Rogis The Gardening Weblog

A terrarium is a “mini-greenhouse”, which contains plants in a confined environment. This allows you to keep specialist plants indoors all year round. They provide an autonomous system. They are ideal for people who neglect their plants as they are best when left for months on their own.

The fundamental process on which the whole terrarium works is evaporation. Water is added to the soil and then the plants take it in, and then it passes out of the plants. The water evaporates and the process starts again.

Because the terrarium has to be in indirect sunlight, it could be placed in direct sunlight if the container is tinted glass. If you do place it in direct sunlight, install a small thermometer inside to ensure the temperature doesn’t get too high. A good glass container is ideal, although plastic could also be used.

Because of the fact that it is a closed environment, smaller plants are better suited to the cramped space inside the container. Cacti can be grown inside, although these don’t really need a contained eco-system to survive. Ferns are excellent for this, but make sure any plant you use isn’t diseased, as bringing a disease into the terrarium could be fatal for all your plants. If you want the best effect, using tropical plants are brilliant, as 7you can create a “jungle in a jar”!
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About 3 weeks ago I woke up one morning and noticed I had no satellite reception. “Interesting.” I thought, and picked up the cell phone to call for repairs. We don’t have a land line and use cellular for our primary phone service. About that time I noticed that my cell phone screen was crazy looking and that I didn’t have phone reception either. “Hmmmm,” I thought, “I wonder if the manure’s hit the fan and I just don’t know it.” I turned on the tv, which I rarely do, and finally got enough reception through the rabbit ears to hear (not see) the local news. I listened for a bit to make sure there were no nuclear attacks, terrorist hackers, etc. and quickly decided that God must have better things for me to do than check my email this particular morning. It was about a week before David could bring me a new phone and it took almost two more weeks to get a fellow out here to fix the satellite.

I believe God purposes all things, including stranding me in far western Garvin County with no electronic communication. Though I enjoy using the internet for information and communication, being without it was a good exercise and brought to light some key thoughts for me:

• The world won’t come to an end if you don’t have instant access to the latest 10 day weather forecast. I remembered how to look in the sky, study sunrise and sunset, feel the wind and get an idea of what the weather was doing.

• Books are a good thing. I started reading “The Sovereignty Of God” by A.W. Pink. I also dicovered that my father-in-law has an extensive library of men like Pink and Spurgeon. It’s amazing what you can find if you pay attention.

• Fellowship is important (and I treasure those brothers and sisters with whom I fellowship long-distance), but so is getting the work done. We don’t attend a corporate bricks and mortar church, but do enjoy fellowship with a small group of other believers online. I have to be careful, though, to balance the needs of friendship with the needs of the family, the garden and the livestock.

• Technology is convenient, but doing things traditionally has merit. I lost all my phone numbers when my cell phone fried and didn’t have access to an important snail mail address when the satellite went down. An actual address book doesn’t have those problems.

• Few things, if any, of the world are certain and trustworthy - definately not things like cell phones and satellites.

As Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I’ve got to say about that.” It’s typical early August here, hot and just humid enough to make it miserable but not humid enough to rain. Statistically the 15th of August is the day temperatures start going back down, but we’ve also had temperatures close to 110 on September 1st in years past. The garden is struggling, despite utilizing rural water (which I hate doing and eventually, Lord willing, will not do) to keep things alive until the fall rains start and production resumes. If it doesn’t rain soon and revive the pasture a bit we’ll have to start feeding a bit of hay. Anyway, it’s just another late summer in southern Oklahoma.

Speaking of summertime, thought you all might get a giggle out of Oran’s and my “Summertime Feet.”

Till next time, Blessings.

Judy

Yew is the best hedge plant there is. In all my time around hedging plants, I have never heard anyone say anything against it. A yew hedge plant has it all, superb windbreak shielding you from prying eyes and blotting out the evidence of passing traffic a few feet away. Yes, it drops its needles, but discreetly and they seem to melt away before you have time to fetch a broom. Its colour is magnificent - it is to hedges what British Racing Green is to generations of Lotus owners. And that colour a dark, rich green, putting Lotus to one side, makes a wonderful backdrop for other plants - shrubs, herbaceous plants, roses, even vegetables.

Some think yew is a bit ‘church yardy’ - rather gloomy and domineering. Not if you keep it below 8 feet - by the way I can’t contemplate a hedge that would not be the centre of attention if it was over 8 feet tall. Just think of giant hedges (the beech hedge at Meikelour for example) - they are the main attraction; people travel hundreds of miles just to see the hedge and forget the rest. But just tall enough to hide the top of your six foot neighbours head is about ideal - and easily trimmed.

Lower than that, and your hedge becomes an internal divider, separating garden ‘rooms’. You can give this shorter style of yew hedging more definition by using upright forms such as Irish Yew (Taxus baccata fastigiata) at the ends and corners of hedge runs. The upright yews are ‘more column and less spread’ and so are purpose made to be clipped into square or round pillars; formal but effective.

