One of the greatest joys of being a gardener is sharing your bounty. Most gardeners are proud to show off the fruits of their labor, and it can be so much fun putting together your very own homemade, garden-inspired gifts. If you are fortunate enough to have your own thriving herb garden, here are a few inspired gift ideas that will have your lucky recipients enjoying the aromas and flavors straight from your garden.

Design Your Own Herbal-Inspired Garden Candles

Candles are one of those versatile gifts that you can give to close friends and family. They are both practical and luxuriant, providing warmth (literally) and imparting a sense of hearth and home. If you have experience with candle making, this can be a fun and creative way to treat your family and friends to a handmade gift. Use your own herbal garden to infuse your candles with special scents from your garden. Use flowers, herbs and leaves to meld them directly into the wax. You can create stunning results with minimal effort. Even if you have no candle making experience, you can purchase high quality plain candles and add your own herbal touch, directly from your garden.

Create Personal Herbal Satchels

For those family members and friends who love potpourri and all good things nice-smelling, create personal herbal satchels. This is a great way to keep dried flowers and petals that still have plenty of aroma and life left in them. Plunder your old flower arrangements, bouquets and your own blooming garden for dried flowers, herbs and petals. Toss these wonderfully aromatic dried herbs and flowers together and package them in pretty satchels, bowls or jars. It may take a while to determine which herbs and flower scents work well together, but it is usually a pretty safe bet that most recently fresh flower petals will create a delicious aroma. Tie a pretty bow around your satchel, and watch your recipients faces light up. This makes the perfect gift for your favorite romantic or flower-lover in your life.

Bottle Up Your Own Herb Infused Oil Concoctions

Do you have a gourmet cook in the family? If so, here is a perfect gift idea for those appreciate the finer things in life. One of the best ways to preserve fresh herbs is to save them in herbal oils. Use a high quality cooking oil, such as cold-pressed olive oil. Use a decorative kitchen bottle and fill it with high quality oil. Then add a sprig or two of your favorite garden herb. Good choices include fresh rosemary sprigs, thyme or other fresh herbs growing in your garden. Tie a pretty bow on the bottle, and you are set. This makes a great housewarming gift, too. Inform your recipient that your herb-infused oil concoction will be at its prime in two months time.

More Fun and Easy Gift Ideas for the Gourmet on Your List

For those in your life who appreciate good cooking, here are a few more ideas on how to turn your fresh herb garden into wonderful gifts. You can create herbal vinegars that your recipient can use to flavor salads and create their own salad dressings. You can also create spicy and fresh herb seasoning mix packets. This is a great idea if you grow regional herbs and you want to share your area’s flavors with an out-of-towner. If you have a favorite martini-drinker in your family, consider making flavored vodka. You can brew your very own flavored vodka, infused with such fragrant herbs as lavender or rosemary. This is a unique and wonderful hostess or house-warming gift that will surely wow even the most discerning friend or family member.

Great Herbal Gift Ideas from the Garden is a post from: Gardening Guide

Chrysanthemums are very popular perennials. You can get mums in a variety of colors as well as in various growths all the way from the smaller dwarf plants all the way up to the Maxi-Mums.

These plants are very easy to grow so they would be good for a beginner gardener to try. If taken care of correctly, they will give you years of enjoyment.

Make sure you choose an appropriate variety, plant your mums in a sunny, well-drained location and protect them during the winter.

Planting Time

The best time to plant your chrysanthemums is after the danger of frost has passed. You are able to use small plants that you have obtained from rooted cuttings or divisions or you may even use the larger container plants that you have bought from nurseries.

The chrysanthemums may be put in the ground at anytime in the spring, summer or even during the early fall.

Soil, Site, and Fertilizer

Garden mums will grow very well in a variety of soils but they must all have excellent drainage conditions. Mums also enjoy sunny locations. Try to mix in two to four inches of peat moss or compost into the soil. If you only use peat moss, then try to add a fertilizer in the spring.

Pinching

If your mums are pruned or pinched on a regular basis, then they will have a bushy and compact plant form. The traditional method includes pinching out the tip in order to induce branching so that stockier plants will be produced.

All pinching must be completed by the 4th of July to assure that your plant flowers before the frost.

The Perfect Mum is a post from: Gardening Guide

The peony is just about the longest-living perennial plant you will ever see. There are two basic types of peonies – the herbaceous types and the tree peony.

It would be best to plant peonies at the back of flower borders as they are large plants. In the spring, the peonies have attractive ferny foliage and the beautiful blooms are usually produced in May.

Peonies best thrive in a place that receives at least half a day to a full day of sunshine. If the climate is very hot, then provide some afternoon shade for these plants.

