Gardening Wallets

Variety is the centerpiece of the joy of a beautiful landscape. You can make your landscape more captivating by using dwarf weeping willow trees to emphasize scale and form of your yard.

A dwarf weeping willow tree or Kilmarnock is a perfect ornamental tree especially for small gardens. The tree grows up to 5-6 feet tall.

Due to its magnificent appearance and size, dwarf weeping willow trees make magnificent focal points in gardens and frame front entrances. They also look great near a pond or water feature because their weeping form is evocative of falling water. The tree derives its attractiveness and beauty from the canopy that tends to drop and sweep gracefully on a neatly balanced set of branches. The overall symmetry of the tree gives it a dramatic look that is bound to win the heart of every garden adventurer.

Planting and managing a weeping dwarf willow tree

Begin by selecting a healthy willow to make your cutting from. The spot on the branch where you make the cutting should be two inches in diameter and up to six feet in length. You will need to use a handsaw for a cutting of this size.

Place the cutting, bottom end down, in a bucket of clear water and leave it until you are ready to put it in the ground.

Select a moist site with adequate drainage for your tree. Avoid selecting sites that are too close to buried pipes or side walks as the weeping willow’s roots grow quickly pushing up against them.

Dig a square hole about 18 inches by 18 inches wide on all four sides.

Fill the hole with up to two inches of water and allow it to drain into the ground.

Place the branch cutting into the center of the hole, with the bottom touching the bottom soil. Fill the soil back into the hole while tapping it down to ensure that the soil securely grips the cutting. Fill the hole until the top of it levels with the ground.

Water your willow every two days until it shows signs of growth. You might want to water it daily if your area is experiencing a dry spell. The appearance of new growth on the cutting is a sure sign that it is developing a healthy root system.

Pruning a weeping dwarf willow tree

Prune and trim weeping willow trees annually to keep them in peak health and form. Prune dead branches at any time of the year as they use up nutrients and water that are better put to use in new growth.

Remove branches that cross each other using pruning shears. Thin the weaker upper branches in order to allow sun light to penetrate inner areas of the tree. Trim the branches that touch the ground at around a third of the tree’s height to create a visually well balanced look.

One trend that is quickly gaining huge popularity is herb gardening. People everywhere are starting their own gardens and producing great herbs and other plants that are much healthier and cheaper than the produce that can be purchased at the store. While it used to take a fairly large garden to grow herbs, it is now possible to have your own herb garden inside your home through a process called hydroponic gardening. This means that you will be able to enjoy the health benefits of herb gardening, even though you may have limited yard space or live in a small apartment.

Besides being a great experience, there are many health benefits of herb gardening. The first main health benefit of growing your own herbs is the added nutrition that you and your family will be getting from your food. Home grown food is higher in nutrition because it can be harvested at peak ripeness. This means that you and your family will be getting more nutrients from your food, which will lead to less medical problems. Another one of the health benefits is that garden grown plants are not contaminated with the harmful chemicals and pesticides that are widely used in commercial farming. These chemicals can be dangerous to humans, even in small amounts, so not having them on your food can help keep you healthy.

Aside from the health benefits there are many other benefits that make growing your own food a great option. Plants that are grown at home will be much fresher than plants that were picked, shipped, and sat in the store until you purchased them. The best tasting plants are the ones that are picked fresh and immediately used., and this is only possible for you if you grow your own.

Starting your own garden can be a great idea and also be a lot of fun. Try to choose herbs and plants that you will be using frequently and others that you may not be able to find in local stores. By growing your own herbs you will be getting all of the health benefits of herb gardening as well as better tasting food at a lower cost. If you are new to herb gardening and need some additional information, you can find tips, tricks, and suggestions on the Internet. There is a lot of information that will be able to help you get started with your own garden.

Market gardening is a great business, but you need to start with the right information. If you are a beginning market grower, or thinking about becoming one, follow this advice to maximize your market gardening results.

Successful Market Gardening Tip 1: Grow natural. Demand for organic produce is increasing by as much as 20% annually. And fresh local organic produce commands a premium price with your customers. So don’t compete with everybody else at the bottom of the market; go after the top. Grow better vegetables, get a better paycheck!