The number one reservation that people have about planting a yew hedge is that ‘everyone knows it is really slow growing’. At the risk of offending ‘everyone’ - they are wrong and it is not. Don’t believe me; just take a look at a hedge near you. We are only a few months into the growing season and newly planted and young yew hedges are roaring away. I have a trough in which I grow bare root yew plants at 3 to the metre to show people what a newly planted hedge looks like. They went in at the beginning of December (a good time to plant most bare root plants by the way) and have grown by over 8 inches (20 cms) already. Given that the growing season has at least three more months to go they will easily top a foot (30 cms) for the year. Remember mine are newly planted and containerised. Established and in open ground they would have grown more.

No article on yew hedging would be complete without a few words on clipping and pruning. As with any hedge plant the early, formative clipping is important. Be gentle but firm. Trim the sides into a ‘batter’ so the hedge is wider at the bottom than at the top. This lets the light reach low down and stops the hedge getting leggy. Do this as soon as your plants begin to grow away strongly - by the end of June if they were planted before Christmas, not until the end of August if they were planted between January and March. Leave the top of your hedge alone until it has reached its final height (which for a six foot hedge is probably four years after planting). Then clip the growing tips of the plants - they will never regain their vigour after that.

Don’t clip your yew hedge plant after the end of September - this leaves enough time for it to grow a little and smooth sharp edges or maybe cover any mistakes…

Talking of mistakes, the yew will re-grow willingly from old wood so the errors of your ways will not haunt you to the grave (as they do with Leylandii). As an illustration, if you cut a strongly growing yew plant down, the stump will sprout. This is a bit extreme, but if your yew hedge is gappy or, more likely, over time gets wider than it should, simply cut the whole of one side back to the trunks in the middle of the hedge in late winter. In a couple of years, that half will have regenerated and you can do it again on the other side.

Plant your yew hedge this winter - it will make your heart sing for the rest of your life.

Anna Stenning is knowledgeable on the world of yew hedge plants and planting hedges, for the best in long term growth and maintenance.

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Tomatoes are among some of the most popular vegetables to grow in your backyard. Rightly so too, because for some reason, homegrown tomatoes taste about 500% better than store-bought ones. In fact, for a period of time when the tomato prices were unusually high, my husband and I boycotted store-bought tomatoes because they were simply a “cardboard tasting” habit for sandwiches. However, once summer started, we decided to grow our own beefsteak tomatoes. It was just too weird to have a burger without a tomato on it! If you’re interesting in growing some good-tasting juicy tomatoes as well, here are some tips to help you on your journey.

1. Starting the seeds. Tomato seeds germinate in temperatures 65F/18C or higher. They grow pretty easy from seeds. You simply get some small pots, put some potting soil in them, and bury the seeds according to the seed package directions. Keep the soil moist and keep them in a warm sunny spot where it can get at least 6 hours of sunlight a day. In a few days, you’ll see your seeds starting to sprout!

2. Starting from plants. The easiest way to start growing tomatoes is to get some tomato plants from the nearest home and garden center or nursery. Select dark green plants that look strong. Make sure it doesn’t have any tomatoes already growing on it, because that will keep the plant from growing to its fullest size. When you get home, re-pot the plant into a huge outdoor pot or simply place it in the ground where you want to grow it. It’s good to bury the plant all the way up to the top leaves so that it develops a good solid root base. Few plants can handle being planted this way, but for tomatoes, it works well. Be sure to plant your tomatoes in a place that gets full sun at least 6 hours a day throughout its growing season.

3. Watering your plants. Keep your plants moist, but don’t over water them. Over watering can do as much damage to them as under watering!

4. Fertilizing your plants. Fertilizing might be a bit of a pain, but it’s highly important. Most soil these days simply doesn’t have enough nutrients to produce nice sweet and healthy produce. You can get some good fertilizers at your local nursery or home and garden center that is made specifically for tomatoes. This works well because it’ll be sure to give your plant the most nutrients it needs.

5. Harvesting your tomatoes. The tomatoes will be ripe when they are nice and deep red. Don’t pick them green if you want the juiciest and sweetest tomatoes, however, they do last quite a long time if you need to harvest them early. Simply wrap them up in newspaper for long storage.

Enjoy! There’s nothing like home grown tomatoes!

Heather recommends a used compact tractor for easier gardening. This site lists used tractors for sale

photo credit: maessive

First, let’s set the stage:

• I really don’t like the traditional suburban lawn. Tons of chemical, energy, and effort to create and maintain a biologically unstable mono culture so that I can … putt … or something. So, so silly.
• I’m also a big non-fan of petrol powered lawnmowers. They’re noisy, smelly, polluting beasts that beat the crap out of the grass, ripping it instead of actually cutting it.