The best time to plant the peony is the early fall but early spring plantings do well also. Make sure to prepare the site well. Dig an oversized hole and make sure that you fill some of it with compost.

The secret of having a successful peony is this: Make sure that the tuber is positioned so that the eyes which are located on the crown are covered with about two inches of soil.

Peonies are picky – they do not like to be planted very deeply. If your peonies have stopped producing flowers after a few years, then you should see if perhaps they have sunken too low in their bed. Perhaps they have had too much soil sitting on top of them.

If your peonies seem to flop over by mid-summer, then it would be a good idea to stake them. When you go to cut your flowers, clip them when the buds are just beginning to unfurl. Once they are put in water, the blooms will quickly open and will last for about a week indoors.

Tips for Having Beautiful Peonies is a post from: Gardening Guide

Now that you have started a flower or vegetable garden, maintaining your garden is the next step to insure beautiful flowers and a bountiful harvest. Maintaining your garden is just as important as choosing what plants are going to be planted and how to plant them? With all the work that has been put into it to let it go to seed or letting the weed take over would be disgraceful.

One sure way to maintain a garden is by mulching. Mulching will make a huge difference in a garden, why? Mulching not only keeps the soil cool but it also conserves water and blocks weed growth. Shredded or chipped bark (called compost) or shredded leaves and straw will also improve the soil. Mulching will be extremely beneficial to warm season vegetable plants such as melons, peppers squash and tomatoes when plastic mulch is used, it warms the soil around them.

Mulch should be put down as soon as possible after planting before new weeds have a chance to sprout up. Layer your mulch no thicker than 4 inches but a minimum of 2 inches. Too much mulch will only give hiding place for moles, voles, mice and other rodents and may cause the stems to rot if it is piled to high so avoid direct contact with the plant itself.

Keep your plant labels ( from the small pots) or seed packets ( if you planted from seed), they are an excellent source for information if your garden starts to look or do poorly, they usually tell you what the plant will need in terms of care and maintenance, how much sunlight, water, fertilizer etc. If you are not an avid gardener or if this is your first garden don’t plant plants that will require a lot of attention do some checking first, garden centers and nurseries are often very helpful.

Remember your name is Smith, so just because it’s pretty in Ms. Jones yard doesn’t mean that it will be pretty in yours and it won’t look like the picture in a magazine photo either. Different regions have different soil qualities and this should always be taken into consideration just like some people have that magical Green Thumb. If your particular region gets a lot of rain, that’s well and good, but if it doesn’t, don’t let your plants get drought stressed. If this happens more than likely they will not recover completely during that growing season.

Weeds come from a variety of places, soles of your shoes and the wind in particular, so there will be plenty of weeding to do. Keep them pulled or they will out grow your plants and or choke them out. If you’ve planted vegetables, they will produce more if you keep them harvested while they are young. Keep your taller growing vegetables such as tomatoes caged or staked, cucumbers have vines that run and can wrap around other plants choking them so planting near a fence or staking them is also a good idea.

Water, water, water, watering is the most important when gardening. A minimum of 1 inch per week is essential to prevent drought stress and when they get all the water they need they stay lively. Morning watering is best, the humidity is high and you will get less evaporation.

Things you should remember:

Water slowly and deeply

Water in the mornings when possible

Use a long lasting mulch on your perennials ( preferably bark chips) Mulch for your vegetables should be one that will decompose within a few months

Choose pine needles, hulls leaves or bark chips for your mulches, keep those weeds pulled and your garden should do well.

Maintaining Your Garden is a post from: Gardening Guide

Now that you are seeing the money that you are basically throwing away at your local grocery store you are starting to see that there may be some benefit in herb gardening. Plus, it seems that whenever you are at the store, no matter what store it is, you are paying premium price for less then premium herbs and that is just longer going to cut it. As someone who prepares dishes and such for those you love, you want to make sure that you are giving them the very best ingredients and that is where herb gardening comes in play.

With diving into herb gardening you are going to be learning a lot about what it takes to produce even the smallest amount of herbs. With a lot of patience and a little practice you will soon see the benefits from herb gardening and you will be suggesting it to all of your friends and all of your family. And if you get really excited about herb gardening, you may find yourself even suggesting it to strangers you come across in the grocery store, even though the store management may not find what you have to say to be so interesting as they would miss out on sales.

The Cons Of Doing It Yourself

It you are anything like a lot of people in the world, you really like to see results right away. Any while you do not have to wait months upon months for results to come from your herb gardening adventure; you do have to be patient. You have to have an understanding for how many herbs can truly be produced from a sinlge plant then make sure you plant your seeds accordingly. This way, your herb gardening venture does not turn into where you have too many herbs or not enough.

