Archive for July 19th, 2010
One of the things I remember ideal about my apartment in Brooklyn was how well the people who owned our building-a conservative Jewish couple who kept the Sabbath weekly-also kept up the flowers in front of our brick row house. Hydrangeas, huge globes of blue and purple, growing neatly behind a cast iron grate.
I know I was impressed enough to find out all about hydrangeas, and learned that the blossom color is influenced by the soil they are grown in. Soil in Brooklyn produced blue-ish flowers; soil in my native Midwest produced white flowers, evidently.
I also learned that small spaces can be used to make a huge impact when it comes to a garden.
One thing that should be pointed out, that most city types already know, is that the smaller the space, the more attention that can be paid to detail. And virtually any kind of plant can be grown in a small space, as long as you pay attention to the scale and balance. Because more than likely, you will be planting around your residence, the building’s character and features come into enhanced focus.
View Your Garden Design Holistically
To create a cohesive garden design that enhances your residence, realistically, you won’t have the option of planting as many different plants as you might want. I think one of the reasons the blue hydrangeas worked so well in front of my Brooklyn address was their color contrast against the light yellow bricks of our building, and their height enhanced the look of the entryway.
Some elements to consider:
1. Color and the statement you want to make with it. Cool colors create a more spacious look; warm colors close a space, but can offer a warm, inviting tone. Too many colors won’t work well in a small space and will seem cacophonous, so pick a theme and stick with it.
2. Scale, just as an artist or designer would. Maybe one series of plants is your background element, adding height, and the plants in front of those are out there to add a splash of color and variance in shape. Making a sketch of the plants you select and their placement can help enormously before you go about the planting.
3. Locale. Some plants need more sunlight than others, and won’t grow well on a shady street. You’ll need to select plants that offer a combination of beauty and hardiness, adapted to the environment you plan to place them in.
Front Door Gardens
The space in front of your abode is probably crying out for a garden of its own. The architectural elements of a building can be greatly enhanced by even a few carefully put green or flowering plants, making your residence look inviting and well cared for.
Stone ledges look beautiful with massive stone planters chosen to either match the existing stone or to compliment it. Flowing, flowering plants are especially suited to these kinds of containers, as are bunching flowers like begonias or hydrangeas. Multiple plantings of various flowers, as long as they work within a color scheme, can also work.
Front yard/front door beds, though usually evenhandedly small in front of city buildings, can be used effectively for plantings. Flowering bushes and other larger plants, such as hostas, ferns, and larger flowers, do much to make a home or building seem settled and part of the larger environment. They act as an anchor, making the home more approachable and more captivating from a visual standpoint as well as from other sensory perceptions.
Window boxes are wonderful to dress up ledges or windows. They take eye up-and flowers-especially traditional ones like marigolds and pansies-look quaint and charming when planted in window boxes. You might also think about planting grasses, or flowering herbs, which can be both beautiful and useful to the urban gardener.
The ideal thing about planters is that they are highly versatile, and can be put on steps or landings, if no other options are acquirable to you. Some common and easy to grow container plants are geraniums (which do well in winter, too, if put in a sunny window inside), tulips, cactus or succulents, or small trees like ficus. They easily accommodate nearly any small space gardening situation.
FireEscapeGardens
I remember travel through neighborhoods in different cities-before I was a city dweller myself-and thinking these were the epitome of urban cool. I still do-they are a testimony to the creativity and ingeniousness of those who have to make do with the space they have. Plus-there is just something visually beautiful about the look of exuberant green foliage against urban architecture.
Some things to think about before starting a fire escape garden:
1. Permanent or seasonal plants? This is probably the largest issue when considering an outdoor fire escape garden in a apartment. Do you have a place in your apartment for perennial plants or those that are considered traditional home plants when the weather turns cold? Do you have the time it takes for growing and maintenance of annuals? These are just things to think about, in consideration of your lifestyle and commitment to the project, in advance.
2. Space allowance. In some buildings, it isn’t permissible to block a fire escape stairwell. This is something to ask about in advance, or you might find yourself with a garden that has no home!
3. Think about trees. Just like for those lucky enough to have a roof top garden, trees on a fire escape garden add shade and ambiance if you are planning to use your fire escape as an mini outdoor retreat or small sitting area. Smaller plants can be maintained in boxes or containers around a couple larger trees planted in pots, adding to the variety and creating a good visual variance of scale.
Vegetable and Fruit Gardening in the City
Vegetable gardens traditionally have been located in separate areas from ornamental gardens, but the small spaces most people have to deal when considering a city garden make this notion virtually impossible. The concept has all but become noncurrent in mainstream gardening, anyhow. Now, vegetables, fruits and herbs are grown right alongside flowers and other plants, and can be just as attractive.
