The little green insects so frequently seen on house-plants are called aphis (plural aphides), plant-lice, or green-fly. They feed upon the tender growth of plants, especially the new leaves, and will rapidly sap and destroy the life of any plant if allowed to remain undisturbed. In the spring these insects abound in great numbers on the plants in green-houses and parlors, or wherever they may be growing, and the remedy should be promptly applied. The greatest enemy to the green-fly is tobacco smoke, made by burning the stems, the refuse of the cigar-maker’s shops; allowing the smoke to circulate among the leaves to which the insects are attached, will readily exterminate them. Place the infested plant under a barrel, an ordinary cracker barrel will do, and put under it a pan of burning tobacco, slightly moistened with water. Leave the plant in the smoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, after which remove it. If one “smoking” fails to destroy the insects, repeat the dose three or four times, once each day, until they are completely exterminated.

 
A strong solution, or “tea,” made from soaking cigar tobacco in water, and syringing the same over the plants, will effectually destroy the little pests, and not injure the plant in the process.

Plants will not flourish, bloom, and be healthy, in a dry, dusty atmosphere, even though they are given the best of care; so it is that those who attempt to raise plants in their house have little success. There is an immense contrast between the atmosphere of a well regulated green-house and that of ordinary living areas.

In the green-house, the atmosphere is moist and well-tempered to the healthful growth of plants; while that of the living-room is invariably dry and dusty, and plants will not flourish in it as they would in the conservatory.

All plants will not flourish in the common temperature of a living-room; some require a low temperature, and others need a warmer one. The following plants do better when temperatures are from 70° to 80° in the day-time, and 55° to 60° at night Begonias, Coleuses, Calceolarias, Bouvardias, Ferns (tropical), Hibiscuses, Poinsettias, Tuberoses, Heliotropes, Crotons, Hoyas, Cactuses, all kinds, Caladiums, Cannas, Palms, Orange and Lemon Trees, Geraniums, etc.

The following will do well in an atmosphere ranging from 50° to 60° by day, and 40° to 45° by night: Camellias, Azaleas, Oleanders, Roses, Carnations, Callas, Ivies,

Abutilons, Jessamines, Holland-bulbs, Lily-of-the-Valley, Primroses, Violets, Verbenas, Chrysanthemums, etc. Plants will flourish better in the kitchen, where the steam and moisture from cooking are constantly arising, and tempering the atmosphere, than in a dry living-room.

If a pan of water is set upon a heat register in a room where plants are growing, it will help to materially relieve the dryness of the atmosphere. But most all kinds of house-plants will do fairly in a uniform temperature, from 70° by day to 55° by night. Careful observation of the habits and requirements of different kinds of plants, as they come under our care, will greatly assist the gardener, and in a short time the novice will be so conversant with the various habits as to know just how to properly treat each and every house plant.

Probably the most important matter to be observed in growing garden-plants is that of watering them. The gardener should know just when to water, and to give it where it will do the most good. Novice gardeners often exhibit poor judgment in watering. It is the habit of some to keep the soil around their plants constantly soaked with water, while wondering why they are not thriving or healthy. These novice do not stop to consider that such treatment is unnatural, and will have an effect contrary to what is desired. There are those who resort to the opposite extreme, and keep their plants all the time in a perishing condition of dryness, which is even worse than if they were watered to death. If we will observe how judiciously Nature distributes the sunshine and shadow, the periodical rains, and the refreshing dews, we will learn an important lesson. A pot, or other receptacle in which plants are grown, should be porous; glazed, or painted pots, should never to be used, where plain, unglazed pots can be obtained; all non-porous pots of tin and similar material, should be discarded. Plants growing in them can never compare in health with those that have the advantage of plain porous pots. There should be a hole of sufficient size in the bottom of each pot, to allow the water to drain off, and to pass away as soon as possible. Placing a few pieces of broken tile, or charcoal, in the bottom of the pots will facilitate a rapid drainage, as good drainage is essential to the growth of strong, and healthy plants. When plants require water, it will be indicated by a light, dry appearance of the top of the soil, and if watered when in this condition, it will do the most good. Give water only when in this condition, and then copiously, giving them all they will soak up at the time, then withhold water until the same indication of their want of it again appears, then apply it freely. Unless plants are in a very dry atmosphere, as in a warm parlor in winter, they will seldom require watering. In summer they should be closely watched, and if exposed to sun and wind, they will require daily watering, to keep them in a flourishing state. When plants are suffering from drouth, it will be indicated by the drooping of the leaves, and they will frequently turn yellow, and drop off prematurely; this can be avoided by timely attention each day.

