After you choose to grow your own herb garden, the next step is selecting the kind of herbs you want. In addition to all the different herb plants out there, each plant has several varieties to choose from—such as basil which has 100s of kinds.

The life cycles or growing periods vary with different herbs. In order to make good decisions, it is important to know the growing period of your herbs. Before you purchase your herb plants, you will want to be aware of their growing season, or life cycle. There are three main types:

• Annuals: This kind of flower begins with a seed. They grow, flower and die all in the same growing season. Some good annual herb plants are dill, cilantro, mustard, chervil, basil and borage.

• Biennials: This kind of herb will grow for two years and can generally bear “fruit” after the first year. Some herb plants (like parsley) can produce leafage during both years but die early in the second growing season. Some biennials you should experiment with are angelica, Queen Anne’s lace and chicory.

• Perennials: Herbs that tend to grow for more than two growing seasons are called perennials. The climate where these herbs grow determines how many years they can come back, or if they can come back at all. Some perennials you might enjoy include yarrow, lemon verbena, mints, rosemary, scented geranium, thyme and lady’s mantle.

I like raising herb plants with different growing seasons, but perennials are really rewarding because I don’t have to buy them again and replant them every year. Be cautious of how much cold your perennials are exposed to because too much can kill them. Bringing your perennials in during the colder time of year is a good way to extend their growing cycle.

These are some nice ways to lengthen the life of your herbs:

• Some perennials will need for you to trim them back, unearth the bulb, roots or rhizome, and keep in your garage, basement or cellar over the winter.
• If you are going to bring your herb plants inside during winter, use pots instead of planting them in the ground.  If you want to plant these herbs in the ground, a nice trick is to plant them container and all. These folks simply remove the whole pot at the end of the season and store them during winter months.
• The best way to get an abundance of flowers from your biennials during the second growing season is to plant them midsummer.
• Self-sowers are herb plants that sow their own seeds for the next cycle. A few fantastic self-sowers include: mustard, borage and catnip.
• Snip off faded blossoms to extend the growing cycle of short-lived annuals. Depending on your area’s temperatures; your annuals may self-seed if you cut the herb back near the end of the summer.
• The frost that can result from unexpected cold weather can kill your herbs if you do not protect them by covering them with a towel, sheet or blanket. Herbs that are in containers can be moved under a covered porch for protection.

My hope for you is that these tips can come in handy when you begin your own herb garden planning. Getting it just as you envision it can be a struggle. I have been doing this for years and I often end up digging up what does not work and redoing it!

Here is more information on Herb Garden Information. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.

Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.

Mushroom compost is very popular product and used by many gardeners and landscapers, the product you buy from the shops is a product which is produced after a growing process. This article aims at providing you with the information so you can make your own mushroom compost and so you can cut out the middle man.

The ingredients you need to start to make mushroom compost is manure, hay, poultry manure, gypsum and mushroom spawn as well as a large compost bin and steam machine. Once you have these ingredients you are ready to go.

1. To star mix gypsum and manure.

2. You then need to put this base to the bottom of your compost bin and leave it in sunlight for 2 or 3 weeks to get decomposed completely. Once it has decomposed the bin then needs to be covered to allow all of organic materials to also decompose.

3. You need to use your steam machine indoors to allow the compost to pasteurize. The sterilized rooms with the ventilation has to be used for allowing the steam to blow inside the room till such time the room gets heated to an approximate of 1600.

4. After it is pasteurized it should be placed on trays and the mushroom spawn added and mixed.

5. Then added peat moss to the tray and this needs to be kept inside and the humidity and the temperature of the room controlled. The full growth of mushrooms should be expected within 30 days.

A quality mushroom can be grown with the help of horse manure. This can be bought from shops or for fresh manure add 20% of wet straw and leave it outside. After some hours, the heaps centre will become hot. This process needs to be repeated and also kept moist. When it achieves the rotten position, the centre of the heap will not become hot.

Home gardening refers to any small activity that you carry around the house from watering the flowers and misting fertilizers or insecticides to lawn mowing and landscaping. Gardening is a popular occupation, and for lots of good reasons: some consider it relaxing, others want to enjoy the beauty of harvesting crops or they just try to go organic. Others reasons can certainly be identified here too.

An earth-friendly attitude more easily finds expression in home gardening. When you do home gardening to cover the needs of the household, it goes without saying that the use of pesticides and insecticides will be minimum if not inexistent. As for flowers they beautify any house.

For those with limited space you should go here (hypertufa.net) to learn more about the special material known as Hypertufa.

