Posts Tagged ‘flowers’
The Many Types of Cherry Trees
One of the most pleasant trees you can possibly maintain is a cherry tree. The word Cherry is derived from the name of an ancient city in Turkey. It describes both the tree and the fruit it produces. A cherry fruit is classified as a “drupe”.
In the center it has a single hard core that holds the seed. The outside of the fruit is smooth and might have a small groove down one side. There are hundreds of different varieties of cherry.
There are two main groups that cherries can fall under. It is either a wild cherry or a sour cherry. Wild cherries are generally used for plain eating, and originated in Europe or western Asia. Usually if you buy a bag of cherries from the store, you can guess that they are wild cherries.
The other type, sour cherries, also originated in Europe and western Asia. These are less pleasant to eat, and are used more in cooking situations, including the production of jam or jelly.
Cherry trees aren’t just known for their delicious fruits. They are also popular for their beautiful flowers or blossoms. The clusters of flowers that appear in the spring are rather breathtaking, and have inspired many a song or poem.
If you’re looking to plant a cherry tree, you might consider black cherries. It is best known for being the tallest tree available, and producing beautiful white clumps of flowers. The fruit, which becomes ready to pick in the summertime, is small and black.
The only negative aspects about this tree are its vulnerability to certain caterpillars, and the tendency for the fruits to fall on their own and stain concrete. That’s why it is best to keep them over grass rather then near a sidewalk.
Another one of the most beautiful types of trees is the purple leaved plum. Contrary to its name, it isn’t a plum but rather a larger type of cherry. Its tree is most recognizable for its strikingly purple flowers.
Through the course of its flowering season, they usually change from deep purple to light pink. Either way, you’ll probably be the only one on the block with such a colorful tree. One of its strong points is that it is particularly resistant to pests.
The Amur Chokeberry is most recognizable for its golden bark on the trunk and branches. When its flowers bloom in the middle of spring, they are very small and white. These trees specifically require moist, but well-drained soil.
If your yard can’t supply that, then this is probably a tree you should skip. This tree is one of the most susceptible to pests and diseases unless you live in a very cold climate. It is one of the most high maintenance trees, but the cherries are delicious and the flowers are some of the lushest.
No matter what your yard or soil situation is like, you should have no problem finding a cherry tree that will do well in your area. They are a great thing to add to your yard, and when it flowers it will take the breath away from everyone that looks at it.
It works great as a focal point for any garden. So go to your nursery today, and inquire about what types of cherry trees are known for doing well in your region. You’re bound to find something you like.
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Tags:beautiful flowers, black cherries, blossoms, caterpillars, cherries, cherry fruit, cherry tree, cherry trees, climate, climates, clump, clumps, clusters, cook, cooking, deep purple, delicious fruits, disease, diseases, drupe, eat, eating, flower, flowers, fruits, gardener, gardeners, Gardening, negative aspects, pests, Planting, plants, plum, popularity, problem, problems, productivity, purple flowers, resistance, seeds, soil, sour cherries, stain concrete, summertime, tallest tree, trees, Types of Cherry Trees, types of trees, western asia, wild cherries, wild cherry
Pruning Your Fruit Trees
If you have just entered the tree growing world, you have no doubt heard the term “pruning” tossed around by the more veteran growers. Well, I have something to admit. For several years, I did not even know what pruning was. I heard the term a lot, but I never felt comfortable asking someone what exactly it was.
Even though it would have benefited my gardening and tree growing, I was too prideful to ask. I’ve found that pride is the reason for the failure of many great endeavors; if I had just asked someone what pruning was, I wouldn’t have undergone a few of the disasters that occurred during my first years of gardening.
Pruning is the removal of dead or unneeded branches to encourage the growth of flowers. Usually a tree will end up devoting energy to branches that don’t need it, while neglecting branches which are bearing more fruit.
If you remove the branches that are taking all the nutrients, you will begin to see a flourish in the other ones. Pruning also keeps the tree in shape by keeping the branches even. This prevents it from becoming weighed down on one side. Having too many branches on one side could cause the tree to become permanently crooked.
Many gardeners don’t even think about pruning their trees until they start to bear fruit. This is a big mistake, and you should never neglect to care for a tree just because it hasn’t yet begun to produce. During the entire process of growth, you should prune the tree in a way that it is even and uniform. Then, when it does start to produce fruit, the results will be significantly greater.
It is very easy to tell the difference between a tree that has been pruned regularly during its growth, and one that has been neglected. Generally the shape of the tree is much more natural looking if it has been pruned.
The first thing to look for when you start pruning is any branches which are dead or diseased. These are quite easy to recognize. Usually they don’t bear any fruit, and might be misshapen or discolored. Don’t hesitate at all in chopping these guys off, as they are nothing but detrimental to the health of your tree.
