Don’t Lessen Your Garden’s Success by Making These Mistakes

You’ve probably looked at pictures in gardening magazines – or online – and you have a pretty good idea of how your garden should look with it’s in full production. Sadly, many would-be gardeners make ordinary mistakes that cause their gardens to fall short of what the gardener wanted. Even something as elementary as the types of plants you put in your garden, and their locations relative to each other, is a frequent oversight of a lot of beginning gardeners. What we hope to accomplish in this article is to help you avoid making some of the customary “goofs” that many gardeners make.

One big problem, especially for new gardeners, is planting their gardens when the time isn’t right. This can really hinder the growth of the plants. A frequent error of new gardeners is to get in a hurry and plant their gardens too soon. This is a problem no matter if you are starting from seeds or transplanting bedding plants.

Pruning is one thing that a lot of people have trouble with, when it comes to gardening. Some plants, trees and herbs will grow inaccurately if you do not keep up with pruning them. While plants vary in their pruning needs, it is essential to be aware of certain signs, like plants that grow too tall to support themselves or damaged leaves. Hedges and fruit trees are examples of landscaping that should be cut back on a regular basis. Of course, you also do not want to overdo it with the pruning. As a rule of thumb, at any given time, you should really not cut off more than a quarter of the foliage. Dependent on your plant varieties, you might have a range of different pruning tools, from hedge trimmers to saws for cutting branches.

Many amateur gardeners forget to acknowledge the location in which they reside and whether or not the plant they like the taste of or love the looks of will really be able to grow in their location. You may marvel at the notion of eating avocados and oranges from your very own trees, although if you live in a nether region, this just will not work. The same rings true for people up North trying to grow a cactus or other tropical plant. Setting up a hothouse is one way around this however if this is your first year of gardening and you do not want too much work, stand by the plants that will naturally flourish in your area. You can study the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone (US), which demonstrates which plants grow effortlessly and in which zones of the US.

All plants need sunlight, yet each type of plant requires a different amount of light each day. This information is easy to find out, and each plant, once you know the requirements, can then be grown in your garden. It is important that plants get six hours of sunlight. More or less in different cases. It is also important to know how much sunlight will actually shine on the area where your garden will be. You can also get plants that like cooler areas if you don’t have a lot of sunlight on your property. It is possible to over expose plants to too much natural light which can cause them to wither and die. Instead of using direct sunlight, some plants actually prefer reflected light much better.

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