The Joy of Gardening Copyright © 2008 1 All rights reserved Published by: Charles H. Smith P.O. Box 2225 West Columbia, SC 29171 Charleshsmith.com Copyright © 2008 Charles H. Smith All rights are reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Note: This e-book is optimized for viewing on a computer screen, but it is organized so you can also print it out and assemble it as a book. Since the text is optimized for screen viewing, the type is larger than that in usual printed books. Copyright © 2008 – Charles H. Smith – All rights reserved CharlesHSmith.com Copyright © 2008 2 All rights reserved Disclaimer This report has been written to provide information about gardening. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering gardening services. If gardening or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Every effort has been made to make this report as complete and accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes in typography or content. Also, this report contains information on gardening only up to the publishing date. Therefore, this report should be used as a guide – not as the ultimate source of enter your report's area of expertise (legal, medical, etc.) information. The purpose of this report is to educate. The author and publisher does not warrant that the information contained in this report is fully complete and shall not be responsible for any errors or omissions. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this report. Copyright © 2008 3 All rights reserved A few words about Give Away Rights ... 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Copyright © 2008 4 All rights reserved Table of Contents Choosing a Garden that is Perfect for You ........................................6 Choosing and Planting Perennials...................................................8 Creating a Raised Bed ................................................................ 10 Creating Microclimates to Facilitate Growth.................................... 12 Dealing with Garden Pests .......................................................... 14 Getting Started in Container Gardening......................................... 16 Growing Your Own Herbs............................................................ 18 Improving Your Garden by Adding a Fountain................................. 20 Installing a Drip Irrigation System ................................................ 22 Maintaining a Compost Heap....................................................... 24 Mulching for Free ...................................................................... 26 My First Gardening Experience .................................................... 28 Optimizing Your Garden for Drought or Water Conservation .............. 30 Other Factors in Garden Creation................................................. 32 Picking a Healthy Plant............................................................... 34 Picking the Ideal Location for your Garden ..................................... 36 Picking the Right Gardening Tools ................................................ 37 Preparing Your Garden for the Winter............................................ 40 Preparing Healthy Soil ................................................................ 41 The Horrors of Hail .................................................................... 44 The Psychology Behind Gardening ................................................ 45 Using Gardening to Get in Shape.................................................. 47 Using Rain Barrels to Survive Droughts......................................... 49 Using Vines to Decorate your Garden ............................................ 51 Using Xeriscaping to Save Time and Water ..................................... 53 All Resources............................................................................ 55 Copyright © 2008 5 All rights reserved Choosing a Garden that is Perfect for You If you're thinking about starting a garden, the first thing you need to consider is what type of garden you will have. There are many different choices and often it can be hard to pick just one, but hopefully you can narrow it down. But by narrowing it down, you'll make the gardening experience easier on yourself and the plants. If all your plants are similar, then it shouldn't be very hard to care for them all. So here are some of the main garden ideas for you to choose from. ADVERTISEMENT Bonsai Gardening Secrets. Discover Over 95 Pages Of Insider Secrets To Creating Stunning Bonsai Trees. The Hypertufa How-To Manual. 