Top Ten Lists of Plants

It might be the top ten choices of anything, but I mainly record the ten best plants for a given situation. Easy and visually helpful way to review good things for the garden.

10 Useful Gardening Tips For Spring

I gathered up some expert gardening tips from around the web, from beginners to a few unusual ones.

1 Soak your seedlings

…the roots of the seedlings become so entangled that separating them without damaging the roots is not easy to do. What can you do in such a case?

Fortunately, here’s a trick that works without fail: soak the roots before you divide. Here’s how it works:

From the Laidback Gardener

2 Plant egg shells along with your vegetables:

Crushed eggshells planted along with your tomatoes help your plants avoid “blossom end rot” , which is often caused by a calcium deficiency.

eggshell in garden — Add eggshells for calcium, tip from Beekman 1802

From Beekman 1802

3 Cut the bottoms out of used plastic jugs to protect new seedlings.

From IanLowe.blogspot.com

4 Sharpen the edges of tools. This is one of those reminders that takes only a little time to do, but saves lots of effort. Use a large file

garden tools need sharpening — Even old tools can work like new with a little maintenance care

From the gardeningcook

5 Stagger planting is a very useful method for quick growing crops like lettuces, mesclun mixes, radishes, and the like. It ensures that tender baby greens and veggies come along on the heels of more mature plantings. This is especially nice when a crop grown to long needs to be removed- always a fresh one!

ready for spring planting — Photo by Erin Feinblatt

Reminder from Eat Drink Garden

6 Keep your plants healthy

don’t let them dry out, but don’t overwater
leave enough room between plants so air circulates to prevents fungus from growing

7 Loosen roots in root bound plants before planting them. And for those who are planning on planting some trees and shrubs this spring comes many tips on just how to do that successfully.

From true Cold Climate experts.

8 Use seed packets for handy planting info: time to plant and depth of seeds. Remember that seeds will usually yield the most plants for the money.

Beginning gardener tip from Farm Girl Gabs

9 Weed Early, Weed Often… because Summer is coming. It is always important to get a head start on the weeds. They are much easier to pull when young and the soil is soft. weeding a tap rooted weed in the broiling summer sun is no fun. Weed now.

weed you garden beds — (c) Francesca Yorke

Reminder from English Gardeners at the Daily Telegraph.

10 Grow Chamomile. If you grow your own stand (very easy), then you can make lots of Chamomile tea during the season to to ward off bacterial and fungal infections. To prevent dreaded damping off in young seedlings, brew the tea and spray with the cooled tisane.

chamomile flowers — Chamomile photo by Ian Muttoo on Flickr

from Huffington Post

Don’t forget these Spring gardening tips, for early spring! And more…

Early Spring Garden

Do You Grow Herbs? 10 Reasons To Love Them

There are so many ways to enjoy herb plants, that they are not for herb gardens only. Think about tucking them into the landscape, into containers or into your home.

I do I enjoy thee? Oh, Herb, Let me count the ways!

10 Ways I Enjoy Herbs (and you can, too!)

In companion plantings, herbs often repel harmful organisms through their volatile oils.
Delicious when culinary herb choices are grown in the garden.
Herbs make delightful bouquets, either alone or mixed into your favorite flowers. Tussie Mussie, anyone?
They are usually easy to grow.
Their soft coloring, whether in foliage or flower, make garden color harmony.
Herbs smell heavenly.
You can make crafts out of them.
You can grow them on your windowsill.
Herbs may improve your health.
People have grown herbs for ages. They are historically important plants.

What are some ways of growing herbs in the garden?

Of course, the garden dedicated to them, the herb garden, sometimes laid out in rows, or in a Colonial manner of blocks -either in raised bed or simply planted along a path or fence. Since some of them run at the root, people do like to keep them contained, either in the raised bed or container pots. The only one that gives everyone a bit of trouble with running through the garden is the Mints, but who doesn’t love a spot of mint tea? And added to meats or chopped into salads, mint makes everything so refreshing.

As part of a kitchen garden, herbs are traditional companions to tomatoes, whether you want parsley or basil, and that is the natural place for your kitchen herbs. I have dill that comes up every year in my vegetable garden. I just pull it up where it isn’t wanted; not deeply rooted and easy to remove, the seedling s are also distinctive and easy to weed out.