Successful Market Gardening Tip 2: Grow for your end customer. Avoid middlemen and wholesalers and go right to your end customer. You will make and keep more money by dealing directly with consumers. And as a bonus, you will get to know them, find out their likes and dislikes, and perhaps find out other things you might provide them. This is a great way to add a sideline business to your market garden.

Successful Market Gardening Tip 3: Grow a large variety of crops. If you grow enough different crops, you are less threatened if one particular crop fails to produce. For example if you grow 30 varieties of vegetables and 3 don’t thrive, you are still operating at 90% capacity. Growing a large variety of crops also ‘stretches out’ your season, as different vegetables mature at different times. While the mix will change as the season progresses, aim to have a dozen or so different vegetables ready for sale all the time.

Successful Market Gardening Tip 4: Don’t grow unless you know you can sell it. For example, while you may love Eggplant Parmesan, make sure enough of your target market will buy eggplant before you plant an acre of it. Observe whats selling at your local farmers market, and grow (mostly) the same things. It’s OK to experiment ponce in a while with an unusual crop, but be prepared to eat the results!

Successful Market Gardening Tip 5: Remember, market gardening is just as much about the marketing as the gardening. This is the most important tip of the 5. If you don’t believe great marketing is just as important as growing great vegetables, consider this: you might grow the healthiest, tastiest, most beautiful vegetables imaginable, but . . . if nobody knows you got ’em, nobody can buy ’em!

Marketing is how you let people know about the great vegetables you have for them. And if you are growing really great vegetables, you should be proud to tell them! To be really successful as a market gardener, the marketing has to come first. In other words, you need to know how, where and to whom you will sell it before you grow it.

Follow these 5 tips to to ‘grow’ a successful market gardening business of your own.

When it comes to some of the problems we are facing in the world with regards to food production, hydroponic gardening offers some promising solutions. In the poorer countries where the terrain or climate is inhospitable to agriculture, hydroponics offers a means of growing healthy foods easily. Also, in those areas where the soil has lost its nutrients or fertile land is hard to come by, hydroponics can produce healthy foods using minimum space and resources.

As with all things though, it is not all good news. There are many pros and cons any grower should weigh before deciding to commit to hydroponic gardening.

First, the pros. In comparison to traditional farming, hydroponic growing can be more productive in two ways. For one, hydroponic gardening saves space. Plants can be placed much more closely together than in traditional fields because of the way nutrients are provided to them. As many as four times as many plants can be grown in same amount of space using hydroponic techniques! Secondly, hydroponics minimizes many of the problems associated with traditional farming which means less sickly, damaged, or wasted crops.

Because hydroponic growers customize their own nutrients mixes, it takes the guess work out of figuring out which field has the best soil and proper nutrition for which crop. The nutrient mix is the right one for the particular plant, in the right ratios, every time. Also, soil based diseases are virtually eliminated because there is no soil. These two factors alone make hydroponics an extremely efficient method for producing food.

Benefits accrue to the environment as well. The water consumption in hydroponic growing is significantly less than traditional methods. In many cases, hydroponic crops use just one tenth of the water! Also, the water that is used is used more effectively. For example weeds cannot come in and steal part of the crop’s water supply. And because the crops are in a controlled environment and not in a field, there is no pesticide run-off water to contaminate the surrounding ground.

The benefits are not without their costs however. The expense of hydroponic growing is an area where improvements need to be made. The nutrient mixtures and growing mediums used can be expensive.

Hydroponic growing also requires an increase in energy consumption. Much hydroponic growing happens in greenhouses, where significant amounts of electricity are used in order to give the hydroponic plants all the light they need.

While research is happening to try and bring the costs down (such as in the field of aquaponics), hydroponics can be financially prohibitive for those areas where it is most needed.

Research in the field of hydroponics is filled with promise and much research needs to be done. Many of the problems are being addressed however, and many farmers and amateur gardeners are eagerly awaiting new developments in this promising field.