Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

Garden Design Advice for Tucson, Arizona Residents

John Waters asked:

Are you looking for good garden design advice in Tucson, Arizona? Perhaps some of the best advice is on how to prevent the spread of destructive pests in your garden! This article will provide you with garden design tips that will help you cultivate and protect your crops. Whether you’re looking to grow edible plants or beautiful flowers, the following information will be beneficial to you.

Garden Design Advice for Tucson: Raise Companion Plants That Thwart the Spread of Destructive Pests:

Dills for cabbages. The number one enemy of plants belonging to the cabbage family is the cabbageworm. These tiny creatures bore holes into the cabbage plants, making them useless for consumption or trading. Dills are plants that attract Tachinid flies that feed on cabbageworms and their eggs. Dills are known to be permanent solutions to the problems caused by unwanted cabbageworms.

Tomatoes for cabbages. Some moths feed on cabbage foliage as well, creating the same problems as those brought on by cabbageworms. Worse, moths produce larvae at such a rapid pace that a full-blown invasion is almost always inevitable. By growing tomatoes near your cabbage plants will help you deter moths. Is is said that tomato plants emit a particular odor that moths loathe, keeping them (and their larvae) away from your garden.

Chives or garlic for roses. Roses are grown for the beautiful flowers. Pests often ruin these blooms, making a quarter of a year’s work rather useless. Cultivating chives alongside roses assists in repelling the usual pests that feed on rose bushes. Garlic is believed to have the same effect.

Beans for corn. A bug infestation in corn crops can be very harmful for the entire garden. Cultivating beans in your garden will help attract useful insects that will prey on the usual pests that trouble corn fields. Armyworms, leaf beetles and leaf hoppers will be all but sad memories with bean plants surrounding growing corn stalks.

Nasturtiums for cucumbers. Cukes attract cucumber beetles – little insects with strong jaws that hack through cucumbers themselves. Nasturtiums, however, repel cucumber beetles, allowing for the healthy growth of cucumber plants.

Here’s some information about a popular desert plant that will make a great addition to the area around your garden design in Tucson.

Boxwood Beauty, also called “Green Carpet” or Carissa Macrocarpa, is a fast-growing, ornamental shrub that is wind resistant and can grow in coastal area. It usually forms a dense, thorny shrub, but can also grow into a small tree.

Boxwood Beauty has y-shaped thorns that grow from green branches. The plant exudes a milky, white non-toxic latex material. Its leaves are shiny, dark and leathery. The flowers vary in size, are pure white in color and have the scent of orange blossoms. Boxwood Beauty produces large oval red fruit that is edible and rich in Vitamin C. “Green Carpet” is a popular ground cover.

Boxwood Beauty attracts birds and butterflies to the garden. It can be pruned if necessary.

If you are still unsure about what will work in your garden design and landscaping in Tucson, there are plenty of online resources that can help you. For instance, many local landscaping companies have expertise in garden design and plants that thrive in the area. Hiring a professional garden design and landscaping company in Tucson, Arizona might just be your best bet. They can work with you to pick out the best plants that fit your taste, lifestyle and budget – and they can even help you maintain it!

Related Blogs

See full post

Lawn Care Advice – Easy Steps To Lawn Care Success

Martin Haworth asked:

So, when you are wistfully looking out over next doors green and pleasant land, it’s time to take some lawn care advice and find out just what you can do, easily, to get that verdant pasture you desire.

It’s All In The Watering

Water is vital in getting a beautiful green lawn. These days, when temperatures are rising with the climatic effects that we are experiencing around the world, and rainfall is erratic, the best lawn care advice you can have is to get your watering just right.

If you get this right, you will find that you neither waste water, nor do you undersell your lawn either.

If you water early in the day or late, these are the right times. If you try it on in the heat of the day, you will waste water as much of it will evaporate off before it’s had the chance to do good. And, what make matters worse, some grass types will scorch if watered in this way as well.

It’s also to water in the right conditions for your lawn as well. the best lawn care advice would suggest that you water when the lawn needs it and not before.

Saturating the lawn can cause other problems as well as encouraging weeds to grow with a lawn that is under water for too long.

If you think about how well a lawn copes with the natural pattern of rainfall, you will start to appreciate how an irregular pattern of watering will be the best to develop good strong root systems (which like a little thirst!), without drowning the lawn and suffering other diseases.

Mow Your Lawn Carefully

Important lawn care advice is continued with the simple rules for mowing your lawn properly and in the best manner to encourage strong and healthy growth.

By ensuring that you mow in such a way as to cut at the higher end of the recommended grass height (as advised by your grass grower or other lawn care advisor – often found at your local garden center), you will increase the proportion of green surface area.

This will enable a strong plant. A bit of grass length is also good to hold back weeds that are trying their best to force their way through.

Taking proper care of your mower is also good lawn care advice. Make sure that your mower blades are sharp; a sharp blade will cut cleanly and prevent damage to your grass, which will also inhibit growth.

Take your blades to be sharpened by a professional each year. The small expense will be worth it as your summer progresses.

Thatch Control

Thatch is the material that comes from dead grass and other materials laying on the ground and inhibiting growth rather than decomposing.

Good lawn care advice means recommending that you do your best to fight thatch. This is more a project to be handled yearly rather than week by week.

Cutting grass at the recommended height for your type of grass will help reduce thatch, as will aeration of your lawn in the spring and fall.

By following this and other good lawn care advice, you’ll be able to have a lush lawn that you can be proud of.