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Deland, Florida (32724) Conditions & Forecast : Weather Underground: "Statement as of 5:05 PM EDT on May 20, 2007 … Record low temperature equaled at Daytona Beach… The low temperature this morning at Daytona Beach of 54 degrees. …
Source: Central FLA Gardener
When starting out on your rose garden, soil is the most important thing to consider. Without the proper soil mix to start, your new roses will be off to a poor start and you might never get to the stage of having to worry about pests …
Source: Jennifer
Hello everyone
Well, if you are a weekend gardener, I would imagine you're finding it pretty tough going at the moment. Those two precious days don't leave you much of a window should the weather turn nasty and at this time of year, it can be very unpredictable in deed. I mean one day will be superb weather, glorious sunshine that make it feel like the end of April already when the next day it can feel like mid January again. The clouds, rain and wind return with a vengence. So one day the sun is beating down, the next there's driving rain and you can hardly stand upright because of the Force 10 gale! The weather, is in effect , halfing your time in the garden at best!
Of course, it is fashionable at the moment to blame the "old" chestnut of global warming for these alternating conditions. Only problem with that though is this type of weather really isn't new. Take 50 years ago in London as an example. In those days absolutely nobody was bothering with "carbon footprints". At the time, down on the Thames river, there was increasing concern about the then Festival of Britain. There is a classic account of the Festival by Russell Page in his "Education of a Gardener". In the chapter on gardening "for the public eye" there is a very interesting account of the cruelty of the then English weather. Page had won a commission to design a series of flower garden for the Festival site which was in Battersea Park. In both 1950 and 51 severe gales and high tides had caused the Thames to burst over the embankment and turn the site of the Festival into a mud bath. Page recalls, "Not infrequently we had many as 40 lorries stuck axle deep in the park." He would also recount how he would return to his small office after spending a day gardening in "calf-deep" mud!
With two months to go to the Festival, the main central lawn area was still an inland sea and had to be covered with truckloads of finely ground cinders, two foot deep, unto which the new turf was directly unrolled. He then found that the grass grew together within two weeks and rooted quickly through the cinders. This is an often forgotten piece of advice for anyone planning to to lay or repair a lawn with ready made turf. Unfortunately for Page nothing was going to save his white tulips. He inspected the thousands of selected tulips at the very end of February. They were to be the centre-piece of a white garden that was to be edge with lavender. However, when he dug up the bulbs, he found that they had all rotted due to the wet winter.
So, basically, we have had wet early months before, it's not something new. Statistics really only show averages and smooth out past fluctuations which, it has to be said, are no different to what we experience now. Assuming all this continues I would focus on plants that actually enjoy the wet conditions. Many of the best spring things are plants and bulbs which like to wear a "wetsuit".
These can come in all shapes and sizes, from trees down to small plants on the carpet beneath. Some of the best carpeters such as celandines are very happy on damp ground but they seed very freely and can become invasive. Most carpeters belong on sloping banks or under the light shade of trees. S long as they stay away from the flower beds they can be enchanting and love the weather we all hate.
So do all the primroses. The favourite white flowered Spring Snowflake, a damp loving bulb, is recommended for any ground on which the rainwater is slow to drain through. Unlike the tulips, as Page discovered, the bulbs never rot and they soon send up stems with hanging flowers like small lampshades. They are just as pretty as their well known cousins, the snowdrops.
Perhaps the winners for the wetsuit prize are the ornamental willows. The year is made for them as their stems and young catkins show up magnificently in the sunny intervals whilst their roots revel in the wet weather. They are a perfect family for an informal garden because their bushes will spread freely and they will compete with any weeds as long as they do not dry out. Mixed plantations of them have the sort of wild look which appeals to gardeners who want the minimum of bother in return for weeks of good colour.
One of te best is quite easy to control, a taller willow called Salix daphnoides Aglaia. With good reason, the last part of its name means a gleam or a bright light. The bulbs and young catkins are a glistening silver, which is scattered all over a tangled tall outline of stems. The stems themselves are a pretty shade of purple and even in the summer the leaves are rather charming.
The beauty about these wet loving willows is that they root with absurd ease from long twigs cut off a parent and stuck into wet ground any time now.
Since 1951 and the Festival of Britain, the rhetoric of gardening has changed. Now we hear so much about supposedly "natural" gardening. If there were to be another Festival of Britain, I am sure that "native wild flowers" would dominate. If Russell Page's tulips had rotted away this year, we would have been told to obey the biomass and plant willows instead. In fact he replaced them with thousands of white double stocks. They must have looked marvellous and I do not begrudge them a penny of their fossil-fuelled greenhouse heating.
