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30 Days to Grow a Better Garden – Day 22 Report

Written by on September 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This month at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden’ Month, which aims to teach you how to garden. As part of that I am running a 30 day challenge. The challenge consists of daily tasks of about 10 minutes each. I guarantee that if you complete each days task, by the end of September you will be well on your way towards reaching your gardening goals and growing better gardens. Will you accept the challenge?

Day 22 Challenge Recap – Apply some slow release fertiliser to any garden bed you have not gotten to yet. Adding slow release fertiliser is the most time effective method because it will continue to fertilise your garden beds over a period of time. Check the back of the package of fertiliser you get for how often you need to re-apply but you can often get away with applying it once every season.

Report
Today I added some fertiliser to each of my vegetable gardens. I didn’t add too much because I already add water soluble fertiliser every fortnight during growth, just added a small amount of slow release fertiliser to the mix. I just used a general purpose fertiliser because I had that on hand. There are specific vegetable garden slow release fertilisers available but if you have some general purpose fertiliser lying around that will do just fine.

The reason I set this challenge
Some people actually suggest fertilising our gardens is silly because ‘plants don’t get fed fertiliser in the wild’. Though this is true, in the wild not every plant survives and also, a lot of the plants we grow in our gardens now have been changed to such an extent they wouldn’t survive in the wild. Giving plants a helping hand is important.

I like to use slow release fertilisers because it makes the job of fertilising easier. You simply take the fertiliser and gently spread it over your garden. No need to bury them, no need to water in. Over the next few weeks it will slowly dissolve, adding important nutrients to your soil slowly for maximum benefit.

Learn more about common gardening tasks
This challenge fits into the category of common gardening tasks. Intrigued to know more about how getting into a rhythm with common gardening tasks will improve your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 5 in my ebook delves into the topic of common garden tasks in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners learn the natural rhythm of gardening.

You will discover;
1. What the most common tasks you will do in the garden are;
2. How to go about doing tasks such as weeding, pruning, mulching etc;
3. Tips on waterwise gardening.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

It’s not too late to join the challenge! You can grow a better garden. Start today! The great thing about this challenge is it can run over any 30 day period. Just check out days 1-5 and start from today.

Categories: Common Garden Tasks

30 Days to Grow a Better Garden – Day 21 Report

Written by on September 21, 2011 · Leave a Comment

caterpillarThis month at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden’ Month, which aims to teach you how to garden. As part of that I am running a 30 day challenge. The challenge consists of daily tasks of about 10 minutes each. I guarantee that if you complete each days task, by the end of September you will be well on your way towards reaching your gardening goals and growing better gardens. Will you accept the challenge?

Day 21 Challenge Recap – Check your plants for pests and diseases. Is there any sign of plants being eaten? Can you see anything that just does not look like it should be on a plant? If you have roses, are they covered in little black bugs? If you are unsure what the cause of your plant problem is, take a photo and show your local nursery horticulturalist. They are usually willing to help you identify the problem and can give suggestions for solutions and they can usually sell you what you need to fix it.

Report
The main plants that I have to keep an eye on regarding pests are my vegetables. My native plants very rarely, if ever experience any trouble with pests but I have to keep a constant vigil with my vegetables because insects like snails, slugs and caterpillars are always cropping up.

A little while back we had a real problem with caterpillars. They were getting to all my new vegetable seedlings and stripping them bare. Thankfully I know that most caterpillar varieties from my area strongly dislike the smell of marigold plants so I have been able to plant a few marigolds around the most targeted plants. This both repels the caterpillars and makes my vegetable garden even more beautiful.

I’ve also had a few aphids around this season but I treat that with various vegetable garden powders and sprays. This is not an organic approach but is the approach I choose to use. The organic approach is to either use companion planting, like the above marigold example, or make natural sprays. A quick google search should help you find a recipe for an organic pest spray.

The reason I set this challenge
Pests and disease can absolutely ravage your plants if you don’t keep an eye on them. Often times pests actually pick on the ‘weaker’ plants. You might have two lettuce plants and one is full of pests while one isn’t touched. This means pests can be useful in helping you know when a plant needs some tender loving care, but you still need to rid the pests to help them survive. Keeping an eye out as you do your usual tasks is the best way to catch pests or diseases early and treating them quickly is a good idea. If you are stumped, take a photo and ask your local nursery if they can help you identify the problem. Do not take the affected plants in or you could contaminate the nursery!