In summer, watering in the cool of the evening will be followed by the best results, for it will give the plants time to take up and assimilate the moisture necessary to their life, and being completely charged with water, they will be prepared for the hot sun and drying winds of the following day.

I hope you enjoy my brief writings on this garden blog about gardens useing a little tlc, and are inspired to get out and do a little digging in your own gardens, whatever kind you may have. We hope that as you visit and exchange thoughts, questions and pictures with us, you’ll get a sense it’s helping others in their gardening pleasures.

Patio furnishings and accessories can all help you add that special touch to your yard. Outdoor benches are quickly gaining in popularity. Benches come in iron, concrete, or plastic. An outdoor bench is a thing of beauty and a place to sit and relax. Iron is a popular garden benche, and these not only last for many generations, but they also lend a specific old world, or romantic style to the garden as well.

Sandstone garden furniture is also in vogue since the rugged and rustic look of sandstone gives a natural look to the garden furniture which blends well with the landscape of the garden. Due to its hardness, durability, and large choice of rich colors, granite is also used for fabricating garden furniture.

Do-it-yourself kits. Wooden swing set building kits are a great option to get yourself a brand new swing set that you can be proud of for years to come. The only thing be very mindful of is the kind of timber you purchase for the job.

As I have said before thanks for reading, you will find plenty more information in my garden furniture review article.

Enjoy!

The operation of “hilling” consists in drawing up the soil about the stems of growing plants, usually at the time of second or third hoeing. It used to be the practice to hill everything that could be hilled “up to the knees,” but it has gradually been discarded for what is termed “level culture”; and you will readily see the reason, from what has been said about the escape of moisture from the surface of the soil; for of course the two upper sides of the hill, which may be represented by an equilateral triangle with one side horizontal, give more exposed surface than the level surface represented by the base. In wet soils or seasons hilling may be advisable, but very seldom otherwise. It has the additional disadvantage of making it difficult to maintain the soil mulch which is so desirable.

Rotation of crops.
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Another thing to consider in making each vegetable produce its best, and that’s crop rotation, or the following of any vegetable with a different kind at next years planting.

With some vegetables, such as cabbage, this is almost imperative, and practically all are helped by it. Even onions, which are popularly supposed to be the proving exception to the rule, are healthier, and do as well after some other crop, provided the soil is as finely pulverized and rich as a previous crop of onions would leave it.

Here we have fundamental rules of crop rotation:

(1) Planting vegetables of the same family (such as cabbage and turnips) shouldn’t follow each other.

(2) Vegetables that feed near the surface, like corn, should follow other deep-rooting crops.

(3) Leaf and vine crops should follow root crops.

(4) Quick-growing plants should follow those of all season types.

These principles should help determine the rotations to be followed in individual cases of course. The proper way to attend to this matter is when making the planting plan. You will then have time to do it properly, and will need to give it no further thought for a year.

Now with the above suggestions in mind, and put to good use , it will not be difficult to give your gardens those special attentions which are needed to make them produce their very best.

Just wanted to say thank you for reading!

The practice of tlc gardening work efforts will create an ideal plant environment, resulting in better yields with less labor. Whether natural gardening is your hobby or your livelihood, organic gardening is essential across the generations. Also for grandparents, this is; way to enjoy gardening with your grandchildren and at the same time showing them tlc’s beauty.

Gardening is not only about digging in the dirt. It’s more about preserving and fully understanding the different types of plants, the care, and all the other factors needed in order to strive such as cultivation, the amount of water, and sunlight.

Let’s look at two purposes of cultivation, to stimulate growth and get rid of weeds, (1) by cultivating it lets air into the soil and opens up other wise unavailable plant food, and (2) by conserving moisture. As to weeds, the gardener of any experience doesn’t need be told the importance of keeping his garden rows clean. He or she has learned from experience the price of letting them get out of hand. He/she knows that one or two days’ growth, after they are well up, followed perhaps by a day or so of rain, may easily double the work of cleaning a patch of onions or carrots, and that where weeds have attained any size they are to hard get out of sowed crops without doing plant harm. He/she also realizes, or should, that every day’s growth means just so much of the available plant food gets stolen from under the very roots of his legitimate crops.

