Picking the Ideal Location for your Garden

Once you have picked what garden you want, there are many other factors
you need to decide before you actually get to work with your gardening
tools. Mainly you need to choose its location. This is usually decided by
several factors: How you will water it, how much shade it needs, etc. Some
of these questions can be very important in deciding whether your garden
lives or dies, so don't take them lightly. You need to take each one into
special consideration.

Choosing the garden's location within your yard is one of the more
important things to decide. You want to choose a location that will
provide an ideal climate for the plants in your garden. I don't know what
type of garden you're dealing with so I can't give you specific advice,
but if you do a Google search for the plant you're dealing with then
you'll find a plethora of sites informing you about the perfect conditions
for its growing. After this, it's just a matter of finding the most shaded
or most sunny spot in your yard.

Another deciding factor is how you plan on watering your garden. If you
have a sprinkler system already installed for your grass, then it could be
a good idea to put your garden in the middle of your yard. Then it will
get watered at the same time, and require no extra work from your part.
But if this doesn't provide for a good location for your garden, then you
might end up watering it by hose or dragging a sprinkler out there. In
this case, just make sure your garden is within the ideal distance for a
hose to reach. While this might not seem like a good thing to base the
entire location of your garden on, you'll be surprised at how nice it is
to plan out in advanced.

Getting the perfect amount of shade for your garden can be a difficult
endeavor. Once you have a basic idea for where you want your garden, you
might want to watch it and record how many hours it spends in sunlight and
how many it spends in shade. Compare your findings to an online web site,
and you should be able to determine whether the spot you chose is ideal or
not for planting and starting your garden in. Of course the amount will
change as the seasons change, but this should give you a good idea of what
to basically expect for the rest of the year. If necessary, later you can
put up some kind of shade to protect your garden from getting too much sun.

After you've determined the ideal place for your garden and whether it has
the right amount of sunlight, and whether you will be able to conveniently
water it, you're one step closer to actually starting your garden. Of
course there are other factors that I have overlooked here, but mostly you
should be able to decide whether your location is good or not based on
common sense. Just think: If I were a plant, would I be able to flourish
here? If you can honestly answer yes, then I think its time for you to
head out to your local gardening store and buy the necessary soil and
fertilizer to get started! Have fun!

DoItYourself-Gardening

Other Factors in Garden Creation

So now you've picked out what type of garden you will have, what the
location will be, and what kind of fertilizer you need, now is the time to
really get started in choosing your garden environment. First you'll want
to choose what your garden barriers will be. What will separate your
garden from the rest of the world? Next you'll want to choose the
decorations and support for your plants. Often some kind of metal mesh is
necessary to keep your plant standing up. You will also want to choose how
much soil and fertilizer to buy, and how to arrange all the plants in your
garden.

Choosing a border is actually a fairly important step in getting your
garden started. It might not actually affect the well-being of the plants,
but having a garden is a fairly aesthetic ordeal for many people anyways.
So usually you will want to choose between metal and wood. You can stack
up boards around the perimeter of your garden, and give it a rather nice
cabin look. If you're looking for a more modern look, you can obtain some
metal lining at your local home improvement store for rather cheap, and
installation is medium difficulty.

Finding something nice-looking to support your plants can be a little bit
more challenging. Sometimes a short metal pole can work well, but often
for plants such as tomatoes you will need a wire mesh for it to pull
itself up on. You can find these at any gardening store, usually
pre-shaped in a sort of cone shape ideal for plants. The plant just grows
up through it, and usually it will last until the plant is grown enough to
support itself. After that you can take a pair of wire-cutters and just
snip it free.

Deciding how much soil to buy can be slightly easier. Look up information
on your plants and find out the ideal soil depth. Then dig out that much
from your garden, take the measurements, and find out the exact amount of
cubic feet of soil that you will need. Go to the store and buy it,
preferably adding on a few bags just so you can replenish the supply if it
compresses or runs out. If you live in an area where the ground is rough,
dry, and barren of nutrients, then you might even want to add a few inches
of depth to the original recommendation.

Arranging the plants is rather important to the success of your garden.
I'm not talking about some kind of feng-shui thing, but depending on your
watering, some plants might hog all the water and leave the other plants
high and dry. Some plants have longer roots than others, and are more
aggressive in the collection of water. If you place one of these plants
next to a plant with weaker, shorter roots, it will quickly hijack the
water supply for itself, and choke out the other plant.

I hope I've led you to realize that placement isn't the only important
thing about a garden. There are many other factors that might not seem
very significant, but spending a proper amount of time considering them
could change the outcome of your garden. So if you're working on building
a garden, use and reference you can (the library, the internet, and
magazines) to look in to some of the factors I've mentioned.

DoItYourself-Gardening

Perfect Garden for You

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.

DoItYourself-Gardening

Do it Yourself - Choosing a Garden

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.

Just make sure you don't get into something you can't handle!

DoItYourself-Gardening