As a consequence we’ve explored a bunch of alternatives, but none have really worked terribly well. We really liked the idea of reel mowers, but our experience with several of them makes it clear that our lawn is way too uneven and bumpy for a reel mower. Sigh.

What would be perfect would be a solar powered Roomba-like robot mower. WeatherGirl correctly pointed out that this is frequently known as a “goat”; sadly, the city classifies goats as livestock rather than lawn tools, and we aren’t allowed keep livestock in town. Damn.

So, anyone have any ideas for an interesting alternative to buying a stinky petrol powered monster?

Thanks in advance!

What is a garden without flowers? A boring one that does not stand out from the crowd as visually appealing, simply because all of the color revolves around green, the color of the grass. There are popular flowers that can make a garden glow as well as the rare ones that make your garden unique.

I will be letting in on some of the great flowers that can be used for your own garden and how to take care of them to make sure they thrive in your fantastic garden.

Lets get started with our flowers:

1. Amaranth
These flowers are clover-liked blossoms that come in several shades of purple, pink, and white. These derive from two foot stems that bloom throughout the summer. One of the great attributes of this flower is that it easily thrives in hot and dry weather all while maintaining there vibrant color. They pose as excellent fillers in arrangements.

These plants should be started indoors with the seeds being planted at temperatures between 55 and 60 degrees fahrenheit. You should give about eight to ten weeks before the last frost, and drenching the seeds overnight will improve their growing ability. When nighttime reaches no less than 50 degrees, they can be placed outside in fertile soil, preferably in a sunny location about twelve inches apart.

2. Confederate Jasmine
These flowers are usually known as a perennial vine. This specific flower is not native to the United States, while the most active periods are during the summer and spring. The Confederate Jasmine has flagrant orange flowers paired with seeds or fruits as well as foilage that is dark green. The life span of these babies is quite long, and they can reach up to two feet tall.

The Confederate Jasmine is only somewhat tolerant of restrictions in water conditions and drought, and they will not be able to survive exposure to temperatures below seven degrees fahrenheit. These flowers are often found in garden stores, plant dealers and distributors, as well as nurseries all around.

3. Clock Vine
Clock Vines reach there maximum height at five or six feet depending on how well they are taken care of, and they are favorites in cottage gardens. They also make great visual masterpieces when paired with hanging baskets, arbors, or mixed containers. During the hot and humid summer, these flowers do not fare well at all, but they will survive to the point of blooming nicely in October when the weather cools down.

Six to eight weeks before the last frost take some samples of the plants or sow seeds. The germination process will run about two to three weeks and their growth rate is very slow. Again, just like the last plant, wait until the temperatures are averaging over 50 degrees fahrenheit every night before you put them outdoors. Place these plants in moist soil with lots of organic matter, and with a little extra protection from the sunny mornings and afternoons these flowers will thrive even better.

That’s three flowers out of too many to count. Hopefully this information will help you get a head start on your garden experience, as the next part will introduce more flowers as well as ways to improve and expand your work of art. Remember, each and every flower needs to be taken care of differently, so make sure to follow instructions and guidelines for each one to ensure the best growth of your garden.

Kevin Bailey loves gardens.
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Once soil erosion starts to take place, there is often a variety of reasons. Poor soil content, too much rain, or wear and tear over time can cause soil to start to slip away. Possible solutions to soil erosion including adding in extra soil is a short-term solution, but with soil erosion that’s advanced, other measures will need to be implemented.

If the soil in a side-walk garden has started to build up on the pathway, construct a small rock fence as this can help in maintaining the soil in its place. In time soil will start to shift. That is normal. However, if there’s more rain than average, the soil can shift at a quicker rate and start to escape onto the pathway. A simple border or fence around a garden bed can assist in keeping soil in place and looks appealing as well.

Soil erosion is also likely to occur if the soil features high rock content. These rocks can pull and push soil away from lawns and gardens over time. One more of the possible solutions to soil erosion can be to eliminate the larger rocks, but often the soil has a lot of rocks in it. Top soil is able to keep soil erosion to a nominal amount. Not simply is top soil great for plant growth, it appears a lot finer than rocky soil. Soil erosion video clips can be view here.

Now, how do plants affect soil erosion, well including more plants in a flower bed can help in keeping the soil from eroding more as the roots of these plants act like a net to take hold of the soil when it’s moving.

Soil erosion causes take place anywhere over time. Erosion can occur faster in certain weather conditions. Protecting a garden by featuring borders, planting extra plants, and applying top soil are ways to develop the overall calibre of the soil and keeping it from elapsing.

Soil erosion in time will damage plant life and cause them to give up the ghost in view of a deficiency of nutrients. By noting the possible solutions to soil erosion, such as adding extra plants, the soil has greater opportunity of staying put and to keep the plants healthy.

Article source: http://www.soil.andallabout.com/

Technorati Tags: Possible Solutions To Soil Erosion, How Do Plants Affect Soil Erosion, Soil Erosion Causes, Soil Erosion Video Clips

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