If you’re the kind of person who takes pride in your home, than you’re likely want to keep your garden in the best shape too. Gardening jobs can be therapeutic, plus such tasks can help you to learn more about nature and green-living. For a few simple garden maintenance tips, try a few of these on for size!
How to Maintain your Garden with These Simple Tips
There are a few things to always consider when maintaining your garden: soil, sun, weeds and use. Many times, we overlook one or two of these basic concepts.
1. Perfect your composting
Rule number one of achieving the perfect garden is perfecting your composting regime. If you send your food waste to landfill, the conditions are not right for proper decomposition. What this means is that the foods produce methane gas as they rot, which is harmful to the environment.
Collect your food waste and use it as fertilizer for your garden instead. From leftover fruit and veg to eggs shells, coffee beans or plant trimmings; with a few composting tips you’ll soon have yourself the perfect pile. It’s easy to build a large compost pile outside, and also have a small kitchen composter too!
2. Prune damaged plants
It’s best to prune your shrubs and small trees in the late wintertime. During winter, wounded limbs are prone to infection, which means that diseases can develop even when the plant is dormant. Pruning during the winter will help you to ensure that diseases do not spread. Following these tips will allow you to grow healthy plants all year around.
Many annuals, however, need to be trimmed during the summer in order to produce large harvests of herbs, fruit or vegetables. For instance, basil needs to be trimmed before it blossoms, or the herb won’t be as flavorful.
Related: How to Grow and Harvest Basil
3. Keep An Eye Out For Bugs
To keep your garden lovely, it’s vital to keep bugs off your plants. For a homemade solution, try putting soapy water into a spray bottle, (you can use your regular dish soap). This solution will dehydrate bugs, ensuring that your plants stay safe.
Pyrethrum spray is another excellent option for tackling those pesky bugs. It’s made of dried chrysanthemum flowers, meaning that it’s the perfect natural solution. Another thing that you can do is add pepper to water and spray this on your bug-prone plants.
Remember, there are beneficial bugs too, so be sure not to harm or kill those bugs. For instance, pollinators such as bees and butterflies are crucial to any garden. Ladybugs are predator bugs that help keep harmful insects like aphids from destroying your plants.
4. Stay On Top of Weeds
Weeds are the worst part of gardening. They grow constantly, and without fail. There are many methods of growing that help curtail some weed growth: no till gardening, companion planting, planting grown cover, etc. However, these do not guarantee that weeds won’t still be a problem.
The best option is to visit your garden daily, pulling and spraying weeds. This will keep your garden healthy and thriving as your plants won’t have to compete for nutrients.
Related: Non-Toxic Weed Killer
5. Give Your Plants Space
When creating a garden space, it’s vital to ensure that plants aren’t placed or grown too close together. When plants are crowded, they compete for everything from nutrients to water and light. Due to this, one or two of the plants may become weak, which means they are more prone to disease.
Keep this in mind when you are planting or arranging your potted plants in your space, as placing them too close together can also be harmful. Arranging your plants well helps to enhance the overall aesthetics of your garden.
6. Consider Companion Planting
Companion planting is the process of growing plants together that benefit one another. There are many different types of plants that can be helpful, and there are many that can be harmful.
For instance, marigolds can be added to your vegetable garden to help bring in pollinators and deter harmful insects. Certain herbs planted together can help provide protection and ensure healthier growth. Before planting anything in your garden, research what kind of plant it likes being near, and consider planting one of those as well.
Related: Why You Should Add Marigolds To Your Vegetable Garden
7. Maintain Your Trees and Shrubs
If your garden has larger trees, it’s essential that you maintain them as a matter of safety. For example, you might find that bad weather leaves you with ‘widowmaker’ branches. These are branches which have become detached from the tree, yet are still suspended, due to being tangled within other branches.
Such issues can cause harm to yourself, others or your property. The best thing to do is to contact a tree removal company who can assess the health and state of your tree. A professional arborist will be able to determine whether you should keep or have your tree removed in the name of safety.
Shrubs are no different, keeping them trimmed not only ensures that they stay healthy, it also ensure that the dead branches do not become a fire risk. Keep shrubs trimmed back each winter so that they grow better the following spring.
Maintaining your garden with simple tips will help keep your garden healthy and thriving. Basic maintenance is crucial to a beautiful garden you can enjoy year and year.
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