Sometimes a branch can be dead or diseased without making it too obvious. If this is the case, simply wait until the tree is flowering and it will become obvious by not growing anything.
The second type of branch to look for is the branch that is too close in range to all the other ones. If it grows at such a length and angle that the end is right next to all the other branches, they might end up crowding each other out.
Take off the smaller of the two branches to allow the larger one to have the breathing room that it needs. This same rule applies to the weight balance of your tree. Sometimes, for reasons we will never understand, a tree will grow several branches on one side and weigh itself into being lopsided.
So hopefully I have provided you with a basic knowledge of pruning. There are more situations and types of branches that require pruning, but what I’ve outlined is the very basic parts. These can alter depending on how old your tree is.
For example, for the first 3 years of a tree’s growth it requires pruning that follows more “formative” guidelines. After the tree is well established, you will need to use “regulatory” pruning to keep it where you would like it to be.
There are entire books written on how to prune trees depending on how old they are. There are far too many techniques for me to go over, so if you want to use these advanced techniques then you should go to your local library and check out a book.
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Tags:benefit, benefits, Caring, disease, diseases, encouragement, first years, flourish, flower, flowers, Fruit Trees, fruits, gardener, gardeners, Gardening, neglect, nutrients, preventable, Prevention, prunes, Pruning Your Fruit Trees, removal, removals, shape, shapes, trees
The Psychology Behind Gardening
I don’t know what it is about a garden that has always drawn humans to them. But they’ve always been very popular, and an integral part of peoples’ lifestyles. Most religions feature gardens as the settings for some of the biggest events.
According to Christianity, humanity was started in a garden and the son of God was resurrected in a garden. The Buddhist build gardens to allow nature to permeate their surroundings. Almost every major palace and government building has a garden. But what’s so great about them? They’re just a bunch of plants, after all.
Of course, the reasoning is fairly obvious behind why people grow food in gardens. It’s to eat! If you live off the fat of the land and actually survive on stuff from your garden, it’s easy to understand the reasoning. But I’m thinking about those people who plant flower gardens just for the sake of looking nice.
There’s no immediate benefit that I can see; you just have a bunch of flowers in your yard! However, after thinking extensively about the motivation behind planting decorative gardens, I’ve conceived several possible theories.
I think one of the reasons people love gardens so much is that while we have a natural desire to progress and industrialize, deep within all of us is a primal love for nature.
While this desire might not be as strong as the desire for modernism, it is still strong enough to compel us to create gardens, small outlets of nature, in the midst of all our hustle and bustle. Since being in nature is like regressing to an earlier stage of humanity, we too can regress to a time of comfort and utter happiness.
This is why gardens are so relaxing and calming to be in. This is why gardens are a good place to meditate and do tai chi exercises. A garden is a way to quickly escape from the busy world.
I’ve thought at times that perhaps we as humans feel a sort of guilt driving us to restore nature and care for it. This guilt could stem from the knowledge that we, not personally but as a race, have destroyed so much of nature to get where we are today.
It’s the least we can do to build a small garden in remembrance of all the trees we kill every day. It’s my theory that this is the underlying reason for most people to take up gardening as a hobby.
Gardening is definitely a healthy habit though, don’t get me wrong. Any hobby that provides physical exercise, helps the environment, and improves your diet can’t be a negative thing.
So no matter what the underlying psychological cause for gardening is, I think that everyone should continue to do so. In the USA especially, which is dealing with obesity and pollution as its two major problems, I think gardening can only serve to improve the state of the world.
Of course I’m no psychologist; I’m just a curious gardener. I often stay up for hours wondering what makes me garden. What is it that makes me go outside for a few hours every day with my gardening tools, and facilitate the small-time growth of plants that would grow naturally on their own? I may never know, but in this case ignorance truly is bliss.
Planting & Caring for Your Rose Garden
Tips, Tricks & Techniques You Can Use to Consistently Grow Gorgeous, Healthy Roses with Ease!
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Tags:bunch of flowers, flower, flower gardens, flowers, food, foods, gardener, Gardening, Hobbies, hobby, natural desire, plant flower, Planting, plants, psychology, Psychology Behind Gardening, tools, trees
Choosing a Garden that is Perfect for You
If you’re thinking about starting a garden, the first thing you need to consider is what type of garden you will have. There are many different choices and often it can be hard to pick just one, but hopefully you can narrow it down.
But by narrowing it down, you’ll make the gardening experience easier on yourself and the plants. If all your plants are similar, then it shouldn’t be very hard to care for them all. So here are some of the main garden ideas for you to choose from.
If you’re just looking for something to look nice in your yard, you’ll want a flower garden. These are usually filled with perennial flower.
