How to take care of your garden

No doubt gardening is a great hobby. A garden is like small heaven, whether in the form of a lawn or just a tiny patch of greenery. It’s a beautiful place to spend time and is quite relaxing. But having a garden requires proper care, and caring means looking after each pant. This plant upbringing also requires looking for the best nutrients for the plants and protecting them from pests. The best part about gardening is that, in the beginning, it requires some time investment. But once everything goes in the flow, it becomes a lot easier and requires lesser time for maintenance. Garden care becomes easy and fun if you know what you are doing. Even proper care can make a forsaken garden look significantly flourished. Here are a few tips to learn to keep your garden green, thriving, and fresh.

Watering:

The most basic but essential part of gardening is regularly watering your plants. Just like any other living being, plants need water for their survival. During the daytime, plants tend to lose water through a process known as transpiration. Water evaporates from the roots during hot summer days, so it’s essential to water them more on summer days than in autumn. It would be better if you watered young plants more since they are in their growing phase and require more water than established plants, which need less water. Similarly, the plants in their containers have less soil from where they can absorb moisture, so it is also advised to give them more water.

The best time to water plants is during the morning or at night. If you are watering your soil at night, it helps plants to drink all the water overnight. If you feed water in the morning during summer, the excess gets dried during the day. The appearance of leaves can also help determine how much you have watered them. Brown leaves mean they are not getting enough water. An overdamped soil means that you have overwatered your plants. Nowadays, it has become even easier to water your garden. If you are outside and can’t water your garden regularly, you can install a micro-irrigation system, an eco-friendly solution. This way, your soil also gets saturated properly without any wastage.

Examining your plants:

One of the most bewildering things that can happen to a plant owner is that his plant gets wilted, suffers from a disease, or is not growing. It can occur due to many reasons. A single affected plant can spread diseases into neighboring greenery. Here, it becomes even worse if the plants are very close in a garden. Therefore, while importing plants into a garden, ensure you have searched for the plant and its behavior in different conditions. Look up the internet and check images of how the plant you want to introduce behaves in different seasons. An important thing to learn is the concept of the disease triangle. Picture it as a triangle with three sides: Environment, Pathogen, and plant. A disease can’t occur even if one of them is missing.

Pro tip: Never take a plant with white spots since these reflect diseased plants and are not in a suitable condition. Spraying the required pesticides and insecticides (discussed in the next section) is also essential, so plants do not suffer from a deficiency or excess nutrients. Once again, you should also check the roots of your plant. Most of the plants we bring from the nursery look healthy, but it is not always the case. A simple check is to turn the pot over and look for how the roots are spread. If they are distributed evenly, then the plant is in good condition.

Feeding the plants:

Next up is feeding your plants. We have talked about watering and examining plants, but plants also need something to grow. There are two types of fertilizers organic and inorganic fertilizers. They generally consist of 3 main components Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, commonly known as NPK. Organic fertilizers are formed in the wild when organic matter decays. For example, dead animals and plants release nutrients essential for plant growth when they die.

In contrast, inorganic fertilizers are made in the lab. Organic fertilizers are encouraged because not only do they provide essential nutrients, but they stimulate overall plant health and metabolism. It does not mean that inorganic fertilizers are bad for plants. According to the N, P, and K contents, inorganic fertilizers are available in the market. Among them, the famous ones are 6–12–6 and 10–10–10 mixtures, but it all depends upon the type of soil you want to apply.

One thing that should be kept in mind while applying fertilizers should be that the fertilizers are to be mixed with the soil thoroughly. Because if left on top of the soil, the essential nutrients get dried up, or they end up mixing in the air. A couple of other things to note are when you purchase fertilizers, ensure that you have a soil test for what type of fertilizer is required. It becomes very helpful when going for inorganic fertilizers. So, what kind of fertilizer you want is up to you. Each one has its pros and cons. When applying fertilizers, you should know not to use too much because excess of these things can burn your plants. Always spray your fertilizers every 3–4 weeks or when needed.

Soil Treatment:

In garden maintenance, safe soil keeping is also essential. If soil is not taken care of properly, all of the maintenance will go to waste. Like every other thing, soil tends to degrade over time, which causes it to lose its efficiency, and plants don’t grow as they are used to. The capacity of the ground to hold plants tends to lose, which is a clear sign of replacement. Therefore, a regular check is essential. There are three most common types of soil depending on the materials and how much water is absorbed.

Loam

This is one of the best soils for garden plants. It’s a mixture of clay, sand, and silt. They tend to absorb the water quickly and store it for plants for prolonged amounts of time.

Sandy Soil

This type of soil is made from tiny particles of weathered rock. However, it’s the lowest in nutrients but one of the best in drainage because water tends to sweep below quickly.

Clay Soil

This type of soil has the smallest particles. Since it absorbs water less than 1.4 inches per hour, it mostly remains wet. Once dried, it has a very smooth texture but is sticky when touched in damp conditions.

