Maybe you've written yourself off as having a brown thumb if you've failed in the flower garden. Avoid doing it. Recognize that errors happen even to seasoned gardeners. Enjoy the thrill of bringing a trunkful of greenery home. Create a garden plan that includes a watering and feeding schedule for your plants to save yourself some hassle.
Water is often the main cause of a garden's failure. Your plants will perish if you water them too much or not enough. Setting out fragile seedlings without a hardening-off time is another error that is often made. Before interacting with the bright light, young plants need a brief acclimatization period. Giving a young transplant too much fertilizer too quickly is another typical mistake since they are prone to chemical burns.
Continue reading to learn how to safeguard your investment by avoiding 13 typical gardening issues.
1. An excessive amount of water
Flowers have very specific requirements for moisture, just as they need for sunlight and fertilizer. Before you locate your flowers a permanent home in the garden, discover more about your flowers' watering requirements by looking behind the care tag on your plant. "Moisture-loving" might refer to bog plants like the cardinal flower or it could refer to an inch of water every week. Other flowers could not bloom because they have been watered excessively: plants that don't like damp feet, like lavender cotton, can develop root rot as a result.
Plant flowers with comparable requirements together as a solution. A xeriscape garden could thrive in the area of your yard furthest from your faucet and around your mailbox. To prevent the danger of root rot, grow moisture-loving plants in the garden bed next to the downspout.
2. Choosing the Incorrect Location
Some blooming plants need full light in order to get the necessary energy to develop blossoms. These plants would cease blossoming, deteriorate, and become more vulnerable to pests and diseases without this source of photosynthesis. On forest floors and in forests, other, shade-loving flowers have developed, and too much light will burn and brown the leaves.
Solution: While it's OK to experiment a little with a plant's exposure, like giving your astilbes an hour of morning light, you should generally stick to the exposure recommendations on the care tag.
Planting too soon
The nurseries are luring us with magnificent dahlias and New Guinea impatiens since winter has lingered on for three more weeks. You bring home a flat of these flowers and plant them the moment the temperature reaches 60 degrees Fahrenheit since if the nursery is selling them, it must be time to plant.
The issue with this strategy is that you just threw these delicate tropical plants into spring thaw mud after the nursery cared for them in its greenhouse. This systemic shock never allows the plant to fully recuperate.
To find out your typical last frost date, get in touch with your county extension agency. Follow the instructions on the plant marker, regardless of weather anomalies, if it advises to plant two weeks after the last frost. Stick with tried-and-true flowers like primroses and pansies for the earliest blooms.
4. Being aggressive while repotting
How can those examples with tangled roots be persuaded to let go of their nursery pots? not by pulling the stems. Numerous plants, particularly herbaceous non-woody plants, are very delicate at the stem level. Your young delphinium stems get injured when you pull and tug on them, opening a doorway for fungus, insects, and other pests.
Solution: Never remove a plant from its container by the stems or leaves. To remove the plant, tap the pot's bottom. Squeeze the pot to free the rootball if it's just a little bit rootbound. Take take your box cutter and gently remove the container off the plant if it is really rootbound.
5. Planting excessively
Getting a seed package full of seeds and putting a lot of them in your garden or too many in one pot is a classic beginner error.
Solution: Plant seeds according to the advised spacing. Don't put too many seeds in one container. If they all germinate, be careful to trim your seedlings or remove the weakest ones and separate your seedlings according to the instructions on the seed package. Smaller leaves, crowding, bug problems, and illness may result from too many seedlings vying for water and nutrients in a container.
6. Incorrect Planting Depth
Some flowers are self-seeders, which means they don't need any planting at all. Instead, they disperse with the wind and grow wherever they land in the presence of the ideal temperatures, water conditions, and lighting. However, bigger seeds often need to be planted deeper.
Solution: Pay strict attention to the planting depth recommendations on seed packs. The seed must bury itself deeper the bigger it is. However, if it's too deep, it may not grow or the sprout might not reach the surface in time to get the necessary sunlight.
7. Improper Use of Herbicides and Insecticides
The majority of chemicals will disrupt the ecosystem's equilibrium in some way, and they sometimes have unintended consequences like killing beneficial insects or neighboring plants. The use of natural therapies like insecticidal soap, neem oil, and vinegar—which may nevertheless have an impact on the plants and animals in your garden—is also consistent with this idea.
Solution: Both organic and synthetic chemicals should only be used sparingly. Before utilizing a product, read all of the labels carefully, be sure it will accomplish your goals, and only use the bare minimum.
8. Inaccurate estimation of the plant's mature size
What begins as a 12-inch plant might eventually grow into a tree that leans against your home, obscures your garden, or ruins your landscape design. Know the plant's lifetime and potential size.
Solution: Carefully study the plant tag or label and take the mature size into consideration. A tree should be planted at least 15 feet away from a home's foundation as a general rule of thumb.
9. Too-Hard or Too-Early Pruning
With the exception of certain flowering shrubs that blossom on old wood, it is often a good idea to prune back dormant or presumably dead wood as soon as spring begins. One of the earliest plants to bloom in March, forsythia is a perfect example of an early bloomer. Its blooms often appear on aged wood. You risk removing all of the year's blossoms if you prune too soon. Lilacs, rhododendrons, and hydrangeas may also be impacted.
Solution: Delay trimming until after the plants have flowered. Also, research your plant to see if trimming is necessary. In certain cases, a little shape and branch or stem reduction can do the trick for the plant.
10. Remind Your Plants to Harden Off
Young plants need hardening off or a period of acclimatization to life outdoors (or returning indoors). The plants must adjust to the ferocious wind, rain, and sun. If not, a young plant may experience stress, droop, cease developing, or even pass away.
Solution: If moving a seedling from a tiny container, gradually increase the time over many weeks by placing the container in its new location outdoors for a few hours each day.
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