All About Gardening

Winter time. What's a gardener to do? Design the most beautiful trellis! And have it built by the greatest blacksmiths! The Couldren Company. Still waiting a black powder coat. Stay tuned March 11th!!! #gardentrellis #customironworks #finegardening #archerbuchanan #thehuntmagazine #landenberg #kennettsquare #brandywinevalley

Summer, summer, summer time! Dreaming of wave petunias and sun coleus! #finegardening #gardenkeepers #gardensofinstagram #chestercounty #ilovemygardener #winetime #poolparty #gardening (at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania)

For those of you looking for only the best gardening services-in Southern Chester County or Delaware- Landenberg, Oxford, Lincoln University, Kennett Square, West Chester, Coatesville, Unionville, Chester Springs, Wilmington, Greenville, Centerville, Newark, Hockessin, West Grove, Avondale, Chadds Ford, Jennersville...and inbetween...I’m here to serve awesome clients like you!

What does a professional gardener’s gardens look like? Here’s a peek at mine. While I have visited a few professional gardener’s gardens, and they are much more elaborate than mine, I like to keep mine fun and simple with seeding annuals. As a single girl, I choose to rent. As I do like to improve my home, I’m also focusing on keeping costs low. With the many clients I serve, I’m also too exhausted at the end of the day, to develop my own beds! Here in these photos, I have planted Zinnias (3 different varieties), Cosmos, Alysum, and the big guys are Sunflowers (this bed is direct South facing) and the vegetables are a fun little project. Seeing these flowers grow to over 10 ft tall has beed a lot of fun! And isn’t that what gardening is all about? The Zinnias give me color first; August thru October the Cosmos and Sunflowers give me color; and in the winter, the birds will be all over the sunflowers. Sowing seeds are soooo easy! Zinna, Sunflower, Cosmos and Alysum germinate easily, and they don’t need much water. Here’s how. ◆sprinkle your selected seeds on top of your mulch in the spring ◆use a metal rake, and rake the seeds into the mulch ◆water nightly, until your plants are about 4 inches tall ◇ Cosmos and Alysum will self seed next year, and you can use the old Zinnia seeds to re-sow the following year.

Pre emergent~the trick is to apply BEFORE the weeds start! If you have a garden or landscape, you have probably had to deal with dreadful weeds at some point. You may have even purchased this product and possibly went as far as to apply it to your beds. Hopefully you had good results. If you didn't here are a few quick tips to help you use your pre-emergent to its maximum potential. ☆ First, apply BEFORE the weeds start. Dont wait until it's too late! ☆ Second, water it in after application. Pre emergent activates with water ☆ Third, use A LOT! I recomend using a non-professional product once a month. Over the counter products have to have lower active ingredients for hazardous purposes. So, for professional results don't be shy with the product. ★ CAUTION: Do not apply to beds with groundcovers who's root systems are generally near the surface, and do not apply to any natural habitat, or any area with moss. As a professional here in zone 6b/7b, I begin applying end of February, beginning of March and re-apply every 90 days. But remember, professional products are formulated different from over the counter products. ★How it works. If your like me, you need to know how everything works, so here is a brief explanation. Many pre emergents include one or some of these chemicals: benefin, dithiopyr, oxadiazon, oryzalin, pendimethalin, prodiamine, and trifluralin - whose funtions are to inhibit plant cell division. When apllied to the ground and activated by water, the chemicals create a barrier. When the weed seeds germinate and grow through the herbicide barrier, the emerging shoots (or sometimes tender roots) end up absorbing the herbicide. And here we have death to the weed!

If you have Boxwood Blight...I'm sorry that you lost your precious gems. Really. It stinks. Now, get rid of those infected plants. Dig them out, place them in trash bags and put them in the trash. DO NOT SEND THEM OUT WITH THE YARD WASTE. These infected Boxwood are HIGHLY contagious and should not be added into yard waste recycling.  When your township picks up your yard waste, it often gets recycled into compost or "free" mulch.  We surely don't want someone picking up a "free" plant killing fungus!

