Best Gardening TipsBest gardening tips and guides to get the garden of your dreams

Poinsettias are one of THE plants (besides holly, mistletoe and Christmas cactus) associated with Christmas, which is no wonder: Their bright, colored leaves – which in fact are not petals but bracts that attract insects – look like a bright star. As you can get poinsettias in different varieties of colors, you can match these christmas plants them perfectly with the rest of your holiday decoration. Of course, the most often seen color is a bright red.

Introduced to the states in 1825 by U.S. Ambassador Joel Poinsett, poinsettias originally come from Mexico where they’re popular as christmas plants as well. They belong to the spurge family and are “short day plants”, which means that they bloom if there are less than twelve hours of daylight. The reason for this is that they get less competition of pollinating insects from other plants this way.

Typical red poinsettias

Choosing the right poinsettias as christmas plants

If you’re getting poinsettias just now from a gardening centre or a specialist, have a close look at the plants and try to notice if there are any pests or mildew on the plant (which happens quite often if you get them from packed places). You best also check if there are disease symptoms at other plant near the one of your choice.
To get healthy flowers that keep their pretty leaves for some time, look for plants with smaller, clustered buds in the center. The buds should be green-ish and yet unopened! Best pick a plant with undamaged and crisp foliage (as an indicator of good care).

How to care for poinsettias

If you have poinsettias at home and want to display them as christmas plants, you can trigger their bloom for the holiday season by reducing the daylight hours they get: Keep them at a bright spot until about 10 weeks before Christmas and then keeping them in total darkness for more than 12 hours a day (by using a box as cover or putting them in a closed compartment).

They don’t always have to be red..

When the blooming period ends (between march and April), you should then decrease the watering to simulate the natural cycle (of dry summers in Mexico). Increase the watering later in summer in conjunction with fresh soil for new nutrients.

You should prune poinsettias each year during summer. If you decrease the number of branches, this will create a more shrubby look with big flowers. poinsettias generally prefer humid conditions; you should however be careful to let te plants soil dry between watering and not to let them stand in water (as moisture around the roots can kill them). As the plants need a lot of brightness, it’s best to place them close to a south-facing window.

Unless you plan to grow some lamb’s lettuce, the gardening season is finally over (too soon, though). However, I’ve got some tips for you that are just the right thing if you

a) are feeling too active on a Saturday afternoon and want to get your hands dirty and

b) want to do something good for your vegetable garden so the next season will be even better than this.

When you’ve grown a lot of vegetables during the summer, your garden will be quite low on important nutrients. The essence of the following How-To is to provide enough nutrients from compost to your soil and to make sure that it mixes perfectly with your existing soil.

So lets get started!

Step 1: Break up the ground!

Use a spade to  break up the firm soil. Do not chop up the large  earth sods (they’ll be useful in the process). So, simply turn them around and (if possible) let columns open.

It’s no problem if individual weeds remain in the soil.

Step 2: Time to empty your compost!

Open your compost bin and sieve it’s ingredients using a coarse grid. It may seem like a lot of unnecessary work, but this process will result in extremely rich and fertile soil (compost) – you’ll reap the results of your efforts during next year’s harvest!

The remains of your sieving efforts (single branches etc.) should be put back into the compost and covered with a bit of soil to encourage the compostation (otherwise, it will simply dry out).

This grid (on the photo) is simply perfect for sieving the compost ingredients.

This is what the sieved compost looks like (the small hill on the right side):

Step 3: Cover the sods with compost soil!

You should now disperse the soil over the original soil you’ve broken up in step one. If you don’t have compost, you can use bought soil as well. Ask for organic compost in your local garden center or in tree nurserys etc.

During winter, snow and rain will flush the nutrients from the fresh compost soil into the coarse clumps in your vegetable bed.

This picture shows one of my vegetable beds covered with compost soil (on the right side) and unprepared (on the left). The only thing that remains to be done is to rake the soil in spring – you’ll have perfect, soft earth.

