You can encourage migrating as well as year-round birds into your garden by offering them food, water, and shelter.
For more tips, read the 2 pages below from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. Pure Gold!
Photo credit: Larry Keller, Lititz Pa./Getty Images
Using a weed killer for gravel is often the most effective way to keep driveways and pathways clear of unwanted growth. At first, pulling the occasional dandelion may not seem like a big deal, but when weeds begin to spread in gravel or across the lawn, it can be difficult to keep up—especially if manual removal means digging between rocks. Even with a weed barrier in place, dust and dirt can settle in the gravel over time, creating the perfect environment for weeds to take root.
With hundreds of popular weed killers available in stores and online, finding one that’s both safe and effective can be a challenge. To help you narrow down your options, we researched effective ingredients and tested several highly rated products. Based on our findings, we selected the Natural Armor All-Natural Weed & Grass Killer as the best overall option for its powerful performance and non-toxic formula.
For us to recommend these products for gravel driveway weed control, they had to meet high standards for performance and ease of use. Each option contains proven ingredients known to kill common weeds and, for pre-emergents, components that prevent weeds from sprouting. These selections offer natural alternatives to harsh chemical formulas and stand out in their categories.
Source: bobvila.com©
Perennials such as asters, hostas, and yarrow can be divided easily with no hassle. You can also divide perennial herbs to expand your harvest. All you need to get the job done is a shovel and work gloves.
While most perennials benefit from being divided every few years, there are a few that thrive better if they’re kept intact. Avoid dividing these varieties:
Rule of thumb: Most perennials do best when divided every three to four years. When in doubt, this is the route you should take. These varieties include:
Some perennials need a little more attention. Divide these every other or every third year to keep them performing at their best.
Whether your plants produce pink, yellow, or orange flowers, knowing when to cut back daylilies can keep these perennials looking tidy and blooming well. Though each flower is only open for a single day, daylilies are a much-loved perennial around the world. In this article, you’ll learn about three different times to cut your daylily plants back to keep them in tip-top shape.
Knowing when to cut back daylilies is easy if you know what signs to watch for. While pruning them back at the end of the growing season (after they’ve been killed by a frost) is a common practice that’s part of their general maintenance requirements, whether or not to prune daylilies at other times of the year is a lot more confusing for gardeners.
Signs that it’s time to prune your daylilies—regardless of what time of year it is—include:
Daylily leaves can even naturally turn ratty at the end of their bloom cycle. They put forth a lot of energy to produce their initial new growth followed by stems full of gorgeous blooms. By the time they’re done blooming, the plants are tired and low on fuel.
A well-timed haircut keeps daylily plants looking their best, and in some cases, it can even stimulate another flush of blooms
First, it’s important to mention that while there are ideal times to cut back daylilies based on the time of year and their bloom cycle, it’s also important to know that there really is no wrong time to trim daylilies. If the plants have turned brown and they look bad, don’t hesitate to give them a haircut and clean out any dead foliage, no matter what time of year it is.
If you want to keep your daylily plants looking their best, here are the three best times to prune them back.
Early spring daylily pruning should take place if you did not cut back the plants last fall. The best time to do this is about 6 weeks before your last expected spring frost. Here in Pennsylvania, I cut back last year’s daylily growth in late-March if I didn’t get to it in the fall.
It’s important to cut the plants back to the ground before any flower bud development takes place and while the plants are still fully dormant. If they’ve already started to generate new growth, it’s still okay to cut the old growth back; you just have to be more careful not to damage the new emerging leaves.
You can use a sharp pair of pruners for the job, but most of the time, you’ll be able to remove last year’s growth just with your hands. Rake it out with your fingers and toss it on the compost pile.
The second time for a daylily haircut is in mid-summer, just after the plant finishes blooming. You can trim off individual spent blooms at any time to keep the plant tidy. Deadheading daylilies in this way is easy, but it isn’t essential. Many gardeners ignore this near-daily task and instead opt to wait to deadhead until the flower stalks have completely finished producing new blooms.
To do this, trim off all of the main flowering stems down at their base when there are no buds left to open. This stops the stem from producing a seed pod and helps the plant store energy for more plant and foliage growth, rather than using its energy to produce unwanted seeds.
Once the plant has been deadheaded, some reblooming varieties, such as ‘Stella d’Oro’ and ‘Happy Returns’, will even generate a second flush of flower stalks. However, most varieties of daylilies are not rebloomers and will flower only once during the growing season.
