Garden Plants Information

Scents from the rose garden filling the air as you walk by… it’s a lovely summer scent that you can enjoy every year. Many gardeners know that the rose is referred to as the queen of all flowers, and you can see the history in the rose by traveling back in time to Europe. The rose is a plant whose scent predominates the historical gardens all over the world. Historical gardens in Europe include the use of Roses, Peonies, Honeysuckle, and a few other strongly scented plants. The rose creates the feeling of royalty, color, and elegance all in the same instant

The rose bush is a perennial that will fill your garden space without much added work.

In planning a rose garden, you might have the option to plant roses that are bare root. What are bare root roses? Bare root roses are plants that you will dig up from your family or friend’s house and bring back to your own garden. The plant that you dig up without bringing the soil that the plant lived in to your garden is a bare root plant. Here, we are going to discuss more about bare root roses, and how to plant them for your rose garden success.

Bringing the bare root plant back from the store, your friends or from your supplier, you should soak your bare root plants in a bucket of water overnight before planting. In planning your rose garden, you can dig your hole for your new plant, loosing the soil where you will place your new rose bush. Using the soil that you loosen in the hole, pile or mound it in the middle of the hole to support the plant during and after planting.

Placing your bare root plant in the hole, center it on the mound of dirt and back fill around the plant. Do not pack in the soil, but loosely back fill the soil around the plant to an inch above where planted in the soil before. You can tell how far the plant was in the soil earlier by the green on the stalk of the plant. Water the rose bush once again with ample amounts of water.

After watering your rose bush well, cover the soil with mulch to hold moisture. The mulch around the rose should not actually touch the thick stalk of the plant, but instead be a half-inch to an inch from the stalk. Watering your rose bush at least once a week, for the first month after planting, will bring the first breath of success in your new rose garden.

Rose Garden Tips…

The rose garden ultimately is a get away for you and your thoughts any time of the day. You can plan and create a rose garden of your own that will take away the stress of your day with its beauty. The rose garden that you love and admire so much can be yours if you follow a few easy steps in planning and in raising your roses.

If you have never raised roses before, we have a few great tips and ideas lined up for your reference. One important thing to remember is that roses do love the sunshine. In the garden that is full sun areas only, you will have great success in growing roses. If you have a partially shaded area where you want to grow new rose bushes, you may want to consider moving your plants to where your roses will receive at least six hours of sun a day or more.

When first planting or transplanting a rose bush, water will be an important factor. You will need to water your roses at least once a week as your rose establishes itself. The soil that you plant your rose in does need to drain well, this is important. The rose bush will not thrive in the area moist all of the time. Refraining from planting your rose in an area that fills with puddles will aid in your successful rose gardening.

As your roses grow and change every year, you will need to pick off the dead head flowers. Picking off the flowers that are dead will bring new life to your bush. If you find black spots on the leaves of your rose bush, this will keep your plant from suffering and from any disease from spreading over the entire plant. Treating your plants at the first sign of Japanese beetles is going to save their luscious green leaves from these tiny creatures.

In the spring of the year, you will need to prune your rose bush. The blackened portions of your rose bush need pruned away to promote additional new growth over the entire plant. While pruning your plant in the spring season, pull weed starts so that your plant is not in competition for water or soil nutrients over the growing seasons.

As you plan your rose garden and begin placement, planting roses of the same color next to each other will enhance the over all look of the rose garden. Using too many flowers in one area though, can make the entire rose garden look more jumbled than a wave of color.

One last thing for you to think about when creating and planning a rose garden is to remember to test your soil. Soil testers are widely available and relatively inexpensive. When testing your soil, your pH level is going to be most important for success with roses. A pH level of 5.5 to 6.6 is the ultimate situation for raising a rose garden of your own.

Gordon Goh is author of the free, informative website Simply Flower Garden offering quality useful tips for flower garden lovers.

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Weeds are the enemy of a beautiful healthy lawn. They can quickly take over and turn a lush green carpet into an eyesore. But there are ways to deal successfully with a weed problem, and there are things you may not be aware of that promote the spread of weeds. So here are the top 10 tips for getting rid of weeds in your lawn.