100 Page EBook On How To Make Garden Art Objects From Hypertufa. Easy To Follow Instructions & Expert Advice. Companion Planting. Learn How To Design An Organic Food System Where Your Plants Do The Work, Creating A High Yield, Healthy, Beautiful Garden. The Hydroponic Garden Secrets Guide. Hydroponics Secrets Shows You How To Grow The Plants, Fruits And Vegetables -even In Limited Space--without Using Soil. Amazing. If you're just looking for something to look nice in your yard, you'll want a flower garden. These are usually filled with perennial flower. Perennial flowers are flowers which stay healthy year-round. They're basically weeds because of their hardiness, only nice looking. Different areas and climates have different flowers which are considered perennials. If you do a quick internet search for your area, you can probably find a list of flowers that will bring your flower garden to life. These usually only require work in the planting stage - after that, the flower take care of themselves. The only downside to this is that you don't have any product to show for it. Another choice for your garden is to have a vegetable garden. These usually require a little more work and research than a flower garden, but can be much more rewarding. No matter what time of the year it is, you can usually find one vegetable that is still prospering. That way you can have your garden be giving you produce almost every day of the year! When starting a vegetable Copyright © 2008 6 All rights reserved garden, you should build it with the thought in mind that you will be adding more types of veggies in later. This will help your expandability. Once all your current crops are out of season, you won't be stuck with almost nowhere to put the new crops. A vegetable garden is ideal for someone who wants some produce, but doesn't want to devote every waking hour to perfecting their garden (see below.) One of the more difficult types of gardens to manage is a fruit garden. It's definitely the most high-maintenance. When growing fruits, many more pests are attracted due to the sweetness. You not only have to deal with having just the right dirt and fertilizer, you have to deal with choosing a pesticide that won't kill whoever eats the fruits. Your fruit garden will probably not produce year- round. The soil needs to be just right for the plants to grow, and putting in another crop during its off- season could be disastrous to its growth process. If you're willing to put lots of work into maintaining a garden, then a fruit garden could be a good choice for you. So now that I've outlined some of the main garden types that people choose, I hope you can make a good decision. Basically, the garden type comes down to what kind of product you want, and how much work you want to put into it. If you're looking for no product with no work, go with a flower garden. If you want lots of delicious product, but you are willing to spend hours in your garden each day, then go for a fruit garden. Just make sure you don't get into something you can't handle! ADVERTISEMENT Help Us Feed Millions Of People! Produce 5-10 Times More Food While Using 1/2 The Water! World-renowned Mittleider Gardening Books, CDs Videos & Software Show You How! Affiliates Earn 40% & Help Others Automatically As This Non-Profit Foundation Teaches Families To Feed Themselves. Diy Japanese Garden. Easy Step By Step Guide To Make You Own Japanese Garden, With Pictured Sample Garden Designs. The Home Of Indoor Plant Care Info. We Provide Indoor Plant Care Information For The Homeowner, Garden Center Personnel, And Plantscape Technicians. Copyright © 2008 7 All rights reserved Choosing and Planting Perennials If you’ve been growing a vegetable garden for a while, you might be feeling slightly disgruntled at how plain it is to look at. I too began my gardening career with a vegetable garden, but I decided that it wasn’t quite as pleasing to look at as I would have liked. I heard from a friend that the use of perennial flowers could be a great way to liven up my garden without adding any extra work for me. Perennial flowers are strong, local flowers that come back every year without having to replant or do any extra work. During their off seasons, the flowers and stems die back and you can hardly even tell the plant is there (rather than just dying and looking like hideous brown clumps in your garden). When it’s time to bloom, entirely new flowers shoot up where the old ones were. Before deciding whether to put in perennials or not, you need to make sure that your soil has proper drainage. If the water stays saturated for long periods of time, you should build a raised bed. To test, dig a hole and fill it with water. Wait a day, and then fill it with water again. All traces of water should be gone within 10 hours. If the hole isn’t completely dry, you will need to build a raised bed. ADVERTISEMENT Self-Sufficient-Life.com. Keeping And Raising Chickens And Poultry. Build A Chicken Coop. Growing Your Own Fruit And Vegetables. Beekeeping (Honey Bees). Herbal Remedies, Herbs, Remedy. Hydroponic Gardening, Hydroponics Garden. Building Your Own Greenhouse. The Eco-Efficient Organic Garden Bed Guide. Low Maintenance, High Yield Organic Garden Bed.Learn How To Grow Organic Vegetables Faster, Bigger And Tastier With One Of The Most Advanced Organic Methods Exists Today. Comprehensive & Fully Illustrated Guide. See Examples On Pitch Page. What You Need To Know About Bonsai Gardening! Brand New Ebook! Amazing Techniques Revealed On How To Grow Shockingly Beautiful Bonsai! Picking your perennials can be a complicated process. The goal should be to have them flowering as much as