Learn more about common gardening tasks
This challenge fits into the category of common gardening tasks. Intrigued to know more about how getting into a rhythm with common gardening tasks will improve your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 5 in my ebook delves into the topic of common garden tasks in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners learn the natural rhythm of gardening.

You will discover;
1. What the most common tasks you will do in the garden are;
2. How to go about doing tasks such as weeding, pruning, mulching etc;
3. Tips on waterwise gardening.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

It’s not too late to join the challenge! You can grow a better garden. Start today! The great thing about this challenge is it can run over any 30 day period. Just check out days 1-5 and start from today.

Categories: Common Garden Tasks

30 Days to Grow a Better Garden – Day 20 Report

Written by on September 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

WeedsThis month at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden’ Month, which aims to teach you how to garden. As part of that I am running a 30 day challenge. The challenge consists of daily tasks of about 10 minutes each. I guarantee that if you complete each days task, by the end of September you will be well on your way towards reaching your gardening goals and growing better gardens. Will you accept the challenge?

Day 20 Challenge Recap – Consider buying a weeder to remove dandelions from your grass. If you have a weeder, spend 10 minutes removing as many dandelions and other weeds as you can from your grass. This is a way of removing weeds and minimising the amount of chemicals that you have to use on your garden. Some grasses, like buffalo types, don’t handle the weed and feed poisons and that means the manual method really is your best bet.

Report
Once again I myself have actually had an easy days challenge simply because I don’t have grass. I chose to use today’s 10 minutes to poison the weeds growing between pavers and other various places where nothing is supposed to be growing. A lot of people pave area’s or make other changes to their property along these lines to reduce the garden space but weeds still manage to find a way to grow. I won’t lie, I am all for using poison to keep these under control. I’m sure there are organic alternatives and I’d love to hear them if you have an idea, but for now I stick to using roundup to keep weeds growing in my paved area’s under control.

The reason I set this challenge
A major area of weeding that is often overlooked or neglected is weeds in the grass. Removing weeds from your grass is as important, if not more so, than removing weeds from your garden beds. Why? Seeds. When the weeds in your grass flower, they send seeds all around. You may have finally gotten rid of some weeds in your garden bed only for seeds to blow into it from your grass. Now, it is true you will always get new weeds because you can’t control your neighbours garden but you can control yours. Removing weeds from your grass is another way to minimise the risk of weeds taking over your garden beds.

Learn more about buying gardening tools
This challenge fits into the category of buying gardening tools. Intrigued to know more about how buying the right garden tools will impact on your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 4 in my ebook delves into the topic of buying gardening tools in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners know what to look for when buying gardening tools and getting to know which garden tools are most important.

You will discover;
1. The top 8 tools I believe every gardener should own;
2. What to test on a tool to make sure it is good quality;
3. A rough price range to consider when buying garden tools.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

It’s not too late to join the challenge! You can grow a better garden. Start today! The great thing about this challenge is it can run over any 30 day period. Just check out days 1-5 and start from today.

Categories: Buying Gardening Tools

30 Days to Grow A Better Garden Part Five

Written by on September 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

30 Day ChallengeThis September at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden?’ month. This month I will be focusing on helping you step forward to meet your gardening goals. I realise though that for many people the task of improving your garden seems monumental.

Hopefully you have kept up with the simple challenges so far. My goal is that each challenge will take no more than 10 minutes per day. Connect with AussieGreenThumb.com on Facebook (search for Aussie Green Thumb)  or follow AusGreenThumb on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss any tips!

Here are the next 5 tips!

Days 21 to 25 – Common Garden Tasks

21. Check your plants for pests and diseases. Is there any sign of plants being eaten? Can you see anything that just does not look like it should be on a plant? If you have roses, are they covered in little black bugs? If you are unsure what the cause of your plant problem is, take a photo and show your local nursery horticulturalist. They are usually willing to help you identify the problem and can give suggestions for solutions and they can usually sell you what you need to fix it.

22. Apply some slow release fertiliser to any garden bed you have not gotten to yet. Adding slow release fertiliser is the most time effective method because it will continue to fertilise your garden beds over a period of time. Check the back of the package of fertiliser you get for how often you need to re-apply but you can often get away with applying it once every season.

