These top gardening tips for beginners can be a guide on what to consider before buying any plants. If you are a beginner gardener or new to gardening, you may have already been tempted to visit your local garden centre to load up with beautiful flowers, fruit trees or vegetable seedlings, right? Hold up a minute....do you know those particular plants and shrubs will thrive in your … [Read more...]
Planting Fall Bulbs for Spring Flowers
If there’s one thing I absolutely love about nature, it’s watching flowers bloom in early Spring. The earliest blooms are from Fall bulbs planted for Spring flowers. Winter always feels like the most stagnant season. Trees have long since shed their leaves. Grass takes a break from growing. Plants are often buried under blankets of snow. Animals use winter to take a respite. Even … [Read more...]
How to Make a Gravel Path
Garden paths and walkways add a lot to the look of your yard. Whether you want to make a gravel path leading to your front door or a walk way through your backyard garden, paths are awesome additions to your yard. Here's how to make a gravel pathway. Here's the "before" picture of our yard. See that flower bed leading down to our barn? I created a perennial flower bed and filled it … [Read more...]
How to Grow Hops
Growing hops is pretty easy and the vine adds so much visual interest to your garden. A fast grower, the vine will set hops the first year. The hops themselves can be used to brew a batch of homemade beer. How to Grow Hops You can buy a vine in a container so you don't have to grow from seed. Hops like fertile soil, although I would not do very heavy … [Read more...]
How to Make a Flower Bed
Adding a flower bed makes such a beautiful difference to your yard. If you think your home is lacking some curb appeal, a flower bed is one of the easiest ways to change that. It doesn't take long to make one or to maintain one, especially if you use perennial plants. Here's how to make a flower bed. How to Create a Perennial Flower Bed First of course, you have to figure out where … [Read more...]
How to Make Dandelion Jelly – Recipe
I've always wanted to try making some Dandelion Jelly - and this year, I did. Spring is Dandelion season here in southern BC! And wow do we get a lot of Dandelions here; we run an organic homestead here so do not use any pesticides or commercial weed killers. And, because of that, our native flowers and plants are left to grow, flower and reseed themselves. Dandelions are not weeds, no … [Read more...]
How to Grow Valerian Plant – Herb
Why not grow Valerian? It's a fragrant perennial that can help with sleeping. I've been growing Valerian in many gardens of my past, well before we moved up here to the Cariboo. It is a wonderful perennial plant, so it dies back in the fall and then grows again in the spring. You can grow them from seed or buy one in a container and transplant it. I absolutely love the fragrance of … [Read more...]
Low Maintenance Shade Garden
A low maintenance shade garden is perfect for that shady spot in your yard! Fall is a great time to build new flower beds - you can plant perennials and let them get settled in. Closer to winter they will die back, only to reappear in the spring. They will grow and bloom in the spring, summer or fall, depending on the kind of perennial you choose. You can build a flower bed for the sun or one … [Read more...]
An Organic Line of Plant Food
Spring is such a wonderful time of year. We’re outside more and enjoying it, whether we’re sitting on the porch or tramping through the woods. The best part of spring to me is that I can get back in the gardens. Right now, it’s too early to get into the still wet vegetable garden. I can however get into my perennial flower beds and do a cleanup. This is great, because later in the season, I … [Read more...]