Basic Gardening Maintenance

If you garden, the garden’s call to come outside and do something is almost irresistible.

This call is what gardening is all about, the gardeners gets an opportunity to be in nature and enjoy the sun, wind and yes even learn to appreciate rain, because when it rains you do not have to water. If you have set up a rain water catchment system, the water your garden needs, is being collected for future use at the same time.

No matter what you like to grow it is not all that difficult to design a garden that requires minimum maintenance.

However, there is always something that needs doing, take watering, for instance. Now if between the weather cooperating and rain falling when you need it and rainwater collecting, the need to run the hose is reduced. But the weather will do what it does and long dry spells are possible.

So, you can mulch the garden and over the growing season check on the mulch to see if it needs to be replaced. Plant selection can help reduce water needs but if you are growing vegetables, you may need to water f you must water, do so early in the morning and give the garden a good, long drink, think- water the roots.

If it is not possible to water in the morning, then do so after supper, before the sun goes down.

Feeding the plants, helps them grow strong and healthy; of course we are talking about feeding them organically.

Foliar feeding is an organic method for feeding the plants. Plants are able to absorb nutrients through their leaves and they do this very well. This means that foliar spraying, spraying the leaves, can be very effective when used at the appropriate time.

If you mulch weeding will be a minor chore; you can pull most weeds by hand, wear gloves, as you do what I enjoy and that is simply walking around the garden seeing what is going on. On the lookout for changes, something unusual so that intervention, if needed, can take palce before problems arise. This is worth doing at least once a week.

Or you can pull the weeds that do slip though and weeds are very persistent, when you deadhead your flowers. Deadheading allows the plant to concentrate on producing more flowers rather than seeds. If you want to save seeds then leave a few seed heads. You may also want to leave seeds on certain plants, some ornamental grasses for example for their fall and winter beauty and also for food for the birds who live all year round in your area.

These few simple chores do not take much time and give you a number of good reasons to be outside.