23. Continue to remove dead flowers from your plants. Getting in the habit of just cutting off flowers as needed will make this task a far quicker and simpler job than waiting for the whole plant to finish flowering. Sure, at the end of flowering it is recommended that you give your plants a trim, so it could wait till then but your plant isn’t encouraged to flower again.

24. Lightly prune any plants that have finished flowering. Prune any plants that you are trying to keep to a certain shape or size. Small regular prunes cause less stress to plants than big prunes. Some plants, like roses, like a solid prune once a year but over all, most bush or hedge like plants are better of with small, regular prunes to keep them in shape.

25. Spend 10 minutes weeding a garden bed you have not gotten to yet or one which needs it most. Perhaps spend the first couple of minutes quickly picking out any new weeds growing in the beds you already have weeded. Hopefully, depending on the size of your garden, you are started to get the weeding under control. If you still have a long way to go to get to that point, don’t fret. Just keep doing 10-20 minutes of weeding every few days until you get it under control, then work out how often it needs to be.

Stay tuned for the next 5 tips which will all be to do with Choosing the Right Plants.

Intrigued to know more about how getting into a rhythm with common gardening tasks will improve your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 5 in my ebook delves into the topic of common garden tasks in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners learn the natural rhythm of gardening.

You will discover;
1. What the most common tasks you will do in the garden are;
2. How to go about doing tasks such as weeding, pruning, mulching etc;
3. Tips on waterwise gardening.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

Categories: Common Garden Tasks

30 Days to Grow a Better Garden – Day 19 Report: Hedges

Written by on September 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment

hedgesToday’s report is about hedges. This month at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden’ Month, which aims to teach you how to garden. As part of that I am running a 30 day challenge. The challenge consists of daily tasks of about 10 minutes each. I guarantee that if you complete each days task, by the end of September you will be well on your way towards reaching your gardening goals and growing better gardens. Will you accept the challenge?

Day 19 Challenge Recap – If you have a hedge or plants you are trying to turn into a hedge, use your hedge sheers to give them a light trim/shaping. If they are flowering, consider waiting until they finish. Most hedge plants can handle regular light trims to keep them in shape. If you don’t have hedge shears, either go and buy some or start to budget towards buying them, they are a very important gardening tool. Scissors don’t cut it on the big scale!

Report
Today’s challenge was incredibly easy for me simply because I don’t actually have any hedges. I live in a smallish unit at the very rear of a block, with another unit directly in front. This itself creates a barrier between my unit and the road and so there is no need to use gardening space to provide privacy. However, most houses have some form of hedge or at least plants which need to be shaped. Today is your day to shine.

The reason I set this challenge
One task that regularly gets overlooked is trimming hedges. What is the problem with this? Well, most hedges plants are used because of their growing capacity. Usually hedges are fast growing and grow very thick, creating a sense of privacy. The issue here is that if you don’t trim them, they will become overgrown very quickly. I have a customer who has a relatively small front yard. The entire front yard is now basically one plant because the ‘hedge’ has grown so large it has actually overgrown everything else, including their paths! Spending 10 to 20 minutes every couple of weeks giving your hedge a quick snip will help to save you from this outcome.

Learn more about buying gardening tools
This challenge fits into the category of buying gardening tools. Intrigued to know more about how buying the right garden tools will impact on your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 4 in my ebook delves into the topic of buying gardening tools in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners know what to look for when buying gardening tools and getting to know which garden tools are most important.

You will discover;
1. The top 8 tools I believe every gardener should own;
2. What to test on a tool to make sure it is good quality;
3. A rough price range to consider when buying garden tools.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

It’s not too late to join the challenge! You can grow a better garden. Start today! The great thing about this challenge is it can run over any 30 day period. Just check out days 1-5 and start from today. Trim those hedges today!

Categories: Buying Gardening Tools

30 Days to Grow a Better Garden – Day 18 Report

Written by on September 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

dead-heading flowers This month at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden’ Month, which aims to teach you how to garden. As part of that I am running a 30 day challenge. The challenge consists of daily tasks of about 10 minutes each. I guarantee that if you complete each days task, by the end of September you will be well on your way towards reaching your gardening goals and growing better gardens. Will you accept the challenge?

Day 18 Challenge Recap – Remove any more dead flowers from your plants. Make sure you use a sharp tool. Removing dead flowers will help to encourage your plants to flower again if possible. Using a sharp tool is important though because you don’t want to open your plant up to disease. Plants heal best from good, clean cuts which come from sharp tools.