Asclepias tuberosa - dry sun Caltha palustris (Marsh Marigold) for wet shade Lamium maculatum ’Shell Pink’ -dry shade (like under trees)

They are Great for your garden! I like using leaves as mulch in my gardens. They are rich in nutients and they help the soil retain its moisture.  I also think it looks very pretty as a mulch, but I prefer using them to benefit the plants I care for.  Now, it's not just as easy as raking the leaves into the garden bed. If you do this it may take years to decompose. Here's how you do it. 1. You ask your landscaper to bag the leaves with his mower. (This process will chopp the leaves into fine pieces.)   If you are a DIYer, rake your leaves into a pile, then use the vacuum function on your leaf blower to suck them up. (This process will also chop the leaves into fine pieces.) 2. Spread the chopped up leaves evenly throughout your beds. 3. Attach a sprinkler to your garden hose and place the sprinkler on the freshly leaf mulched bed. (This process will keep the leaves from blowing away!) 4. Reap the rewards of beautiful healthy plants next season!)

Also try Lobelia Cardinalis for late summer blooms and native Honeysuckles for a spring food source for the Hummingbirds.

<a href="http://www.thumbtack.com/Professuonal-Garden-Keepers-Newark-DE/service/1050283">Outdoor Gardening</a>

Often I hear home gardeners complain about how things they plant never grow.  Other times we hear complaints of how the landscaper planted many plants but then they all die.  There can be many reasons a plant doesn’t grow.  Most commonly, when we analyze these unsuccessful plantings, we see the root ball of the plant still in the same form of the container it was grown and purchased in!  So, gardening 101,  step A - break the roots up.  I like to use a hatchet, its easy.  Don’t be shy. Those roots have been bound in that pot for maybe a year or more, and they need some help breaking free.  Break the roots up at the bottom and lightly around the sides. Step B - double the size of the hole. Make sure the hole that you are planting in is much larger than the size of your plant that your planting. This will give the plant loose soil around it, so that it can spread its roots and grow!

Amethum graveolens - What? Yes, Dill. This herb serves as a host plant for the Black Swallowtail. Dill grows tall with light and feathery foliage. It smells beautiful and is quite the culinary treat. It's easy to grow from direct sow.

Just say "No" to landscape paper. If you are having new landscaping done this year or are thinking about it in the future, this is my strong suggestion to -Not -puchase this option. Landscape paper is NOT a bio-degradeable product that is placed on top of the soil,  and then layers of mulch are placed on top, with a purpose to eliminate weeds from growing from the existing soil into the new bed. It may work for the first year or so,  but thats all folks. Most weeds come from drifted seeds, spread by wind and birds, and these weeds don't need soil to grow. They can grow profusely right in the mulch! Another good reason to do without the landscape paper is for development. If you have landscape paper, and want to plant Tulip bulbs this fall -  or add to the bed in any way -your work will be three times more tedious.  First you would have to move the mulch; then use a knife to cut a hole in the paper, where you plan on planting your new plants; then you will need to tuck the paper under itself....then you can plant! Finally, the next reason we don't like landscape paper is because it greatly hinders soil and plant  development. What makes great soils is decomposed leaves and other natural debris; what makes healthy plants, trees and shrubs,  are good soil. So, you can see that if the the natural leaves and debris are laying on top of the mulch -inaccessible to the soil because of the landscape paper- the roots of the plants never get to recieve the nutrients of healthy, enriched soil. In the photo above, we removed the paper from this small bed portion. This client wants flower and  a more lively look, but we could not plant and develop to meet their wishes with this lanscape paper in the way.

There are many native beauties, so have fun panting your dream garden!

With the numerous tasks that spring brings, winter is the ideal time to get out and catch up on your pruning. These evergreens were growing wildly on a well manicured property. We used the snow day to begin shaping these evergreens into a highly polished plant to reflect the owners preference and the homes exclusivity. Spring winds will blow out the dead growth, making room for new growth in the interior.

When people ask me "what do you do in the winter?", with an intonation like I'm bored silly or something. I excitedly answer that I prune like crazy! Why do gardeners spend the winter pruning? Two answers: 1.)Like the above picture you can see that when deciduous trees and shrubs loose their leaves, you can see their bones perfectly! This provides perfect opportunity to shape this plant for optimized health, growth and shape for the next growing season. 2.)"Playing catch-up". Spring, summer and fall are so busy with growth that we are doing all we can to keep a property maintained and beautiful. Winters dormancy gives us only 3 glorious months to get into those boxwoods, Japanese maples and holly and thin them out; prune those Crepe myrtles for glorious blooms, and all the other non spring blooming woodies.

Do you have overgrown shrubs? Maybe they are taking over your side walks? One reason is they are re-rooting due to excessive mulching.