The Gardener
www.ft.com/lanefox
Author: StarLiteFarms Subject: Pond plants for wet soil?? Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 4:11 am (GMT 0) I have an area next to my house (north side) which is shaded heavily by a tree and no grass grows there or any other plants ive tried. …
Source: StarLiteFarms
Hi everyone
Welcome to this edition of your Gardening Weekly, today's edition is entitled:
The Right Stuff
QUOTE: In the hope of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
- Albert Schweitzer
One of the most important rules of creating a garden is to ensure that you have the right plants for the right place.
There are many plants that will suffer if they aren't growing in conditions that are suited to them and by planting in these conditions you will always be fighting a battle to have them looking their best simply because they will always be struggling to survive.
If you have a specific theme that you would like to follow when planning your garden and that theme doesn't suit the growing conditions you only have two alternatives and they are;
1. you can change the plants you intend using to something more suitable but still in keeping with your overall theme or
2. you can change the conditions that the plants will be growing in.
Website Of Interest. Check out the following:
http://blog.mygardeninghome.com/plants.html
While it is not possible to change the climate, you can make changes to the layout of the garden and surrounding area to create your own 'micro-climate' with other plants or trees offering shading or shelter.
You can plant windbreaks or construct them to reduce the effect that the wind might have on some of the more fragile plants.
If you are looking for color in your garden but the plants you prefer would suffer in the conditions your garden presents, then look for alternative plants that can offer the same color but are more suited to those conditions.
By using plants that are more suited to the conditions, they will thrive better and require a lot less maintenance while still giving you the 'look' you require.
It's all about getting your planning right before you even buy the first plants. If the plan is well executed the garden will look better, be easier to maintain and you will enjoy ownership more so than a garden that is a constant struggle.
Website Of Interest. Check out the following:
http://blog.mygardeninghome.com/plants.html
Thanks,
Annie
http://blog.mygardeninghome.com
Here are some tips for herb gardening indoors that will simulate the conditions in an outside garden. For Herb gardening indoors the growing climates need to be pretty much the same as the conditions outside. …
Source: exhanbatik
The weather has been so nice lately that we’ve taken our seedlings outside to harden them off a bit. Hardening off is meant to let the plants acclimate slowly to outside conditions so that they aren’t shocked when they are finally …
Source: gremlin
Hi everyone
Welcome to this edition of your Gardening Weekly, today's edition is entitled:
Desktop Gardening
QUOTE: Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, or even joyous.
- Paul Hawken
Who would have believed that you could plan and order your whole garden from your desktop just a few years ago?
It makes it so easy to get exactly what you like for your garden by logging on to the Internet Garden stores and being able to choose your plants according to color, size, type, season and more.
You can even select plants according to the conditions they will be planted in your garden, so if you have a shaded area you will be able to select only those plants that prefer those conditions.
It makes it so easy for an inexperienced gardener to plan a garden and know what it will look like and know that the right plants and in the best place according to the conditions.
The saving that you can get over hiring professional advice can go in to the purchase of plants and garden necessities.
Website Of Interest. Check out the following:
http://blog.mygardeninghome.com/plants.html
It is quite a lot of fun creating your own oasis and choosing the plants to suit your personality. You can chop and change the plan around until you get the best layout without ever having to spend money until you are completely happy and ready to go with the ordering of the plants.
As well as the convenience of these search functions on the gardening sites, you will often find that due to the lower overheads of the online businesses, you can save quite a substantial lot of money by buying through them rather than the local garden store.
One of the best ways to get ideas for your garden plans is to look at the galleries of other gardens on the Internet and base your own garden on one you like, customizing it to suit your requirements.
Once you have created a plan using these resources you can take it to a landscape professional to get some additional guidance and advice but in doing the groundwork online first you will stand to save a lot of money.
Website Of Interest. Check out the following:
http://blog.mygardeninghome.com/plants.html
Thanks,
Annie
My Gardening Home Blog
Gardening is supposed to be enjoyable. Practice, experiment and learn from what you did. Your space is unique, so what might not work for someone else with almost similar conditions may work for you. In general, particularly if the …
Source: Garden District
What conditions does a neem tree require for growth? (answer). From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Source: The Old Farmer's Almanac