Instead of letting the weeds get away with any plant food, he should be furnishing more, for clean and frequent cultivation will not only break the soil up mechanically, but let in air, moisture and heat all essential in effecting those chemical changes necessary to convert non- available into available plant food. Long before the science in the case was discovered, the soil cultivators had learned by observation the necessity of keeping the soil nicely loosened about their growing crops. Even the lanky and untutored aborigine saw to it that his squaw not only put a bad fish under the hill of maize but plied her shell hoe over it. Plants need to breathe. Their roots need air. You might as well expect to find the rosy glow of happiness on the wan cheeks of a cotton-mill child slave as to expect to see the luxuriant dark green of healthy plant life in a suffocated garden.

Important as the question of air is, that of water ranks beside it. You may not see at first what the matter of frequent cultivation has to do with water. Let us take a moment and look into it. Take a strip of blotting paper, dip one end in water, and watch the moisture run up hill, soak up through the blotter. The scientists have labeled that “capillary attraction” the water crawls up little invisible tubes formed by the texture of the blotter. Now take a similar piece, cut it across, hold the two cut edges firmly together, and try it again. The moisture refuses to cross the line: the connection has been severed.

In the same way the water stored in the soil after a rain begins at once to escape again into the atmosphere. That on the surface evaporates first, and that which has soaked in begins to soak in through the soil to the surface. It is leaving your garden, through the millions of soil tubes, just as surely as if you had a two-inch pipe and a gasoline engine, pumping it into the gutter night and day! Save your garden by stopping the waste. It is the easiest thing in the world to do cut the pipe in two. By frequent cultivation of the surface soil not more than one or two inches deep for most small vegetables the soil tubes are kept broken, and a mulch of dust is maintained. Try to get over every part of your garden, especially where it is not shaded, once in every ten to fourteen days. Does that seem like too much work? You can hoe or till through, and keep the dust mulch as a constant protection. If you wait for the weeds, you will nearly have to crawl through, doing more or less harm by disturbing your growing plants, losing all the nutrients (and the weeds will take the cream) which they have consumed, and actually putting in more hours of infinitely more disagreeable work. If the beginner at gardening has not been convinced by the facts given, there is only one thing left to convince him experience.

Having given so much space to the reason for constant care in this matter, the question of methods naturally follows. Get yourself a tiller. The simplest sorts will not only save you an alot of time and work, and does the work better, very much better than it can be done by hand. You can grow good vegetables, especially if your garden is a very small one, without one of these labor-savers, I assure you that you will never regret the small investment necessary to procure it. With a tiller, the work of preserving the soil mulch becomes very simple. If you don’t have a tiller, for small areas very rapid work can be done with the scuffle hoe.

The matter of keeping weeds cleaned out of the rows and between the plants in the rows is not so quickly accomplished. Where hand-work is necessary, do it all at once. Here are a few practical suggestions that will reduce this work to a minimum, (1) Get at this work while the ground is soft; as soon as the soil begins to dry out after a rain is the best time. Under such conditions the weeds will easily pull out by the roots, without breaking off. (2) Immediately before weeding, go over the rows with a small tiller, cutting shallow, but just as close as possible, leaving a narrow, plainly visible strip which will be hoed by hand. The best tool for up next to large plants is the hoe after running the tiller. (3) See to it that not only the weeds are pulled but that the soils surface is broken up. It’s important that the weeds just sprouting are destroyed, and the larger ones pulled up. One pass thruogh with the tiller will destroy a hundred weed seedlings in less time than one weed can be pulled out after it gets a good start. (4) Use one of the small hand-tillers until you become skilled with it. Not only may more work be done but your fingers will be saved unnecessary wear.

Your skills improve as time goes on. The first thing to learn is that it is necessary to watch the tillers tines, for the plants safety and the rest will take care of it selve.

My gardening advice is meant to give the gardener all the guidance needed to help make the garden perfect. Thanks for reading, I hope this article provided you with the knowledge and understanding you were looking for. Be sure you get your free container gardening report and browse through the categories and article links at the right and start finding the answers to your questions.

Garden seeds are the easiest way to start your own garden, whether it’s a flower garden or a vegetable garden. Seed planting is one of the most important steps to successful home gardening. A seed may have the appearance to be all right and yet not have within it enough vitality to produce a healthy plant.

You could save seeds from your own plants, by doing so you are able to choose them carefully. But it’s just as likely as not the seeds will produce plants like the parent plant. Because a weak, straggly plant may produce one fine blossom. Looking at that one blossom so really beautiful you think of the numberless equally lovely plants you are going to have from the seeds.

So let’s look here at the entire plant that is to be considered. Is it sturdy, strong, well shaped and symmetrical; does it have a good number of fine blossoms? These are questions to ask in seed selection.

