Gardening

The holidays are upon us and what gift to give to whom is looming on the horizon. What better gift to give your gardening friends than something to enhance their gardening experience.

There is nothing nicer than giving one of the best gardening gifts for friends and relatives who love nature and all its beautiful aspects right on their own backyard. The problem you may encounter is choosing the best gardening gift there is for your loved ones.

To ensure that your gardening gift will be appreciated by the recipient and also your budget, here are some guidelines you should consider:

In choosing the type of gardening gift, consider your budget. When your budget is holding you back from buying the best gardening gift, don’t fret. There are garden accessories and gardening wear that would suit your fund.

Gardening gloves, footwear and kneepads, may be bought in a variety of colors, texture, and material. You could choose the perfect accessory for the person you’re giving the best gardening gift to, which won’t cost you much. Simply do your homework – research either on the net or rummage through catalogs.

Common garden hand tools may be found in most hardware stores. The handiness of hand gears like pruning shear, secateurs, hoes and a watering can will never lose their magic touch. Surely, with these hand tools, your friend will appreciate how much you know that he really is into gardening.

If you have prepared a bigger budget, specialized gardening tools may steal the spotlight. Before choosing which tool to purchase, make sure to check which tool is missing from your gardener friend’s backyard. To prevent duplication, you may even stealthily ask your friend which gardening tool he is dreaming of having.

Digging tools like rakes, shovels, pitch forks and spade are some of the basic tools used by professional gardeners as well as beginners. These types of equipment may be expensive, but it surely will be money well spent.

The most extravagant gift you could give a friend is some type of heavy gardening equipment. These gardening machineries could serve well as wedding present or a house-warming gift for a gardening enthusiast.

Automatic lawn mowers, electric cultivators, dirt diggers, hedge trimmers, brush cutters, or trolleys could provide so much ease to your gardener friend’s daily routine. These gardening gifts, which are considered the nature-lover’s dreams, may give your friend a reason to smile all year round.

Your gift could be as simple as a water resistant garden gloves or a more expensive gift like an electric cultivator. When the recipient realizes you have given a gift that complements his passion, expensive or not, it would certainly become the best gardening gifts your friend has ever received.

Read more about Greenhouse Gardening as a hobby at HobbyNook.com!

John

The idea of no-dig gardening was developed by an Australian named Esther Deans. It was originally 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, then by adding lucerne hay, straw and compost in succeeding layers, you can create a growing medium without resorting to heavy digging. This growing medium is rich in nutrients and 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. This approach has been used to create 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 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 they will die out or move out.

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.

Read more about Greenhouse Gardening as a hobby at HobbyNook.com!

John