possible during the Copyright © 2008 8 All rights reserved year, so you should create an outline of the year. Research the different types of flower you want, and create a timeline of flowering. If you plan it right, you can have a different type of flower blooming at any point in the year. Getting just the right mixture of seeds can give your yard a constantly changing array of colors. When you go to buy the seeds from your local florist or nursery, you might be able to find a custom seed mixture for your area. This takes the really tough research part out of the job. Usually these blends are optimized for the local climate, and do great jobs of having flowers always grow in your yard. If one of these isn’t available, you can ask the employees what they think would be a good mixture. They should be happy to help you put something together which will be optimal for whatever you desire. ADVERTISEMENT Square Watermelon Secrets Revealed! Instant Buzz Home Garden Ebook. Author Grew His Own Square Watermelon And Shows How To. Its Great Fun And Curiosity. Home Vegetable Gardening Guide. A Complete Guide To The Planting And Care Of Vegetables, Fruit, And Berries. The Real Gardener's Book. Get A Beautiful Garden - Easy, Inexpensive, And Rewarding - Simple Steps To Follow! Only Product With Book And Audio Mp3 Book ! You should definitely use mulch when planting perennials. This will reduce the overall amount of work you have to do, by reducing the amount of weeds and increasing the water retention. Bark or pine needles work great, I have found, and depending on the rest of your yard you might have them on hand at no charge. As for fertilizer, you should use it sparingly once your plants start to come to life. When you actually go to plant the seeds, you should put them in small, separate clumps according to the directions. This is because they tend to spread out, and if you have too many too close together then they will end up doing nothing but choking each other out. As you plant them, throw in a little bit of extremely weak fertilizer. In no time at all you should start to see flowers blooming up. Copyright © 2008 9 All rights reserved Creating a Raised Bed If your current planting goals involve plants that require good water drainage, I am sure you know how frustrating it is to have a yard that just won’t cooperate. Some plants can handle the excess water that comes about from being in an area that doesn’t drain properly. In fact, it might just cause them to bloom more lushly. However, other plants don’t cope as well, and it will cause them to die a gruesome, bloated death. You should always find out about the drainage required for every plant you buy, and make sure that it won’t conflict with any of the areas you are considering planting it in. In order to test how much water your designated patch of soil will retain, dig a hole approximately ten inches deep. Fill it with water, and come back in a day when all the water had disappeared. Fill it back up again. If the 2nd hole full of water isn’t gone in 10 hours, your soil has a low saturation point. This means that when water soaks into it, it will stick around for a long time before dissipating. This is unacceptable for almost any plant, and you are going to have to do something to remedy it if you want your plants to survive. ADVERTISEMENT Your Perfect Lawn. Step By Step Guide On Building And Maintaining A Perfect Garden Lawn. How To Plant & Care For Your Rose Garden. New Guide Reveals Tips, Tricks & Techniques You Can Use To Consistently Grow Gorgeous, Healthy Roses With Ease! Worm Farms Diy. How To Build And Manage A Worm Farm To Suit The Average Family. Recycle Household Organic Waste Into Fertilizer For Your Garden And Help The Environment Too. The usual method for improving drainage in your garden is to create a raised bed. This involves creating a border for a small bed, and adding enough soil and compost to it to raise it above the rest of the yard by at least 5 inches. You’ll be amazed at how much your water drainage will be improved by this small modification. If you’re planning to build a raised bed, your prospective area is either on grass or on dirt. For each of these situations, you should build it slightly differently. Copyright © 2008 10 All rights reserved If you want to start a raised garden in a non grassy area, you won’t have much trouble. Just find some sort of border to retain the dirt you will be adding. I’ve found that there is nothing that works quite as well as a few two by fours. After you’ve created the wall, you must put in the proper amount soil and steer manure. Depending on how long you plan to wait before planting, you will want to adjust the ratio to allow for any deteriorating that may occur. If you’re trying to install a raised bed where sod already exists, you will have a slightly more difficult time. You will need to cut the sod around the perimeter of the garden, and flip it over. This may sound simple, but you will need something with a very sharp edge to slice the edges of the sod and get under it. Once you have turned it all upside down, it is best to add a layer of straw