You can find equipment for home gardening in any local department store. It would be a poor investment to buy all the tools available. Just keep the activity simple, pleasant and comfortable. There are no more important aspects. Gloves will prevent hand injuries and heavy nail soiling, and good shoes will keep humidity away and provide protection for your feet. Choose your methods and equipment depending on what you grow.

Make a list of supplies before you go shopping and then go to the house and garden store or search online. For landscaping design you may have to shop around and get the best offers possible. Magazines, web sites and online forums could make viable recommendations for home gardening, and it doesn’t hurt to take a look. On the average, such materials also provide solutions to your dilemmas as well as answers to pressing questions.

You decide how complex or simple home gardening should be. You can can cultivate the entire garden or have just one bed to look after. Even so, having a garden does not necessarily force you to take up gardening all the same. You can hire someone to trim the hedges and cut the grass as you may not have the time or the disposition to ‘get dirty’. Consequently, home gardening is an occupation you love. Whether productive or enjoyable, gardening could become the perfect refuge from a stressful world.

Much more assistance and inspiration about tending to your garden and Hypertufa containers in particular are availiable at my internet site. Here you can be educated about Hypertufa garden art and lots of other inventive gardening advice.

Orchids have a reputation for being difficult to care for, but they don’t have to be as long as you follow certain instructions. You should become aware of which ones are most vital in determining whether or not your orchids are going to be healthy and beautiful.

Of course, there are countless different tips for successfully raising orchids. Here are a few of the most important ones, which any beginner orchid grower should definitely keep in mind and take seriously if they want to have the most success.

Of course, as with all other types of plants, when it comes to orchid care you are going to need to be careful with watering.  Water is essential, but you need to use care with the amounts you give them. Either too little or too much can cause your beautiful orchid to die. Orchids require a lot less water than other flowering plants, and instead of watering every few days, it is important only to water them every five to ten days or so.

You can discover if your orchid requires some water by lifting it up by the pot and assessing the weight. This way you can see how heavy the plant is and therefore how much water is left in the plant. The soil has to become very dry in between waterings.

Ventilation is another critical factor in caring for orchids. This is what is going to help keep the water from settling in right away and is also going to make sure that the flowers are getting enough oxygen.

Caring for orchids involves a number of issues that tend to come up quite commonly. Despite your best intentions, you will probably over water your plant from time to time. If so, it’s important to soak up the surplus water with a paper towel or old rag as soon as possible.

Leaves that appear to be scorched are another concern that many people experience.
This means that the plant is getting too much direct sunlight which is causing the leaves of the plant to burn as a result.

There are a lot of different types of flowers that you can grow, but the orchid is a favorite of many gardeners. Once you know the ropes on caring for orchids, you’re sure to receive years of enjoyment from these beautiful blooms.

After a long winter there is nothing more lovely than a spring garden with decorative garden decor (glass gazing balls are a great addition). You want the beautiful spring bloom so here is what you need to do.

First things first…in the fall, plant your bulbs along with some ground phlox. You
should also put some bulb fertilizer in each hole as you plant the bulbs-and pay attention to
how far down the vendor explained to plant. I recommend planting in groups, odd numbers are best,
scattered about so that that most of the other plants will hide their greenery as the garden bulbs start to
wither. If you go about loosey-goosey style putting them out to and fro, they tend to make a pretty
lawn appear amaturish.

In the spring after your daffodils and tulips have all bloomed it is important to not cut
away the greenery. Considered unattractive by prude people this cutting out can only hinder your new garden flower bulbs from
showing up the next year the way that you really want them too. Wait until it turns yellow and then it should pull out or cut off easily
enough. In fact if it does not pull out of the ground easily then it is not ready to be cut
out or cut away. These left over leaves are generating food for next year’s blooms. Simply
disregard them until they are wholely turned.

It is also a good idea to put down some bulb fertilizer in the fall and spring over the areas where you have them planted. This will help keep your bulbs happy from year to year. Deer and squirrels usually are not interested in daffodils, so this flower can be a safe bet
they are going to slowly multiply season after season.

If you haven’t already noticed also, tulips can be a hear-breaker!

You may notice that within a couple years the bulbs tend stop blooming. Plus, the squirrels like to steal the bulbs and even the deer eat them … they simply disappear.

Yes, grape hyacinth and also scilla are both know to be precious small purple flower bulbs, but they can spread to the
point of being hinderance to your garden…and, as you can probably guess, you will want to keep this in mind when introducing them. Be sure to have some recycled glass gazing balls and other decorative garden decor too!

Rule of thumb number one is to start the spring garden in the fall…just another reason why planning ahead is a big part of gardening.