1. Don’t mow your grass too short. By mowing too low this can cause weeds to seed easier and spread much faster throughout your yard. And also avoid mowing right after applying a weed killer product to your lawn, as this can cause the product to be picked up out of the ground and blown around instead of moving into the weeds where it belongs.

2. Fertilize your yard. Without proper nutrients in the soil, your grass simply won’t be able to grow like it should. That means that the nutrients that are available will most likely go to the deeply rooted weeds instead and help them take over the yard.

3. Don’t fertilize at the wrong time of year. If you don’t follow the instructions that come with most fertilizers carefully, and lay down your fertilizer at the wrong time, the weeds may be the only thing in the yard that gets the fertilization, leaving very little nutrients for the grass instead.

4. Avoid over watering your yard. If you’re putting so much water on your yard that the soil simply can’t soak it up in time, that leaves a perfect opportunity for the weeds to use that extra water for their own growth. So try to make sure that the water you put down is all going into the soil and being used for your grass.

5. Try to avoid having too much shade on your yard. Excessive shade can contribute toward the growth of many weeds. There are many different types of weeds who actually began in the shade first and then spread throughout other parts of the yard. So by cutting back some of your tree branches and bushes, you can often stop this process before it starts.

6. Avoid applying herbicides with low soil moisture. Herbicides can be effective in preventing some weeds, but applying them when the soil moisture is low will only do further damage to your grass, and may not even affect the weeds very much at all.

7. Avoid applying herbicides to new sod or newly seeded lawns. If you apply a herbicide or weed remover before grass has a chance to take root and really start to grow, it will often have the opposite effect of what you intended.

8. Make sure you use the right kind of weed killer. There are different kinds of weeds, and correspondingly different kinds of weed killers. So make sure that whatever product you are using to kill weeds, it is the right product for the weeds that are in your lawn. Otherwise, it may have no result at all, and may even damage your grass.

9. Only use weed killer in the right season. Follow the directions on the bottle and apply weed killer at the right time of year. Otherwise, it may be totally ineffective.

10. Some weedkillers will work not only on weeds but also on your lawn and kill it as well. So be sure that you know what weed killer product you are using before you apply it. Some products should only be applied on areas away from your lawn.

Hopefully these reminders will help you be able to better control the weeds in your lawn and help you have a beautiful yard that you can be proud of.

Thad Pickering writes on many consumer related topics including home improvement. You can find lawn mower reviews and lawn tractor reviews by visiting our Home Improvement website.

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Planting roses isn’t actually complicated, as long as you have some good advice and tips to start with…

1. Check with your local gardening center or florist for the best type of roses to grow in you climate. If you are a novice, you should look fo? disease resistant types of roses because they require a lot less maintenance.

2. When planting roses, you want to pick a spot that is well lit in the morning. You also want an area that is sunlit for at least 6 hours a day. Roses need a great deal of light if they are to grow properly. If you live in a really hot climate though, you’ll probably get the best results by not planting your roses in direct sunlight.

3. Pick an area that has plenty of well drained soil. Great soil has a PH level where the amount of acid in the soil is at about 5.5-7.0. You can get a testing kit for your soil at any garden center.

4. Organic matter like manure or lime helps to nourish the roots of your roses. You should soak the roots in water or puddle clay for many minutes, and cut off any root’s ends that are broken.

5. The first 3-4 weeks after planting your roses, you should water them often. Usually this is when the top 2 inches of soil is dry. Roses need a lot of hydration and food to remain healthy.

6. Four weeks after planting, you should start soaking the bed every 2 weeks or so. You should do this in the morning for the best results.

7. Begin fertilization approximately 3 months after planting. Use 3-6 inches of mulch to control the moisture, temperature, and to stops weeds from coming up. Mulch also helps to lock in the vital nutrients your roses need in order to remain healthy.

8. Planting in the Spring is the best.

9. You want to plant your roses in an area that is well circulated with air. Your roses will not grow in an enclosed or tight area.

10. Dig a hole that is two times bigger than the amount of space that your roses take up. It makes it easier to plant them and creates a spaced area for them to grow with freedom. Poor circulation for your roses can cause fungal diseases. Using a larger hole also makes it easier for you to pull them up later and pot them if you’d like.

© 2004, Kathy Burns-Millyard and Garden-Source.com

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