You really need to know how much you really require for your household and if you are planting extra just to make sure you have enough, maybe consider who you could give extra to if there turns out to be any. But, if you are ready, willing, and eager enough then go ahead and jump into herb gardening, as this is something generally done indoors so it does not matter the time of year it is. It is time to get started and then before you know it, you will have lots of herbs to share with friends and family from your fun adventure.

Venturing Into Herb Gardening is a post from: Gardening Guide

Spring starts early here in southern California, and that means you have to be ready! For an early display of colorful annuals in late February and March, you’ve got to get those seeds in the ground in October and November. But winter can bring cold days and hard rain, so you need seedlings that are tough and durable enough to keep growing through the gray days.

An ideal choice is the calendula. Their brilliant yellow and orange daisy-like flowers explode from winter-grown plants in the first weeks of warm weather, perfect for either borders or bed plantings of moderate height. They are very hardy, have a unique enticing spicy fragrance, and bloom extravagantly if they’ve had a chance to fatten up on winter rains first.

Calendulas come in a vast variety of shades of yellow and orange, from delicate pale or lemon yellow to orange-peel orange and luscious apricot, usually with brown centers, but also with pale yellow centers. Some newer varieties like Burpee’s “Dwarf Double Gem” have outer petals so plush they almost hide the center completely.

It is almost impossible to buy separate seeds of any particular color or shade. The best method is to buy packets that contain an assortment, such as the ever-popular “Pacific Giant” available from many brands.

Calendulas grow in almost any soil, but you should add a little all-purpose fertilizer when lightly spading. Plant in November or late October after the weather cools. Cover the cute crescent-shaped seeds with about ¼” of soil and put a little fine mulch on top. Seeds will sprout within a couple weeks and plants will grow green and fat all winter. Sorry, the leaves look a little weedy! But that only shows how robust these plants are.

For a thick spectacular bloom, avoid thinning the plants as much as the seed packets recommend – let them grow lush and crowded, and they will reward you with a gorgeous mass of yellow and orange flowers in early spring. Your bright, cheery display will ignite the envy of your neighbors!

Gardening Calendula is a post from: Gardening Guide

You can have the most elaborated back yard from the entire neighborhood, but if it isn’t functional you have built it in vain. We all want to have beautiful and flourishing gardens, but when we have a family, we must also take into consideration the needs of the other members of it. Divide the space of your yard in two or three visual spaces, one for play and relaxation, one for gardening and maybe one for pets.

An open space, covered by lawn is ideal for your children. Here you can install a table for open air lunches or for a romantic summer evening dinner.

Do you have a fireplace? Keep a portion of your garden especially for depositing fire woods, but make sure it is at a considerable distance from the house or animals that can cause damage.

How about pets? You can build for these little members of your family special spaces, in which they can play and exercise. Before you plant bushes and ornamental plants, surround the pet space. Cats and dogs tend to be attracted exactly by the things we try to keep them away from.

Keep the by-passers’ eyes away from your personal life. Before planning the scenery, you must have in sight a place for the garbage cans. It wouldn’t be very nice to have a wonderful garden right next to the garbage cans. These can be efficiently hidden in some kind of surrounded space, decorated on the sides with life fence.

Functionality is an important factor in your garden, so you have to think about children, little pets and family assets before you plant anything. Save a portion of the yard especially for you, in which you can plant whatever you want and leave for the others some space to breathe freely.
You will find it more satisfying this way, once the whole family is happy with your garden and they might even bring their personal ideas for it. It is important that personal space is respected and that is why the garden must not be very wide, taking up all available space. Build from time to time a pathway or some benches where you can just relax and admire your work.

A Garden For The Whole Family is a post from: Gardening Guide

The idea of no-dig gardening was developed by an Australian named Esther Deans. It was originally both developed both as a labor saving idea, and a method to rejuvenate badly depleted soil in a vegetable garden.

The process involves starting with layers of newspaper, and by adding lucerne hay, straw and compost in succeeding layers, you can create a growing medium without resorting to heavy digging, and one that is rich in nutrients and which will simplify weeding and encourage your much desired plants to grow. The layers compost together, and greatly encourage earthworms. The gardens are maintained by adding manure, compost, etc., and should not be dug up, as this will undo the good work. I have used this approach to creating vegetable gardens, and it certainly does work.

The principle of not digging has sound foundations. Excessive cultivation of the soil, especially when very wet or very dry, will damage the structure of the soil, and lead to compaction. Such excessive cultivation can also discourage the earthworms, and they are the best free labor a gardener has.