There are lots of challenges to overcome for anyone who tries to create an organic vegetable garden. The process extends over several seasons, but when results finally appear, the homegrown veggies will be the tastiest you’ve ever had. From a technological point of view, organic gardening is a return to traditions and to the old agricultural practices present in any culture worldwide. Click through here for extra info on lawn tools .

It is unimportant how large the organic vegetable garden is: it can even range from a few feet on the house roof or balcony to several acres. The first difficulty one may encounter in the attempt to start the cultivation of the plants is the crisis of organic seeds. The thing is that in order to have a real organic vegetable garden, you have to begin with seeds that are completely free of all toxic residues. Therefore, ask around in your town or order them on the Internet. One can think of many advantages to an organic vegetable garden. First of all when there are no pesticides or herbicides used in the plant cultivation, the crops will not suffer because of the chemicals, the soil preserves its quality for several years and the specific fauna will contribute to the regeneration of the garden. Furthermore, the organic vegetable garden presents the advantage of covering the needs of the family in a very safe, cheap and easy way. Whenone also runs a farm together with the organic vegetable garden, there are even more benefits to it. You should acquire complimentary worthwhile information about fiskars garden tools here.

For instance, the profitability and the quality of the crops can be increased by using the manure as a fertilizer. Moreover, everything one needs for an organic vegetable garden should be available from local stores; there are no high costs and the necessities come for very decent prices. Don’t ignore the tips available in gardening books because lots of the tradition is lost and we need to revive it.

Just a relevant example here: it’s practical to grow beans and corn together; the beans climb up on the corn stocks and you won’t need any sticks at all. You will gain oodles of additional invaluable info relating to lawn garden tools here.

The organic compost, the seeds and the soil will all play an important role in the development of the organic vegetable garden. Do not overlook any of these aspects and your home enterprise will be both successful and rewarding on the long run.

The Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides, 15-18 in.) with rich dark glossy leaves, is one of the sturdiest and most dependable. Last year’s fronds are still green as this year’s new ones emerge. You can easily recognize the Christmas fern for each pinna is shaped like a long Christmas stocking, foot and all (foot against the stem). Light brown scales also cling to the stalk. One plant for years remains one plant. It spreads by spores alone, not by underground runners or by division of clumps.

The evergreen wood-fern, leather wood-fern or marginal shield fern (Dryopteris marginalise 2-3 ft.) weathers almost any winter and is found among snowy boulders in thickly forested areas. It is common, easy to grow, and spreads very slowly, remaining a single plant for some time. You will recognize this fern by fruit dots located on the margins of the pinnae, the chestnut brown scales on the stems, and its habit in the growing season of erupting its roots several inches up out of the ground!

The common polypody (Polypodium vulgare, 4-10 in.) sends a parade of erect fronds marching across the surface of rocky ledges where they are bright green whether surrounded by snow or by summer. They soften harsh ledges wherever they grow, also cling to steep banks, and make splendid terrarium material.

The ebony spleenwort (Asplenium platyneuron, 4-12 in.) is almost evergreen. You can find its twisting turning stem and delicate green pinnae snuggled in any bank of snow along with ground pine and cedar. It takes many hard freezes before this fern finally gives up. It is ideal for terrariums.

Bublet Berries

The berry bladder fern (Cystopteris bulbifera, 2-3 ft.) not only likes rich moist woods but is often found clinging to limestone cliffs. A fine ground-cover for large areas, it spreads rapidly. You will know it by its tapering almost vinelike fronds, but more especially by the tiny bulblets at the base of the pinnae that drop to the ground and sprout (hence the “berry” in its common name). It also bears the more conven¬tional fruit dots.

Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum, 3-4 ft.) which has a nice Scotch sound, does thrive in great sweeps in Scotland as well as in almost every country in the world. In England it was the basis of an old time medicine. And in rural areas many a mattress was stuffed with the fronds to prevent rickets! Bracken is an informal fern suitable for casual plantings. It is one of the most adaptable and will grow anywhere—wet, dry, sun, shade, high, low, hot, cold. Where nothing else will live the bracken fern will thrive, and spread furiously. The sporophyll edges curl under, and spore cases are hidden beneath these rolls.

The cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea, 3-5 ft.) is not only one of the loveliest ferns but also one of the easiest to grow. You will know it by the abundance of golden brown wooliness on its unwinding fronds in the spring. Also characteristic are brown wool-like hairs on the stem, a tuft of down at the base of each pinna, and several long slender lovely sporophyll during the summer. The fruiting stalk is a rich cocoa brown, erect and clustered.