Most people believe that the vegetable gardening season ends in september and starts all over in April or May. While this may certainly be the time with the most agreeable temperatures – where you will spend more time outside – it isn’t true that winter is a „dead season“. Besides preparing your soil for the coming spring (what we described in this article ) you can in fact practice winter gardening and continue to grow vegetables. In this article, I will write mainly about two points: To use season extenders for extending the “warmer” season; and which crops you can grow now (in winter) to generate yields in spring.

How can I continue to grow plants even though it gets cold?

You can use so-called “season extenders” for winter gardening to retain some level of warmness for your plants and to protect them from wind and snow damage. This can be:

• Covered raised beds (with a transparent cover to allow sunlight to get in). Have a look at this site to see what I mean.
• One step further is to construct your own row covers using special lightweight fabric and a hoop framework. Use simple flexible wire or pvc pipes to construct the hoops, then cover them with the fabric.

With this later system, you’re flexible when it comes to size. You can create small row covers just large enough to cover your plants; or you can create kind of greenhouses, that you’re able to enter and work inside.
The benefits of these system are, of course, that you use the greenhouse effect to heat up the air under the respective cover. As it will get cold at night nevertheless, best grow cold-resistant plants.

Which plants are suitable for winter gardening?

There are winter gardening vegetables that can be planted even in late fall or in the winter months (alsowhen the ground is frozen). In fact some plants (so-called cold season plants) are meant to be planted rather and will not grow as well  if planted late in the year. The benefit of planting early is that a.) you get healthy, resistant plants and b.) you get your vegetable yields much more early (in spring instead of in summer).

Before planting any seeds, you should always clear your beds of all dead plant material (also autumn foliage), crack the ground open, add compost and till it in. You can use organic fertilizers if your soil has been grown heavily during the preceding year.
Typical cold-hardy plants are the following:

• lettuce
• peas
• spinach
• broccoli
• Brussel sprouts
• carrots
• radish
• cauliflower

You should not grow tubers and roots this early during the year, as they will easily rot from wetness. If, however, you combine the two tips I gave you in this article (cold covers & cold season plants), you can even grow potatoes before their time is due and transplant them into your “normal” beds once the weather gets warm again.

I hope this posts motivates you to try winter gardening yourself. I recommend to take a bottle of warm tea along if you’re feeling cold

What are bonsai trees?

The literal meaning of bonsai is “potted plant”. Bonsai trees can be all kinds of trees and shrubs that are grown in small pots to limit their growth and are cut extensively to bring them into an ideal shape. We mostly know bonsai from Japanese culture, but the art has also been practiced for centuries in Vietnam and China (where its origins are). Bonsai are not merely meant to be pretty adornments for one’s home, but they also transport the meaning of harmony between nature (symbolized by the tree) and mankind (symbolized by its creation – the pot).

What kind of tree is a bonsai?

Bonsai can be all kind of trees or shrubs – they don’t belong to a certain species, but their essence is rather the techniques that are used to create them: Leaf trimming, pruning (of trunk, branches and roots) and wiring. There are also other common techniques, but these are the most important.
If you want to create your own bonsai trees from scratch, you can therefore use the kind of tree you like best. Pines, elms and maples are quite common for traditional bonsai trees; but for beginners, I would recommend ficus, which are quite flexible and not too demanding. Azaleas are also great plants for beginners (and they have beautiful blossoms).

How and where can I get a plant?

You can grow new plants from seeds, acquire young trees from gardening centres or find and dig out trees in their natural environment (which may or may not be illegal in your respective state).

How exactly is a bonsai created and maintained?

The ideal of a bonsai is that of a nature-like tree in miniature size. Of course, interesting forms are more attractive than standard and symmetric ones. Your bonsai may lean to one side, feature tree-holes etc.
As a first step, you should create the general shape your plant by cutting off some of the branches; you may also use wire to force the plant into the shape you have in mind – this is especially important if you want to grow a cascade or half cascade form. Subbranches should be cut off from time to time to prevent the plant from getting to large and to provide a dendritic and branched growth.

