last night. Lots of radishes, lettuce and spinach rounding out a great meal on the grill.

Today we spent the better part of the afternoon mulching around everything. We have tomatoes blossoming, cherry tomatoes coming, zucchini and summer squash sprouting from the soil, peas twining up the garden fence, eggplant and cabbages getting nice and big and healthy. Even the peppers are looking wonderfully chipper out there. My herb garden looks great too…chives blossoming, basil beginning to take off. Yes…the garden is taking hold and thriving.

Next week we will finish mulching the other half of the garden and finally get some beans in…and then…we get ready to enjoy the bounty of our labors.

What a treat!

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

One of the reasons people garden is to save money…right? Not only can you have the best of the best growing right outside your back door, but for less than it would cost you to purchase it from the store. Well…let’s make sure about that!

By the time you add everything up… the costs of plants, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, lawn mower and trimmer maintenance, weed eater cord, mulch, watering your garden…and even your time and effort, this can add up to substantial spending.

One of the best ways to save money in the garden is to make use of your own organic waste. By this I mean…start a compost pile and add all of your organic kitchen refuse as well as your yard waste. Before you know it, you will have a thriving compost pile ready to improve your garden soil.

1. Pare down the gardening tools you purchase and use. The must-have’s include a good shovel, a hose, a spade, pruning shears and gardening gloves. Beyond this…only purchase what you really consider a requirement for gardening.
2. Start plants by seeds instead of seedlings. Although seeds require more patience, they are much cheaper than seedlings. Start seeds indoors in late winter to have them ready to transplant outdoors.
3. Use naturally occurring materials in your garden. Mulch with grass clippings instead of purchasing bags of mulch. Lay down sheets of newspaper beneath the clippings as a weed block.
4. Apply white vinegar to weeds for an effective an inexpensive weed killer that does not contain all of the toxins of regular weed killer.
5. Collect rain water for watering instead of watering from a hose.

What are your favorites?

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

Here’s a tip…gardening not only will fill your kitchen with a plethora of tasty and low-fat vegetables, but the task of growing them just might take some weight off. Have you worked in a garden lately? The work involved in cultivating soil, planting seeds, hoeing weeds…it’s exhausting…and it burns calories! I don’t know if its the best weight loss supplement out there, but it definitely bears some consideration in the grand scheme of things. Go out there and work up a healthy appetite and then satisfy it with the fruits of your labors!

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

Well, it’s set to happen tonight. Wouldn’t you know…I chanced it and put my tomatoes in this week and now? Yep…frost tonight and even possible snow flurries! Argh! Is all lost? No…I’ll just be out there tromping around my garden early this evening tucking my prized tomatoes in for the night.

Here’s what I’ll be doing:

1. Watering thoroughly in the evening
2. Pounding stakes around the perimeter of my tomatoes (to support the sheeting)
3. Draping either old bed sheets or plastic sheeting over the tomatoes, over the stakes and down to the ground
4. Securing the sheeting on the ground with bricks
5. Removing the sheeting and stakes tomorrow morning after the sun comes up and the temperatures moderate back above 40 F.

Yeah, it’s a pain…but not as painful as losing 38 tomato plants!

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

Hey Gardeners! Do you compost? Are you in the process of creating black gold for your growing areas? No? You don’t know what you’re missing! Better even than extra macbook memory for your macbook!

Composting is simply mixing yard and household organic trash in a bin and creating conditions that facilitate decomposition. The decomposition process is occurs as millions of microscopic organisms go to work in the compost pile making it into a rich organic fertilizer and valuable soil amendment.

Select your site – make it a little “out of the way” so you don’t have to look at it all the time, but it should also be convenient to your garden for transporting compost. Make your compost bin about 3 cubic feet in size.

Now start adding your layers. You need carbon materials (straw, dry leaves, newspapers, sawdust) and nitrogen materials (grass clippings, kitchen waste, manure). Start with a 6-inch layer of carbon and follow this with a 12-inch layer of nitrogen. Continue adding the layers in alternating order – always end up with a carbon layer on top, though…keeps pests and insects away! After you fill your bin to the top, let it sit and fester. You’ll know when it’s done because it looks like…dark, rich, COMPOST!

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

No, hip hop clothes will not be our apparel of choice tomorrow. We’ll most likely be in old jeans, t-shirts, rubber shoes and gardening gloves. Why you ask? Because we are planting our spring garden tomorrow. I’m very excited to be anticipating sweet peas, onion, spinach, onions and radishes. We’ve had a warm and dry spring so far…I only wish I could have gotten the seeds in about a week ago…but I’ll have to be satisfied with this and make it work.

What are you planting in a spring garden? Is it in yet?

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.

Time to head out to the yard and whip it into shape. Want to hear the good news? You can whip your body into shape at the same time with the calories you can burn as you work out in the garden. For every half hour of work outside, here is a rough accounting of the energy and calories you can expend:

• Mowing: 180 calories
• Power trimming: 140 calories
• Manual trimming 180 calories
• Weeding: 180 calories
• Raking: 160 calories
• Bagging leaves: 160 calories
• Planting seedlings: 180 calories
• Planting trees: 180 calories
• Digging and spading: 200 calories
• Chopping wood: 200 calories

Ready to hit the turf, get busy and whip both your yard and body into shape? I am!

ShareThis

Related posts

• No related posts.