If you could visit a seed producer’s garden, you would see here and there a blossom with a string tied around it. These are blossoms chosen for seed. If you look at the whole plant with care you will be able to see the points which the producer held in mind when he did his work of selection.

In seed selection size is another point to hold in mind. Now we know no way of telling anything about the plants from which this special collection of seeds came. So we must give our entire thought to the seeds themselves. It is quite evident that there is some choice; some are much larger than the others; some far plumper, too. By all means choose the largest and fullest seed. The reason is this: When you break open a bean and this is very evident, too, in the peanut you see what appears to be a little plant. So it is. Under just the right conditions for development this little guy grows into the bean plant you know so well.

This little plant must depend for its early growth on the nourishment stored up in the two halves of the bean seed. For this purpose the food is stored. Beans are not full of food and goodness for you and me to eat, but for the little baby bean plant to feed upon. And so if we choose a large seed, we have chosen a greater amount of food for the plantlet. This little plantlet feeds upon this stored food until its roots are prepared to do their work. So if the seed is small and thin, the first food supply insufficient, there is a possibility of losing the little plant.

Plants need a certain amount of space to grow well, and most plants can only be moved successfully when they are quite small. If some plants should die their neighbors will take advantage of this by growing both under and above ground in the direction of the empty space.

From large seeds come the strongest plantlets. That is the reason why it is better and safer to choose the large seed.

Well that’s all I have for you here I hope the information was of good use. Remember if you buy your seeds. Each garden seed pack contains a wealth of information to help you successfully grow your own food and you should store the seeds in moisture-proof containers.

Thanks for you time and effort in reading my article! Please visit GardeningTLC.com main page and pick up your free report.

It’s spring and I started thinking about how the sun feels warm and how the grass is continually coming alive from that warmth. It is simply amazing, the miracle of spring.

A beautiful, well-kept lawn is not only pleasant to look at, it is an invitation to go outside and enjoy some quiet time or a pleasant afternoon with the family. While you’re enjoying your lawn, you can also take comfort in knowing that it is significantly impacting the environment for the good. It does this by absorbing runoff water, providing oxygen and helping to cool the temperatures in your general area. With all of this good, is there something bad lurking behind your lawn?

Most people are unaware of the negative impact that their lawns may have on the environment around them. All of the good that it does may be negated by any one of the following facts. Three out of every 10 gallons of water that is used on the East Coast of the United States ends up watering lawns. Almost 20% of everything that is dumped in landfills is comprised of lawn clippings. Lawn fertilizers and other chemicals are dumped on our grass to the tune of over 70,000,000 tons per year. What can be done to stop this cycle from happening? How can we enjoy a pristine lawn and still be friendly to the environment?

There are several different ways that you can still have a beautiful lawn even without using the chemicals that are commercially available. In the first place, you need to make sure that your soil is balanced so that it will produce the best grass possible. You do this by checking the pH level, making sure that it is neutral. It is also important for you to mow on a regular basis but make sure that you do not mow your grass too short. By mowing your grass short, you are exposing roots and speeding up the drying process. When you do this, your grass requires more watering.

There are many other ways that you can show your lawn TLC and provide the earth with a clean environment. The real choice comes in making sure that you do things naturally and not chemically. Although it may take more time at first, an organic lawn is not more difficult to maintain, and is usually much less expensive than one that is commercially maintained. Without a little tlc over time could lead to general erosion, which can impact an entire area. Today gardeners are continually building up their soil with organic matter, that means less erosion of topsoil restoring the natural balance.

The earth deserves this kind of respect and so does your family. Would you provide them with anything less?

Thanks for finding my gardening blog and taking the time to read my article. You can find more information by browsing through my other articles @ GardeningTLC.com websites main page. Help me to keep more articles like this coming by leaving your thoughts and suggestions.

In addition to our main site www.gardeningtlc.com, this blog will be full of great ideas, tips and resources to help us all become better gardeners. Besides it’s a great way to expand our social circle.
I hope we all will enjoy the brief writings on this garden blog.

Gardening is a way of showing that we have faith in tomorrow. It’s a lot of work, but when we stand back and take a look at what was built with our own hands, the sense of accomplishment is great. The mood in a beautiful Indiana garden is tranquility.

Please provide your brief, but concise remarks on my new gardening blog. Of course, it would be preferable for these remarks to be enhancing ones. Please feel free to continue to browse around the www.gardeningtlc.com site for more useful articles. You can also pick up a free container gardening report.

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