Tucked into nooks and crannies inside a Cottage garden is the perfect way to include them in a garden “plan” for a very sweet smelling and lovely medley of plantings. Thyme running along cracks in the pathway, a purple blooming stand of sage as a full stop, there are so many beautiful ways to incorporate herbs in such a place.

If you want lots of herbs for crafts they are easily grown out in rows in a cutting garden. I loved marjoram wreaths for my kitchen. Try making potpourris and include Sweet Annie (Artemisia annua), which can also be used for informal wreaths or a wreath base for other flowers.

Are you tempted to find a place for an herb or two ( or more!)in your life? It is one romance to share with friends and one that might grow into a life-long relationship. Herbs are like that- a perennial favorite to enjoy in many ways.

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© 2013 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.

10 Cool Season Annual Flowers To Plant

Shirley poppies and Bachelor Buttons

Not every garden writer alerts you to the fact that annuals can have seasons that are shorter than other choices. For places like Ohio which have hot summers, there are common annuals that only do well when our weather is cooler, such as in early summer. Those flowers sort of burn out in our hot summer temperatures of midseason, in July and August.

Does this mean we shouldn’t plant them? Not at all. I love the cool season annuals because of their beauty, but also because they pop up early. Such plants can be ideal in a child’s garden, where quick results are wanted. To fill in where perennials are slow to cover space might be another good use for them.

English Meadow Denizens

Many of these types of annuals grow native in the English meadows.

Filled with colorful blooms of Bachelor button, Allysum, and Calendula — Filled with colorful blooms of Bachelor button, Alyssum, and Calendula

Here is the list of ten cool season annuals to try in your garden this year:

Candytuft, Iberis umbellata, quick and easy- but oh so pretty. Large flat shaped seeds burst into purple, mauve, pink, and white Candytuft blossoms.
Shirley poppies, Papaver rhoeas, are delicate, full blown poppies and come in a rainbow of colors. They sway in the breezes and will make your garden veritably shine with a mass of blooms.
Love In A Mist, Nigella damascena, creates the sky blue gardeners love when they are selected for that color, such as in the ‘Miss Jekyll Blue’ variety.
Sweet Peas, Lathyrus odoratus, are fragrant and come in not just a candy store display of colors, but special bloom forms, too. The old fashioned selections are the most fragrant, and try to plant the seeds around St. Patrick’s Day.
Pot marigolds, Calendula officinalis, are not just gorgeous in spring, but one of the last to be still standing and blooming in the fall. They can put chrysanthemums to shame in both color and long-lasting bloom. You can eat them if you wish, too.
Toadflax, Linaria marrocana, is one of my favorite little flowers and great for a Fairy Garden. They come in both mixed colors and selected varieties. Like small versions of snapdragons.
Nemesia, is a small scale flowering annual that comes in all sorts of colors and looks pretty with linaria and is one of my favorites for a container planting. Like many of the cool season plants it needs to be kept moist.
Chinese Forget-Me-Nots, Cynoglossum amabile, are easy to grow and bring cheerful forget-me-not type flowers and that sought after blue into the garden. It was very persistent for me for years, coming back reliably from seed. Also called “Hound’s tongue”.
Annual Baby’s Breath, Gypsophilia elegans, will give the pure white, delicate flowers that grace a cut flower arrangements and lace the borders with pretty sprays of baby’s breath flowers. They are much shorter than the perennial plants of that name. ‘Covent Garden’ is the variety I always planted.
Satin Flower, Godetia, doesn’t seem to be very well known nowadays. Its showy pink flowers deserve to be more widely known. Just barely cover the seeds that are directly sown into the garden. Another good cut flower choice.

I just wrote a new plant profile page on Calendulas

The main drawback for those of us who garden in the continental Midwestern states is that fact that these lovely blooms “burnout”, and do not thrive in our hot summers. But if a garden is located in the South, the cool season annuals can be great choices for sowing in November for early blooms the following year.

Wherever you garden, consider direct sowing some of these lovelies in your garden.