Some followers of permaculture and organic gardening have translated no-dig into never-dig, which I believe is sadly mistaken. If you start with a base soil that is badly compacted, then your no-dig garden will initially work well, but you may find your garden does not continue to perform well. The fertile layer you have built up will encourage the earthworms, but we do know that the worms need to shelter from excessively hot, dry, cold or wet conditions. They have been found to seek shelter from extreme conditions by burrowing more deeply into the soil, sometime many feet down. If they cannot shelter in this way, it is my contention that they will die out or move out.

My belief is that an initial cultivation of the soil before you apply the no-dig system will guarantee a better environment for the worms, and thus a better garden for growing your plants, over the longer term.

By all means give the no-dig approach a try – you will be pleased with the result.

No Dig Gardening is a post from: Gardening Guide

What is butterfly gardening? Simply put butterfly gardening is the art of growing flowers and plants that will attract these colorful and dainty creatures to your garden. Delight your family and visitors with beautiful butterflies, but be sure to create a safe habitat for them. If you own cats rethink your plans, because it would be a shame to attract these lovely insects to their death.

The design your butterfly garden is a matter of personal preference. Typical points to consider are the size of your garden and the types of flowers and plants you want to grow. Pick a style of garden that appeals to you, but ensure it also contains the plants and flowers that appeal to the butterflies you wish to attract.

It is important to find out which plants and flowers will attract the species of butterflies. that live in your area. This information can be found at the local library
To create the kind of environment that they find attractive, you will also need water of some kind. A birdbath will look attractive and keep the butterflies up off the ground, away from stray cats or mischievous puppies. A shallow dish on a post or hung in a tree will do just as well.

When planting your butterfly garden be careful how you coordinate the colors you choose for your flowerbeds. Although butterflies do not care about your choice of color, you don’t want your garden to be a hodgepodge of unrelated colors and textures. Butterflies are attracted to those flowers that have nectar rather than pollen, like honeysuckle, milkweed, summer lilac, Valerian, daisies, Purple Coneflower, Yellow Sage, day lilies and lavender.

Some people find it helpful to draw and color a layout of their butterfly gardening plan to see what the finished product would look like. Keep in mind that warm colors like red and orange are flashy and showy. These colors have a greater impact against a strong green background. Cool colors such as blue and purple are soothing and toned down and would work better with a white contrast to create the look of freshness and brightness.

Butterfly Gardening is a post from: Gardening Guide

Whether in Arizona or Hawaii, when discussing gardening, pest control is certainly to be one of the greatest challenges gardening enthusiasts share. Although organic methods have always been available and used for gardening, pest control in developed countries since World War II has predominantly used man-made chemical pesticides to combat pests of all shapes and sizes. An increasing awareness of the dangers and drawbacks associated with chemical pesticides has recently led to a growing trend among gardeners to return to an organic strategy in dealing with pests.

Certainly with all types of gardening, pest control using an organic strategy can be highly effective as well as cost efficient. The Internet has made it increasingly easy to find countless tips that if used successfully will help in dealing with the most annoying pests that infiltrate and destroy gardens. Gathering information about the appearance, habits, enemies, and life cycles of pests helps provide gardeners the opportunity to rid their garden of the harmful insects while leaving the beneficial insects in the garden alone to do their job.

When it comes to gardening, pest control can be viewed as being divided into different yet strikingly similar methods. Frequently the most simple and obvious first line of attack in avoiding the destructive and annoying problems of bugs is in the selection of the actual vegetables and flowers. Using a mixture of science and nature, breeders of plants and flowers continue to improve the varieties available that are resistant to bugs and diseases. With so many disease and insect resistant varieties available, a bit of research and reading the back of seed packets will pay of handsomely.

Although the time-honored and historical practice of crop rotation requires a good deal of planning and forethought in home gardening, pest control is greatly enhanced by this and other methods that require the gardener to be aware of the bug friendliness extended by their garden as the host and “culture” for insects. Removing unhealthy plants, building up the soil, pruning, and staking plants off of the ground are all organic “cultural” methods that assist in controlling pests as well as diseases.

Oftentimes in organic gardening, pest control is simply handled through the actual physical removal and termination of insects from the plants, flowers, and vegetables. Clearly, using fingers and shoes can be an effective and yet distasteful tactic to many squeamish gardeners with weak stomachs.

It is clear with organic gardening, pest control plans having special consideration for plants grown, location, and of course the insects involved will yield successful and bountiful gardens whether in Arizona or Hawaii.

Gardening Pest Control is a post from: Gardening Guide