The fragile fern or brittle bladder fern (Cystopteris fragilia, 5-18 in.) is not too fragile to grow the world over, even in the frigid areas of Greenland and Alaska. Thus it actually is a robust grower; the brittleness of its stems is responsible for its name. Clinging to shaded rock ledges, it also grows on the ground, and is among the first ferns to start up in the spring.

Image by jpc.raleigh via Flickr

by Adam Fulford

Your basic objective in making a butterfly garden is to attract butterflies to your garden, keep them there when they come visiting and encourage them to keep coming back again and again. And how do you do this?

As we learned earlier, we make sure our garden features both nectar-producing plants as well as ‘host’ plants for the caterpillars. When selecting nectar-producing plants, remember that butterflies are active from spring until late summer and therefore it’s imperative to have flowers in bloom throughout the season if we’re to have any chance of attracting them. Care must therefore be taken to plant annuals and perennials which provide a steady supply of nectar. Flowers with multiple florets produce large quantities of nectar and thus are ideal to attract butterflies.

Some butterflies are attracted by plants of some colors and even seem to avoid plants of other colors. The Silver Spotted Skipper likes lots of colors — red, pink, blue, purple, white - but not yellow flowers. Sulphur Butterflies, on the other hand, prefer yellow flowers.

Short-tube flowers of lantana, phlox, and verbena have ‘nectaries’ that are at the base of the tube and are readily available to butterflies. Pipevine Swallowtails have long proboscises and feed on the nectar of bergamot flowers. And so do birds

The nectar of Alfalfa flowers appeals to Checkered Whites, Dogfaces, Red Admirals and Southern Dogfaces. Incidentally, these plants play host to the caterpillars of the Orange Sulphur butterflies. Alfalfas are a host plants for the caterpillars of Dogface Butterflies and Clouded Sulphur butterflies.

Many butterflies favor the nectar of Asters, including American Painted Ladies, Cabbage Whites, Common Buckeyes, Common Checkered Skippers, Dainty Sulphurs, Eastern Tailed Blues, Fritillaries, Fiery Skippers, Red Admirals and Eastern Tailed Blues. Asters
sometimes serve as host plants to Dainty Sulphurs.

Banded Hairstreaks and Eastern Tailed Blue butterflies will likely grace gardens with White Sweet Clover Flowers. Skippers and Swallowtails butterflies stretch their long proboscises down the long tubes of Beardtongue Flowers to sip nectar. Little hummingbirds also like the nectar of these flowers.

New Jersey Tea plants provide nectar to the Banded Hairstreak and Peck’s Skipper. They are a host plant for the caterpillars of Spring/Summer Azure butterflies. They also attract insects that hummingbirds like to eat. Cloudless Sulphur butterflies sometimes sip the nectar of Cardinal flowers, as do hummingbirds. Everlasting Peas provide nectar to the Silver-spotted Skipper.

Goldenrod flower nectar provides meals for Giant Swallowtails, Little Yellows, Milbert’s Tortoiseshells, Orange Sulphurs and American Painted Lady (By now you might have noticed that the American Painted Ladies like almost everything). Hibiscus flowers provide nectar to Cloudless Sulphurs, Common Checkered Skipper and Monk Skippers. Honeysuckle Flowers attract Giant Swallowtails and Northern Cloudywings.

Milkweeds are very popular with butterflies. Monarch and Queen butterflies are born on milkweeds and attain all of their nourishment from these bountiful plants. Milkweeds also provide nectar for Monarch Butterflies, Queen butterflies, American Painted Ladies, Banded Hairstreaks, Black Swallowtails, Fiery Skipper, Giant Swallowtails, Northern Cloudywing, Orange Sulphurs, Pearl Crescents, Peck’s Skippers, Zebra Swallowtails, Silver Spotted Skippers, Red Admirals and Question Marks.

Rest assured, you can attract a whole host of butterflies to your garden.

Image by lewiselementary via Flickr

by Adam Fulford

Interested in making your own butterfly garden? Great! You and I, we’re already friends.

This is what you do. Step out, look around you. Look at the kinds of butterflies that visit your neighborhood. Slowly. Don’t rush these things.

Note down the flowers that the butterflies frequent. Find out the names of the plants. Note the colors, the fragrances, the dimensions, how big are the clusters of the same type of flowers. (You’ll notice you won’t see just one individual plant or two). Note down the height of the plants, how they’re placed in relation to one another. Do you see a little patch of moist mud, a little puddle of water that the butterflies drink water from or the flat rock or wall around it? Take a long look at how butterflies behave. You could supplement your findings by reading books about butterflies and their habitats, checking out internet sites, talking to butterfly experts or professionals (they’re called lepidopterists) or you might also find dedicated organizations in your county or province that are associated with butterfly watching and study.