to discourage the grass from growing back up. After the layer of straw, simply add all the soil and steer manure that a normal garden would need. Planting your plants in your new area shouldn’t pose much difficulty. It is essentially the same process as your usual planting session. Just be sure that the roots don’t extent too far into the original ground level. The whole point of creating the raised bed is to keep the roots out of the soil which saturates easily. Having long roots that extend that far completely destroys the point. ADVERTISEMENT Home, Deck And Garden Projects. Fifteen Home And Deck Project Plans, Spiral Stairs, Whirlpool Spa, Spa Wood Heater, Retractable Awning, Compost Tumbler, Under Deck Roofing, Double Carport, Trimmer Mower, Abrasive Saw, Patio, Miter Saw Table, Pot Rack, Joggle Board, Pool Heat, Ping Pong. Organic Gardening Secrets. Discover The Secrets To Organic Gardening. Great Conversions. Easy To Promote. We Cloak Your Affiliate Link. Get Your Custom Lin. Cinder Block Gardens Ebook. Grow More Food In Less Space And In Less Time. Finally, Gardening Made Simple And Easy, The Way Gardening Should Be! Once you have plants in your new bed, you’ll notice an almost immediate improvement. The added soil facilitates better root development. At the same time, evaporation is prevented and decomposition is discouraged. All of these things added together Copyright © 2008 11 All rights reserved makes for an ideal environment for almost any plant to grow in. So don’t be intimidated by the thought of adjusting the very topography of your yard. It is a simple process as I’m sure you’ve realized, and the long term results are worth every bit of work. Creating Microclimates to Facilitate Growth Many gardeners live in areas where almost anything can grow effortlessly. Just plant the seeds and water it for a few weeks, and you’ve got a beautifully lush plant. But if you live in somewhere like Colorado, you’ll understand what its like to have a slim selection of plants that naturally grow. It can be quite a challenge to facilitate the growth of a large variety of plants, especially when the very world you live in seems to be rooting against you. Some people solve this problem by loading up their plants with every type of chemical and fertilizer known to man. This usually works, but to me it seems kind of unnatural to rely on man made materials to keep your plants alive. Also, if I’m growing fruits or vegetables, I don’t feel very comfortable eating something that is entirely composed of chemicals. ADVERTISEMENT 4 Great Gardening Ebooks For One Very Low Price. Discover Easy Tips And Advice To Get The Most Beautiful Garden, The Perfect Lawn And Learn About Organic Secrets And The Fascinating World Of Wild Flowers. How To Garden In A Dry Climate. The Private Home Gardener, Primarily In A Dry Climate, Hungry For Hands-on Information From A Seasoned Professional Of Nearly 25 Years Experience, Gardening In Israel A Hot And Thirsty Country. Make Money From Greenhouse. The Most Thrilling Pursuit In Amateur Horticulture Today Is Certainly Greenhouse Gardening. This Book Will Turn Your Hobby Into Profit! A gardening theory that I have relied on in the past to grow many types of plants is that of creating a “microclimate” for each type of plant. This is when you regulate the sunlight, shade, moisture, and wind factors for each separate plant. It sounds like a challenge, and it is. But you can regulate these factors in such a way that the Copyright © 2008 12 All rights reserved plant feels just like it is in the ideal growing conditions. This can be achieved by the use of wind barriers, shading umbrellas, extra water, or different types or amounts of compost. If you’re ready to make an attempt at creating microclimates, you’ll need to make a detailed plan in advanced. You should start by finding a large shade providing bush or tree that will grow fast and naturally in your area. Just look at some undeveloped plots of land and see what is there. Most likely it grew on its own without any planting or care. This is what you want to happen. Usually the growing of one plant can bring about the growing of another more desirable plant. If you have a fence in your backyard (you would be surprised at how many people don’t) then you already have a good amount of shade to work with. You can start the microclimate process using just the shade of the fence, combined with (perhaps) a screen or large bush to shade your new plant for the other half of the day that the fence doesn’t take care of. The fence is also useful for shading against wind for very fragile plants. ADVERTISEMENT Cultivate The Magic! The Number One Guide To Easy Container Gardening. Helpful, Clear Straight Forward Step By Step Instructions For Indoor And Outdoor Gardeners. Lower Your Stress! Improve Your Environment! Come To The Plant Zone And Cultivate The Magic! Free Organic Vegetable Gardening At Home. Learn How To Start Up Or Enhance Your Own Organic Vegetable Garden At Home. Everyone Can Save Money On Food Bills And Produce Superior Fruit And Vegetables. How To Build Auto Lawn Sprinklers. Build Your Own