Some good plants city gardeners might think about (though it is up to you), are herbs like basil, oregano, chives, and other plants that can be harvested easily and are easy to grow. These look great planted in window boxes either indoors or outdoors, and like to be planted next to apiece other. Other options might include small marrow (always prolific), tomatoes, leaf lettuces, fruit trees like orange or lemon, that add shade and beauty as well as are harvestable.
Related Outdoor Garden Articles
When you practice indoor gardening, one of the issues that can diminish the fun is the number and ferocity of insect pests that can wreak havoc with your plants. There are, however, several indoor gardening supplies that can be used to control various pests from harmful your indoor crops, and will thus increase your plants’ yields. Indoor gardening supplies can include such pest control products as powder sulfur and spider mite control, to study a few.
Powder sulfur
Powder sulfur is one of the indoor gardening supplies that will ideal control thrips. Thrips will puncture the cells of your plants and suck out the contents of the cells, resulting in cosmetic alteration to crops. Sulfur can be used in a vaporizer unit, which sends out sulfur vapors into your indoor gardening area. Sulfur will change the pH level on the plant’s leaves and stems, which will cause alteration to pest reproduction cycles. Changing the pH level also has the added advantage of reducing the common plant disease of powdery mildew, which can be a problem in break greenhouse settings.
Spider Mite Control
Indoor pest control can also include a program for reducing spider mites. Indoor gardening supplies used for spider mite control include beneficial insects.
This form of controlling spider mites can be used as an initial means of implementing integrated pest management, also called IPM. This is a method whereby you initialize your pest management by using the least toxic means of controlling the problem, and move up the chain to more powerful and toxic solutions only if necessary.
Beneficial insects are an organic gardening solution for controlling spider mites. Even though they are very little insects, when amassed in massive groups they can decimate a greenhouse crop very quickly. They, like thrips, suck the contents out of plant cells, leaving a scar on the leaves and stems of the plants. If a plant has too many of these scars, it suffers a reduction in photosynthetic ability, causing it to not be healthy to take in enough nutrients. This can eventually kill the plant.
There are beneficial insects that will kill spider mites. Even though its study is not simple to pronounce, Phytoseiulus persimilis is nevertheless one of the indoor gardener’s ideal friends when it comes to spider mite control.
When using a beneficial insect as a method of controlling another harmful insect, you will want to release the beneficials as soon as you detect a pest problem, because the sooner they get to work, the sooner they will eliminate the problematic greenhouse insect guest. These are one form of indoor gardening supplies that work ideal indoors, because they keep their feeding focused in one small area to get rid of the pests efficiently.
Indoor gardening supplies including pest control systems can be found to meet your specific indoor gardening needs, suitable for the particular types of plants you grow.
You know you will need to be pruning tomatoes plants to refrain ending up with overgrown tomato plants, so it is helpful to realize that you will do different things at different stages of the growing season. You can easily define three separate stages, apiece with their own tomato gardening tips to follow and adjust your efforts to match. You will find everyone has their own views on this, so reading about common tomato gardening problems will be helpful. this article however is based more on experiences and not as much what the textbook has to say.
When the plants are first growing, all of your pruning tomatoes efforts will focus on the new leaves and the new growth shoots that are between the trunk and leaves. At this point you only want one main trunk so that it can grow massive and sturdy. What you do is snip off the leaves that are closest to the ground as new ones form above them. Then by eliminating the side shoots, all the energy will be directed to the newly formed tomato and not the leaves. This lets the tomatoes grow larger. Once your tomato plant gets as high as the stakes or to the top of the cage, your strategies will start to change.
Tomato plants at this size become more difficult to keep up. What you will do is turn things around and let the new shoots form and cut off new growth at the top. With this tomato gardening tip you keep the same principal, but in reverse. You will get a bushier plant, but it will not outgrow your stakes or cage. You can pinch back some of the new growth, but let some of them grow out. Keep pulling unnecessary leaves off, but be aware that this is the hot time of the summer and the ground and the tomatoes need the shade the leaf provides. Your goal is to still channel the nutrients to the tomatoes and not the foliage.
There is a point of no return, and you just have to grappling that you have overgrown tomatoes. You will have to admit that you also have tomato gardening problems. One of the pruning tomato tips to use at this point is to count 30 days ahead. If that is within the time you usually have left before the first frost, then you can stop letting new tomatoes form, and just cut them off along with all new shoots and a pile of leaves Only pay attention to making sure the tomatoes already there can finish growing.
Do the ideal you can for as long as you can is some of the most practical tomato gardening tips and advice there is when dealing with overgrown tomato plants. You could really apply that advice to other tomato gardening problems like your fungus and pest issues, too. Everyone really needs to think about being sure not to overdo it by putting in more plants than you need in the spring!