Perennial flowers are flowers which stay healthy year-round. They’re basically weeds because of their hardiness, only nice looking. Different areas and climates have different flowers which are considered perennials.
If you do a quick internet search for your area, you can probably find a list of flowers that will bring your flower garden to life. These usually only require work in the planting stage – after that, the flower take care of themselves. The only downside to this is that you don’t have any product to show for it.
Another choice for your garden is to have a vegetable garden.
These usually require a little more work and research than a flower garden, but can be much more rewarding. No matter what time of the year it is, you can usually find one vegetable that is still prospering. That way you can have your garden be giving you produce almost every day of the year!
When starting a vegetable garden, you should build it with the thought in mind that you will be adding more types of veggies in later. This will help your expandability. Once all your current crops are out of season, you won’t be stuck with almost nowhere to put the new crops.
A vegetable garden is ideal for someone who wants some produce, but doesn’t want to devote every waking hour to perfecting their garden (see below.)
One of the more difficult types of gardens to manage is a fruit garden.
It’s definitely the most high-maintenance. When growing fruits, many more pests will be attracted due to the sweetness. You not only have to deal with having just the right dirt and fertilizer, you have to deal with choosing a pesticide that won’t kill whoever eats the fruits. Your fruit garden will probably not produce year-round.
The soil needs to be just right for the plants to grow, and putting in another crop during its off-season could be disastrous to its growth process. If you’re willing to put lots of work into maintaining a garden, then a fruit garden could be a good choice for you.
So now that I’ve outlined some of the main garden types that people choose, I hope you can make a good decision. Basically, the garden type comes down to what kind of product you want, and how much work you want to put into it.
If you’re looking for no product with no work, go with a flower garden. If you want lots of delicious product, but you are willing to spend hours in your garden each day, then go for a fruit garden. Just make sure you don’t get into something you can’t handle!
Planting & Caring for Your Rose Garden
Tips, Tricks & Techniques You Can Use to Consistently Grow Gorgeous, Healthy Roses with Ease!
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Tags:Caring, choices, Choosing a Garden, climate, climates, day of the year, eat, eating, expandability, experiences, fertilizer, flower, flower garden, flowers, fruits, garden ideas, gardener, Gardening, hardiness, healthiness, Healthy, internet search, list of flowers, new crops, perennial flowers, pesticide, pests, Planting, plants, product, productivity, starting a garden, starting a vegetable garden, type of garden, vegetables, veggies, weeds
Wedding Favors for Less Than One Dollar
When most people think of wedding favors they do not think it will be a substantial part of the wedding budget. This is largely because the unit price of each wedding favor is often quite low.
However, it is important to remember that this price must be multiplied by the number of guests in attendance and this can really add up if there are a large number of guests at the wedding.
It can also add up quickly if the unit price is quite high.
As example consider wedding favors with unit prices of $2 and $10. If you plan to have 500 guests at your wedding and give each one a $2 favor your budget for wedding favors will be the same as it would be if you plan to have a small wedding of only 100 people and give each of them a favor which costs $10.
In both cases you would need to have a budget of $1000 for wedding favors. From this example you can see why it is very important to consider both the unit price as well as the number of guests.
Fortunately, whether you are having a large or a small wedding there are many wedding favors available for less than $1 which can help to keep the wedding favor budget low.
This article will provide some ideas for wedding favors which typically cost less than $1.
Place card holders are one type of wedding favor which is typically available for less than $1 per place card holder. There are certainly some place card holders which will cost much more than $1 per unit but you are likely to also find many which are priced under $1.
Place card holders make great wedding favors because they not only serve a purpose at the wedding but they can also be used as small picture frames by the guests after the wedding.
Tins containing mints are another option for wedding favors which are often priced at under $1 per unit. These tins come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes but the tins which are priced at less than $1 are likely to be quite small.
However, there are also a wide variety of designs available. You can purchase ones which feature a tuxedo design or a wedding dress. You can also find tins with wedding bells or flowers on the top.
Another way to find wedding favors for less than $1 per favor is to inquire with the wedding favor distributor about clearance or closeout items. These are often items which have been discontinued or which the distributor is not planning to stock anymore.
Many distributors are willing to offer these favors at discounted prices because they do not have many left and are trying to free up space in their warehouse. If these items have been discontinued or the distributor is not willing to order more you may be limited to the number of favors the distributor has in stock.
If this quantity is enough to meet your needs, you are certainly in luck but if you need more than is available, it might be a good idea to search for other inexpensive wedding favors unless you know for sure there is another distributor who can sell you additional quantities of the same favor.
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Tags:attendance, budget, budgets, card, cards, dressings, flower, flowers, framing, Less Than One Dollar, limitations, mints, money, number of guests, picture frames, place card holder, place card holders, purchase, quantities, stock, tin, tins, wedding budget, wedding favor, weddings
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