Automatic Lawn Sprinkler System. Once you have established the shade, be it natural or unnatural, you have created a slightly less harsh miniature environment. You must remember this is a gradual process, and find a new plant to put in the shade of the other one. Now your choices are a little more open. You don’t have to go with a rugged plant like the one you did before; you can now choose a plant that survives in cooler weather. If the plant you are trying to grow next requires more moisture in the air than your area provides, installing a fountain or small pond can fix this problem due to the Copyright © 2008 13 All rights reserved evaporation. You may think you don’t want to waste water on a pond or fountain, but it’s all going toward the betterment of your garden. It’s just like the watering process, only indirect. As an added benefit, usually fountains are quite aesthetically attractive and a great addition to your garden. I can’t explain every stage of the process, because everyone’s goals and setups are slightly different. But to reach your goal, you should do research on every plant that you would like to have in your garden. Find out everything you can about the zone that it flourishes in, and ask yourself how you can emulate that zone within your own backyard. Almost always you can take control of the environment and recreate whatever you wish. Usually all it takes is some planning and strategy. Dealing with Garden Pests While tending to my own garden, I have found that one of the most frustrating things that can happen to a gardener is to walk outside to check on your plants. It’s just a routine walk to make sure that your garden is thriving, but you end up finding holes in all of your plants that looked fine only hours before. The explanations for some of these plant-destroying holes are garden pests. Some of the main garden pests are slugs, worms, caterpillars, birds, snails, and the occasional gopher. Although you can never wipe out these pests entirely, after all your hard work in the garden you have to do something. Insects are one of the worst things to have in your garden; they can live under the soil, in old weeds or piles of leaves, or in a number of other places. In order to help keep insects away, always try and eliminate places in your garden and near your garden that these ADVERTISEMENT Your Lawn Care Business Marketing Plan. How To Double Your Lawn Care Business In The Next 30 Days. Lawn Care EBook(R) - High Pay - High Conv. High Paying Commissions And High Converting Sales Letter For This Lawn Care EBook(R. Your Perfect Lawn. Step By Step Guide On Building And Maintaining A Perfect Garden Lawn. Copyright © 2008 14 All rights reserved insects and other plant diseases could be living. Remove old leaves, weeds, or any other decaying matter that insects and diseases could be living in from your yard. Also, regularly turn over your garden soil and break apart any clumps of dirt so that you can eliminate the living spaces any insects that might be hiding underground. Another way to rid your garden of the pests is to use dormant spray, which is used to keep destructive insects and diseases under control. It is best that you use dormant spray when your plants are dormant, usually around February or early March. I have used dormant spray many times on my garden and it has worked wonders on keeping insects out. But as I learned from experience, dormant spray is only effective if you follow the correct instructions. When I first decided to use some on my garden, I just dumped it everywhere in hopes of killing everything harmful. Unfortunately I ended up killing my entire garden along with my neighbors. Some insects can be beneficial to your garden though, so be sure to find out which insects help your garden. Another pest problem I've had besides insects has been birds. Whenever I see birds in my garden I run outside a chase them away, but as soon as I step inside they come right back. The solution that I've come up with to keep the birds away from my garden is to put a bird feeder in my yard. Instead of costing me time and money by eating my garden, the birds eat at the bird feeder. In the long run it’ll save you money. Not only can a bird feeder help keep birds away from your garden, but they can also be a new part of your yard decoration. Although not completely eliminating my bird problem, my bird feeder has made the problem smaller. Getting a dog has also helped. If you start seeing mounds of dirt around your yard, and your plants keep unexplainably dieing, you can assume that you have a gopher problem. Thankfully, this is one of the few garden pasts that I haven't had. However my friend has struggled with a tremendous gopher infestation, so I decided to research it. Gophers are rodents that are five to fourteen inches long. Their fur can be black, light brown, or white, and they have small tails. One method of getting rid of these root-eating pests is to set traps. The key to successfully capturing a gopher using a trap is to successfully locate the gopher's tunnels and set the trap correctly. Another way Copyright © 2008 15 All rights reserved