Depending on the type of plants you want to add to your garden, check the type of soil they are compatible with because each plant has its kind of soil requirements. For example, a plant with sandy soil habitat can’t grow appropriately in clay soil. Taking care of soil also means removing extra plants and weeding out regularly. Use gardening tools to look for moss and thatch and remove them so that your pant growth does not get hindered. While irrigating plants, make sure that the water reaches the roots. Make holes at some distance so that nutrients reach the roots easily.

Caring for the plants:

Now let’s talk about plant care. On the whole, it’s a pretty extensive topic, but in general, plant care involves the following.

Pruning

Pruning refers to the cutting of plants for their better growth. Preferrable time for pruning plants is late winter or early spring because it’s the time when most of the change happens, and there is greenery around. Trimming is necessary for plants so that they remain healthy. A common myth regarding pruning is that it hinders plant growth. But in fact, pruning does not impede the plant’s growth; instead, it’s cutting in a specific way so that plant grows in a certain way. It also reshapes the plant and helps them a lot while they grow. Although pruning helps remove dead shrubs and unhealthy parts of the plant, it also enables you to create a room in your garden for other plants to express your creativity.

Deadheading

In simple words, deadheading refers to removing flower heads that shed their petals. When flowers start shedding their petals, it’s a clear indication of these plants transferring their nutrients to the seeds so that they grow. Deadheading is a widespread form of pruning that removes faded flowers. Routine deadheading concentrates the energy on the flowers, leading to more healthy plants and ongoing blooms. Fingers and shedding tools can do deadheading. Although it is a tiring task for most, the effort is always worth it.

Cutting and clipping

Compared to pruning, pruning means removing particular parts of the plants so that growth is restricted in a specific way. Both are beneficial for plants and help them to grow. Pruning is done to limit the plant’s growth, while cutting is done for cosmetic purposes. If cutting removes non-needed plants, pruning removes the unhealthy parts of the plants. A simple example to understand is that we cut our hair every month so that the original shape of our hair remains. This resembles plant cutting. While pruning Is like removing an infected tooth so that your whole jaw remains healthy and does not get infected.

Mulching

Mulching means spreading a specific type of material, usually organic, on the soil to protect them from environmental factors. Compared to fertilizers, they supply essential nutrients, as described in the above section. At the same time, mulch’s primary purpose is to give plant protection and a shield. During the daytime, plants get dried up, and nutrients and water tend to evaporate from the soil and affect the plant’s overall growth. Not only this, excess sunlight and cold nights can ruin the plant. A 3- to 4-inch-thick layer of mulch can protect plants since it slows the drying-up process for a relatively long time. Another benefit of mulch is that when it decomposes and leaves many nutrients that benefit the plant as time passes.

Staking

Staking means inserting a rod or something upright to support the plant so that it remains upright and gives overall plant posture. Stakes give strength and backing, and they license plants to keep pushing upward when they’d, in any case, be overwhelmed by a downpour, high breezes, or the heaviness of their natural product or blossoms.

Typically, there are four types of stakes depending on the support they provide:

Single stake:

The simplest type of stake, made of bamboo, plastic, or metal, is readily available in your local nurseries. Single stakes are best for flowering stems, for example, foxglove or lilies.

Ring-type stakes:

These types of stakes provide circular growth and range higher in height. Typical examples of using these stakes are when you use a strawberry plant with them. One disadvantage of using this type of stake is that you can’t remove these stakes without removing the plant.

The Tomato cage:

Explicitly designed for tomatoes, these stakes provide 360-degree support with open tops. They are not restricted to tomatoes but are also helpful for growing young trees.

Trellis:

The trellis is the best option for the plants that crawl on the wall. It’s like a frame of latticework that provides the necessary support which helps the plant. Vertical structures that provide stylish support to climbing vines, blooms, and weaving vegetables.

Aeration:

Last but not least, let’s talk about aeration. One more special factor that holds importance in plant growth is the pore space of the soil. They are the voids between the materials of the ground and help in the healthiness of soil which in turn affects and helps a lot in plant growth. Over time, the soil gets compact, which happens due to many reasons. Some of the most common reasons for the tightening of soil is pressure on land in the form of weight. For example, a lawn that is regularly used by children or pets. So, time after time, the ground gets cramped. Often, the land which comes as a part of the newly constructed home is also compact. The reason is that the land stripped has been compacted by construction traffic.

Aeration tends to loosen up the ground, providing room for the nutrients so that they can reach roots. When to aerate the soil is a point of interest. It’s better to aerate your soil during the growing season at the start of spring since the grass may recover and fill up any holes left following the removal of soil plugs.

If you are new to gardening, you should also try raised beds. They come with their boundaries of soil where you can express your creativity. Plus, they also come with a drainage system. Because the soil in raised beds is less compacted, has better drainage, and warms up sooner in the spring, they are frequently more productive than beds in the ground.

And there you have it! Congratulations on reading the beginner’s guide on how to take care of your garden, from examining plants and watering to soil care. Just remember a few things whenever you are maintaining your garden.

• Always clean your garden tools since dirty things lead to diseases.

• While planting new plants, always have spaces between them because it creates a sense of competition and hinders the growth of other neighboring plants. It not only affects their nutrient intake but also affects their growth overall.

• Keep weeds out of the soil regularly.