Brighten up your garden and prepare for a more bountiful season with some practical and simple Spring Gardening tips.
I love the idea of having a completely edible garden, but it’s always a flower garden that fills my heart with joy. So, today’s tips are for both! Spring is definitely approaching – lets start celebrating it!
Simple Spring Gardening Tips
Tips to Prepare for Spring, while it’s still Winter
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1// An early sunny day today? Put on some gloves and start with tidying up flower beds and borders.
2// Add some nourishment to the soil. E.g. cut up some banana peels and add that in the soil around your roses for some extra magnesium, potash and other nutrients, which in turns makes their color pop once the roses start flowering. (Handy link: Down to Earth Organic Vegetable Garden Fertilizer 4-4-4, 5lb: Buy on Amazon)
2// Another sunny day? How about cleaning out and de-grubbing your greenhouse?
3// Now is the time to order summer-flowering bulbs and seeds, or to find the ones you have in winter storage. (Handy link: bulb for Spring Planting: Buy on Amazon)
4// When the new seeds arrive, start sowing the seeds that need a longer growing season.
5// Take a stroll in the garden, with your glasses on, and note if there are any garden pests to remove?
6// While you were tidying up the garden bed, did you inspect your watering system (if you left it out over winter?) Unless you live in rainy UK or a similar place, around the world, now is a great time to start collecting rainwater – a reserve for the hot season.
7// If you are planning to redesign and redo some of your garden layout, now is the perfect time to dig out and move deciduous shrubs.
Other Simple Spring Gardening Tips – by our Featured Bloggers
Beautiful Potting Bench Howto
Tammy from One More Time – events shows off a beautiful, practical potting bench. Her advice is
- Make sure that pretty things are also practical.
- She shows how to add extra shelving to a potting bench so it can hold loads of pots and garden shed tools.
- Ensure a non-manicured look, like this rough wood with whitish paint. A nonchalant look goes so well with greens and flowers in the garden. And, you don’t mind if it gets scratched up as that just adds to the patina. Am loving it.
Tammy’s How-to formulae in general is to paint everything white, and add some repetition of design elements. See the long flower vases with flowers on them add vertical lines that are then reinforced with the reclaimed wood panel behind the shelving unit. Note too how there are 2 planters on either side, 2 watering cans, 2-3 of the same types of pots, vases or saucers.
Pffft… I have a secret to tell: As of next week, Tammy is going to be a regular contributor at the Fine Craft Guild. Every Monday, Tammy will show you how to decorate with recycled glass.
Tammy loves the French Farmhouse style, for a long list of reasons, and she’ll showcase them off one by one:
- Its weathered and lived in finishes
- It’s Welcoming
- Its Details
- Offering you ways to recycle and breathe new life into older pieces
- It’s budget friendly
- You can mix and match pieces of furniture and wood
- You can also mix texture and patterns
- It’s about taking new and making it look old
- It’s offers an appreciation of the past.
- It goes so well with with white dishes… lol.
Grow Your Own Salsa
Next on the list of featured bloggers is Mary from Back to Basics. She dares us to grow our own salsa! Novel idea. Never thought of that. One tip that’s pretty vital is her planting schedule. She alert us to plant things according to their duration to mature. Mary is owner of a seed shop and sure knows her stuff when it comes to planting heirlooms. She gives the following plant / veggy maturity time guidelines.
- Onions need 100 or 40 days
- Tomatoes need 75-80 days
- Peppers need 70-90 days
- Cilantro needs 30-40 days. Mary suggests succession planting for the Cilantro, which makes sense. And when you get your timings all right, hop over to Mary’s blog again, as she even features a salsa recipe
.
Companion Planting – Vegetable Gardening Tips
If you are all revved up to go gardening, I’d like to offer you my free downloadable companion planting guide, which explains which veggies to plant with which.
How to Grow Fuchsias in Pots
Arathi from Novice Decorator implicitly suggests to grow some flowers. Arathi talks about overcoming her sorrow by being delighted by the sight of her fuchsias. She grows hers in pots. Seems like she forgets everything when she’s with them. Look how gorgeous!
How to Design a Porch
Last gardening advice comes from featured blogger Cindee in Texas, who used to write at Restyled Junk. She shows us how to just begin making a porch come together. Really, she made the porch in her rental home look fabulous with the right placement of a pair of vintage barn doors.
3 Secrets to How to Design a Porch that You’ll Love
1// Add a light fixture asap. Even 50 XMAS lights hung up in a bird cage will add tremendous appeal. Add extra lightning on your potting bench and coffee table simply with some solar lights in a flower pot.
2// Spruce up the back wall and to blend it with your decor style. This is a perfect place to show off your flee market finds. ;-)
3// You can use an old bench but do add seat cushions and covered pillows for the back, to make sitting out there more enjoyable.