Report
Today’s challenge was quite easy for me because there were very few dead flowers to remove. However, this is mostly because I keep on top of this.The upside is that the ones I did need to remove were removed with ease because of the sharpened tools I was able to use, due to meeting yesterdays challenge.

The reason I set this challenge
You’ll have started to see a trend in the challenges I set with a few re-occurring tasks like this one. If you spend 10-20 minutes each week on tasks such as this, you’ll get to the point where it really won’t take too long to stay on top of things. Keeping a garden in order can feel like such a big task if you think you have to do all the work at once. Hopefully as this months challenges progress you’ll see that spending a small amount of time each day will make it far easier than trying to find a 2-3 hour block of time in your busy week.

Learn more about buying gardening tools
This challenge fits into the category of buying gardening tools. Intrigued to know more about how buying the right garden tools will impact on your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 4 in my ebook delves into the topic of buying gardening tools in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners know what to look for when buying gardening tools and getting to know which garden tools are most important.

You will discover;
1. The top 8 tools I believe every gardener should own;
2. What to test on a tool to make sure it is good quality;
3. A rough price range to consider when buying garden tools.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

It’s not too late to join the challenge! You can grow a better garden. Start today! The great thing about this challenge is it can run over any 30 day period. Just check out days 1-5 and start from today. You can grow better gardens. Get on with sharpening your tools today!

Categories: Buying Gardening Tools

30 Days to Grow a Better Garden – Day 17 Report: Sharpening Tools

Written by on September 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Today’s report is about sharpening tools. This month at AussieGreenThumb.com is ‘So You Want A Better Garden’ Month, which aims to teach you how to garden. As part of that I am running a 30 day challenge. The challenge consists of daily tasks of about 10 minutes each. I guarantee that if you complete each days task, by the end of September you will be well on your way towards reaching your gardening goals and growing better gardens. Will you accept the challenge?

Day 17 Challenge Recap – If you have tools like secateurs, hedge trimmers or loppers check and see how sharp they are. Try and find an old or dead tree or bush limb and cut it off. You should get a smooth cut. If your tool struggles to cut cleanly you have a blunt tool. Sharp tools help limit plant diseases. There are a few methods for sharpening tools. Some business’ offer sharpening tools as an option. Another option is to buy a tool sharpener. A third method, which is actually what I use, is to buy a good, small metal file. You have to be a little careful with this because you can actually make the tool worse, but even then you can usually fix it. Just try and file to the angle of the blade. If you are not confident doing this, try either method 1 or 2.

Report
As someone who uses my tools regularly on other peoples gardens you will often find me sharpening tools because I need to make sure I use the best on their garden. I used my 10 minutes today to give my loppers, shears and secateurs a quick sharpen using the small metal file that I use. Soon however I will be moving to testing a store bought tool sharpener, I just don’t have time today to really look at how it works. I am pleased to say my three most used tools are now back up to scratch and ready to be used again!

The reason I set this challenge
One of the major causes of disease in plants is using poor quality or blunt tools. Plants are good at healing from cuts but they heal best when the cut is clean. Sharp tools minimise the risk of your plant becoming diseased. Though I myself have never really had a plant get diseased after trimming, I know people who have. It isn’t something that happens heaps but why risk it when simply keeping your tools sharp will help?

Another reason is that sharp tools make for an easier job! If your tool is blunt you will have to apply more force to get it to cut through. If your tool is sharp it will usually glide through with ease, as long as the limb you are trying to cut is within the size for the particular tool you have chosen.

Learn more about buying gardening tools
This challenge fits into the category of buying gardening tools. Intrigued to know more about how buying the right garden tools will impact on your garden? I recently released an ebook called So You Want A Better Garden. Chapter 4 in my ebook delves into the topic of buying gardening tools in a way specifically designed to help beginner and intermediate gardeners know what to look for when buying gardening tools and getting to know which garden tools are most important.

You will discover;
1. The top 8 tools I believe every gardener should own;
2. What to test on a tool to make sure it is good quality;
3. A rough price range to consider when buying garden tools.

And much, much more!

Click Here to learn more.

It’s not too late to join the challenge! You can grow a better garden. Start today! The great thing about this challenge is it can run over any 30 day period. Just check out days 1-5 and start from today. You can grow better gardens. Get on with sharpening your tools today!

Categories: Buying Gardening Tools

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