How To Look After Your Flowers
Understanding the best ways to take care of your flower garden can be the difference between a garden that you can be proud of, and a garden that is nothing more than mediocre. Following are some simple tips to make your garden bloom with health, color and vitality.
1. These essentials should always be given major consideration.
Your flower garden needs to have an adequate supply of water, sunlight, and fertile soil. Ant deficiency in these basic necessities will greatly affect the health of your plants, and, consequently, the overall appearance of your garden. Remember to Water your flower garden more frequently during dry spells.
When planting bulbs, make sure you set them at the correct depth. When planting out shrubs and perennials, ensure that you don't pile up soil or mulch up around the stem of your plants. If you do so, water will drain off instead of sinking in, and the stem could develop rot through overheating.
2. Mix and match perennials with annuals.
It is not necessary to replant perennial flower bulbs because they grow and bloom for several years, whereas annuals grow and bloom for just one season. If you mix a few perennials along with the annuals, it ensures that you will always have something blooming in your garden.
3. Encourage blossoming through deadheading.
Deadheading simply means snipping off the flower head after it wilts. This will cause the plant to produce more flowers. The one point to watch out for here is to ensure that you don't discard the deadhead on the garden because mildew and other plant disease will likely attack your plants.
4. Learn which insects are good for your garden, and which are bad.
Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of garden bugs do more good than harm. Butterflies, beetles and bees are known pollinators. They fertilize plants through the unintentional transfer of pollen from one plant to another. Interestingly enough, 80% of all flowering plants rely on such insects for survival.
Sowbugs and dung beetles together with fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms are vital in aiding in the decomposition of dead plant material, thus enriching the soil and allowing more nutrients to be available to growing plants.
Other insects such as lacewings and dragonflies are natural predators attacking and neutralizing the bugs that inflict the real damage on your plants, like aphis.
An occasional application of liquid fertilizer when plants are flowering will have them blooming for longer.
Always prune away any dead or damaged branches. Fuchsias are particularly prone to snapping when you brush up against them. However, if you do snap a branch, don't worry because it can be potted up and grown, in time, into a new plant, so it won't be wasted. Virtually any gardening course will tell you how to do this.
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