Now you’re ready to begin.

Perhaps, it would be best if you plant the seeds in small pots or containers while you ready the soil in the patch of land you’ve earmarked for the butterfly garden. This way the seeds are protected from birds and simultaneously the soil is turned to make it ready for the sapling. (Be sure you have the right soil that fosters healthy growth of these plants).

Choose a sunny spot. Butterflies love to bask in the sun and are not tolerant to the cold. Give them a shelter away from the wind and rain. Make sure there’s a flat piece of rock or wall where butterflies can bask and obtain energy in their wings before they take flight. Place small, moist mud puddles within the garden so the butterflies can extract water and salts from them.

You should know the bloom times of different plants and try to plant in such a way that there are enough flowers in bloom throughout the butterfly season. Butterflies generally surface from early spring and are visible right through until autumn. Make sure you grow plants that provide nectar as well as ‘growth food’ for the caterpillars throughout this period so as to keep them coming to you. Annuals bloom throughout the season, providing an unending supply of nectar. Perennials too are great butterfly attracters.

Butterflies do not have strong eyesight but they have a strong sense of smell. Rather than plant individual saplings that produce individual pinpoints of color, you should plant clusters of the same saplings so the butterflies see large splashes of color. Generally, butterflies prefer white, purple, red, orange and yellow. Some plants grow tall, some short. Plant the taller ones behind the shorter ones. Make sure that the flowers of the plants you plant are good sources of nectar. Avoid those large, bulbous showy flowers. They are poor nectar sources. Ideally, flowers with multiple florets produce a good quantity of nectar and butterflies are naturally attracted to them.

In all this, do not forget that you also need to have ‘host’ plants in your garden. These are plants that the adult butterfly lays her eggs on and whose leaves the emerging caterpillar can chew on and grow before it forms a cocoon around itself and metamorphoses into a butterfly. Remember, butterflies are basically searching for these two very important types of plants: nectar producing plants and ‘host’ plants.

And your objective is to watch them.

Image by S.L. Sagan via Flickr

by Adam Fulford

A butterfly garden is basically a garden of specific plants which not only yield you some of the most beautiful and fragrant flowers, they also return an array of some of the beautiful butterflies you’ll see.

Watching a butterfly flitting gracefully from one flower to another can be one of the most beautiful and delightful experiences that nature can offer you and your loved ones. And, if you so choose, you can have a myriad of such ‘nature’s colorful angels’, cavorting in your garden patch, right in front of your window or porch. That’s precisely what a butterfly garden can give you.

A good butterfly garden is meticulously planned to accommodate plants whose flowers are rich in nectar as well as those specific plants that female adult butterflies look for, to lay their eggs on. Such a garden will have not just one or two plants bearing a type of flower but rather, clusters of plants of the same flower. In a good butterfly garden you’ll see various colors especially red, yellow, purple and orange. You’ll see flowers that allow the butterfly to sit on their petals; you’ll see the taller plants arranged behind shorter ones, you’ll see rocks and stones for butterflies to bask on and little puddles of water and patches of moist mud that butterflies so often frequent.

And it’s not difficult to make a butterfly garden. There are scores of sites on the internet and books and periodicals that’ll inform you about the various but simple considerations you’d need to make in order to experience the delight of watching butterflies up close in your own butterfly garden.

Did you know that butterflies do not pay as much attention to humans as birds do, (birds are always flighty and nervous) which means you can sit up close and observe them… like that equally calming experience of watching goldfish in a bowl. And don’t be surprised if a butterfly or two mistakes the bright T-shirt you’re wearing to be a source of nectar and visit you up close.

With so-called urbanization and development, many of the butterfly’s natural habitats have been sacrificed, when all they need are those flowers they can feed on and those plants they can lay their eggs on. Butterflies feed on nectar – the sweet honeydew that many flowers produce. And they look for those plants to lay their eggs on that provide the leaves that the newly-hatched caterpillars can chew on and grow. Do they ask for much? No! But somehow man in his self-important ways seems to have denied even such a simple convenience for one of nature’s most beautiful creatures. But then, you don’t have to be like that. Perhaps you could create your own butterfly garden and invite these ‘flying rainbows’ to your doorstep.

A good butterfly garden teaches you that life is about all of nature’s creations, not just of our own selves. It’s a treat for the eyes and the soul. You don’t need more.