Here’s the secret third pruning time for daylilies. It’s one that most gardeners fail to do because they don’t know how much it will invigorate their plants, and they may even be afraid to prune their daylilies back so hard. However, a mid-season buzzcut keeps daylilies looking fresh and green all the way through season’s end. Here’s what to do.
A few weeks after you’ve removed all the spent flowers, the plant is running low on food supply and is likely to look worn out. A good portion of the leaves will probably be brown or showing signs of disease. When this happens, it’s time to be ruthless. Cut the entire plant all the way back down to the ground, flush with the soil. It’s going to be scary but trust me… everything will be fine.
Within a few weeks of completely cutting down your daylilies, they will leap forth with a flush of new growth that is fresh and green and lovely. These new leaves will now generate the food supply for next year’s flowers. The photosynthesis they perform from this point until the end of the season provides nutrition for roots and crown to get the plant safely through the winter. Trust me on this. Cut the plants back hard a few weeks after they finish blooming, and you’ll be so pleased with the result.
source: savvygardening.com
If you prune daylilies back in the spring and then plan to mulch them, you can also take the opportunity to divide your daylilies. These perennial flowers will live for years without being divided, but dividing the roots is a great way to get more plants for free!
Another great time to divide the daylilies, is during late summer, once the flowers wilt.
Dig up the whole plant and carefully pull apart its tuber-like roots. Replant smaller amounts of the plant to have a whole garden full of daylily plants!
Source: homefortheharvest
As the weather warms up, you might be itching to fix up your boring lawn, but if you’ve never had a garden before it can be hard to know where to start. No worries, we’re here to help you start the colorful garden of your dreams. Follow these expert tips to get started. If you want your garden to serve a purpose, these are some of the easiest foods you can grow.
Keep tabs on your garden. Create a scrapbook using an inexpensive photo album and add your plant tags and sticks to it each season. Then, make it as detailed as you’d like by adding information as to where the plants were purchased and where the plant was located in your garden. Add your own artistic flair with sketches of your garden or photographs.
Spray your favorite garden shovel with a silicone or Teflon lubricant to make shoveling a breeze. A good coating of this spray will make any type of soil slip right off the shovel without a mess. These container garden ideas will inspire you to create your own.
ALEXANDRA EKDAHL / EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES
Take the strain out of lifting large planters and pots by filling the pot one-third to one-half full with packing peanuts. Be sure to place a piece of landscape fabric on top of the packing peanuts and then layer on your potting soil. To reduce the weight of the pot further, use a potting mix with lots of vermiculite and peat moss.
Before your next trip to the local nursery, line the back of your car with a plastic tarp and place a small step ladder on top of the tarp. The slots between the rungs of the ladder serve as perfect compartments to protect your fragile plants during the drive home. You will no longer have to worry about spilled plants or a messy car! If your car is too small to fit a ladder, use recycled cardboard boxes.
Spruce up your rain gauge by adding a few drops of food coloring to the bottom. During the next rainfall, the water will combine with the dye and the water level will be bright red and easy to read.
Prevent plants such as gooseneck loosestrife from taking over your garden by planting them in a plastic container. To ensure that these plants’ underground roots don’t quickly crowd your entire garden, cut out the bottom of with a knife—the roots can grow directly down into the soil.
One woe associated with buying potting plants is that they are often root-bound. In other words, as the plant grows in the pot, the roots run out of room to grow—so they begin to form tight circles of roots in the pot. The problem is that these roots can prevent water and other essential nutrients from traveling to the leaves and the rest of the plant. For a quick fix, gently guide the roots outward using your fingers. If they are really tough, carefully make vertical cuts in the root-ball with a knife.
Sick of creatures munching on your just planted flower bulbs? Keep them out by staking netting over the bed of flowers. Come springtime, simply remove the netting or cut holes in the cloth and let the plants grow through.
Upgrade your wheelbarrow by fitting a piece of plywood to the back end with wood cleats. This creates a flat surface that is perfect for potting. Now you can wheel your soil and plants to the garden all in one easy trip.
When planting roses, pruning is crucial to keep the center of the flower open, so sunshine can shine in. Careful pruning will keep the moisture out and will prevent black spots and other blights from forming.
By Lauren Gelman for Readers Digest ©
Photo credit: WESTEND61/GETTY IMAGES