A cascading/”leaning” bonsai plant

Where should I place my bonsai?

While most bonsai trees in western countries are kept outside the house, bonsai in East-Asian countries are often kept outside. You should, however, be careful of low temperatures, as bonsai are more sensitive to frost than their “normal” counterparts. Pay attention to the placement: Your bonsai should have a light spot, as its leaves are quite small and not able to absorb so much light.

I hope you liked this short introduction to the care for bonsai trees. It’s quite general; I want to delve deeper into the subject on how you can shape your bonsai in following articles. If this article aroused your interest, I can recommend the great site http://artofbonsai.org/ that features nice pictures and bonsai projects.

In today’s gardens, a vegetable garden is mostly in a separated spot, while the rest of the garden is filled with lawn, maybe a pond and ornamental plants and perennials. I think, however, that vegetable plants can also develop a beauty that we normally only see in ornamental plants.

A different approach is the so-called “kitchen garden”, a concept that reaches back to the European renaissance, were noblemen built vegetable gardens not only for a constant supply of legumes and herbs to their kitchen, but also as eye-catchers. These gardens contained both crop plants and ornamental plants and looked like imitations of the kings’ parks (like Versailles near Paris or Sansoucci near Potsdam) with their structured and symmetric layout. I’ll give you some tips on what to pay attention to if you want to follow this layout for your own vegetable garden.

How to create the general layout

Residential kitchen gardens were parts of larger, symmetrically ordered gardens and thus quite formal. If you think that this form would be too strict for your garden, you can lean more towards a wild “cottage garden”-style. In the “historically correct” form of kitchen gardens, paved paths lead through the different vegetable patches so you can easily reach all of them.
The pathways shouldn’t be too narrow – they should be sufficiently wide for a hand barrow. The patches are separated like a chessboard; the whole garden may be surrounded by a hedge.

What plants to choose for your vegetable garden?

A possible layout for a small kitchen garden

Which combination of plants should be planted in the separate beds depends on how they harmonize with the adjoining beds in colour. Generally, it’s nice to have differences in height: Simple flat beds look a bit boring and are not really a sight for sore eyes. Try to incorporate trellises for beans or other climbers. You should also combine vegetables and ornamental plants of different heights in the kitchen garden: This could be cabbage and lady’s mantle, for example, or corn and geraniums, spinach and dahlias etc.

These plants also differ in color: I.e. the blossoms of lady’s mantle are golden-orange, while cabbage is of a light green. I find it better to not combine two many colors in adjacent beds – if you spread the colors over the garden, it will look a bit more structured while retaining the lovely flair of a kitchen garden.

How to improve your kitchen garden

The tips I’ve given above may seem quite simple – however, the devil is in the details. First of all, a kitchen garden will not look good unless you’re constantly improving it. Try to keep it as full and lush as possible and whenever you’ve got the feeling that something’s missing in a patch, choose a new and surprising plant for it.

A kitchen garden – the envy of your neighborhood

I would also advise you to make more from the borders of patches: As kitchen gardens often have a strict structure and are not as densely planted due to the fact that vegetables are often taken from the patch when they’re ripe, the garden could from time to time look a bit empty. To counteract this, you can plant smaller plants like lavender, curry-plant or salvia around the borders of the patches. Be careful to make these fit the main plants in the respective bed.

Trellises can also be an amazing sight, especially when they’re home-made (f.e. irom hazel branches). They don’t necessarily have to be grown by climbers all year but are eyecatchers themselves.

Pay attention to roughly following the rules of crop rotation. This is especially true for plants like cabbages that drain lots of nutrients from the soil – they can be followed f.e. by peas (peas can restore the soil’s nitrogen).

For great impressions on how nice a kitchen garden can be, I recommend you to have a look at  the BBC series “The Victorian kitchen garden” from the 1980s on youtube!