Gardening Services Guide

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You want to start your first vegetable garden, but you don’t know how to begin. Don’t worry. Vegetable gardening for beginners is not difficult. Many vegetables are actually easier to cultivate than flowers.

Basically, vegetables are sun lovers. They need at least six hours of sunlight a day, so select a garden spot that does not get a lot of shade. Some leafy vegetables like lettuce, spinach and endive like some shade during the day, but vegetables that must develop roots, like carrots, beets, tomatoes, peppers, squash and radishes need a lot of sunlight. Another good point for vegetable gardening for beginners is to be wary of low areas where water tends to stand after a rain.

You need good, loamy soil that is well drained. If your garden site does not have ideal soil, you can improve it with good soil management. There are many books on vegetable gardening for beginners that will tell you how to do this, and you can get good advice at a garden centre.

A flat garden is the easiest to tend, but if you must plant on a slope, place your rows along the slope, not up and down. This will prevent erosion and provide the plants with the maximum amount of rainwater. A good mulch will also help catch the water and prevent erosion. If the hill is steeply sloped, you will have to terrace it with stones or wood.

Another rule of vegetable gardening for beginners is to have your garden near a water supply, even if it is just a garden hose. Vegetables are ninety percent water, so soil moisture is vital if your crops are going to develop. A heavy mulch will help your garden soil stay moist, but the crops will still need about an inch of water a week, either from the rain or from irrigation.

Another suggestion about vegetable gardening for beginners. If you live on a large property or in a rural area, try to have the garden as close to the house as possible. There are several reasons for this. The nearer the garden is to the house, the easier it will be to tend. It also means you won’t have far to carry your crops back to the house. It will be convenient for you to step outside and fetch fresh vegetables even while you’re preparing a meal. Close proximity to the house will also help discourage four-footed raiders like raccoons, rabbits, deer and opossums that would make short work of the vegetables in your garden. It might be a good idea to put up a fence.

Organic gardening supplies are essential to raise a natural garden. The main feature of organic gardening supplies is that they do not use any chemicals or synthetic products to treat the garden. There are many organic gardening supplies required for the upkeep of the garden.

Pests are perennial problems bothering the gardeners. Organic gardening abhors the use of chemical pesticides. Instead, natural means are used for pest control. They are: – beneficial insects, organic insecticides, natural insect repellents, trap and pheromone lures for all integrated pest management programs. The ladybug, also known as the lady beetle or the ladybird, devour a variety of pests like the aphids, leaf worms, mealy bugs and mites. The praying mantis, a relative of the grasshopper, is an indiscriminate glutton that eats up any passing insect. They are known to attack aphids, beetles, caterpillars and even frogs and lizards. Some of the other useful pests are lacewing larvae that attack aphids, mites, thripes, leafhoppers and white flies.

There are many organic materials that prove to be very good insecticide. They affect the insects on contact or ingestion. Organic insecticides protect the plants without the side effects of chemical sprays.

Insect traps are another step towards pest control. They have pheromone lures or sticky substance attached to colored lures. Birds and critters seriously damage the vegetables and flowers. Organic garden supplies shops keep many traps and scares to prevent damage from them. Weeds and diseases are the characteristics of unhealthy plants. The stores selling organic gardening supplies have many weed control options. There are organic pre-emergent herbicide and slow release fertilizer that kill the weeds. The root weevil is very good at removing the knapweed. Fungal spores cause most of the plant diseases, especially during the wet season. The cure for various fungi is organic copper and sulphur products.

Organic gardening uses fertilizer and soil booster of a natural origin. A variety of such fertilizers is available at the organic gardening supplies shops. There are Organic Insect Repellents, Organic Insecticides and other Beneficial Insects & Organisms also available at such shops.

Varieties of tools are required when working in the garden. The tools required can be classified according to their usage. The main usages are: – cultivating, lawn care and tree care. The organic gardening supply for cultivation is the spade, fork, hoe and trowel. A lawnmower is the primary requirement for lawn care. Tree care requires secatures, bow saw and pruning saw.

All this and more is available at the various specialty stores dealing exclusively in organic gardening supplies. The enthusiastic organic gardener can obtain all the necessary items at the organic gardening supplies stores.