Discover New Ways to Improve How Your Garden Grows

How to stimulate your mind to be more creative for your garden. The best way that I know to do this is by checking around at your local garden nurseries, garden centers, or greenhouses.

Just wandering around through the plants to see what is available locally is fantastic. This way you can directly ask the staff any questions about the needs of the plants you like best to see if the plants will be a good fit for you and your garden.

BUT...an even better way is to find out if these places offer lectures, workshops, special speakers, etc. This way they will introduce you to plants that you may have never thought of using. Most of the time they will give you all the pros and cons of each plant and its relatives. This way you may find out that the one plant which does not seem to do well for you has a relative that suits your garden situation much better; a happy plant will grow and prosper very well and live a much longer life (if it is not an annual) for you.

The majority of lectures are free. The workshops' fees are usually to cover the cost of the materials.

I find it has been very beneficial to me. It keeps you up on the most recent discoveries with plants, pest control, new products, and so much more. Along the way you meet wonderful folks to share your learning experience with you.

My favorite garden center, Lake Street Garden Center in Salem NH, is not very close to me, but I definitely find the little trip is well worth it for such valuable information and ideas.

Check around your area to see what might be available for you!

What's in Your Garden?

What are you growing in your garden?

• Are there vegetables or herbs for food?
• Flowers to brighten your life and home...or to dress up your salads or your plates?
• Are you experimenting with one or more new types of plants that you never saw before?
• Or never ate before and you want to be daring?
• Or saw in a magazine, book, or someone else's garden and you loved it and want it in your garden?
• Are you growing a giant version to enter a contest at a country fair in the fall like giant pumpkins?
• Are you staying safe with your old standbys?

I am doing a combination of vegetables for food and flowers to make my yard and home pretty. I will soon post some photos of what I have. As the summer goes on, we will watch them grow...along with any 'situations that happen to them.

Such as....my granddaughter planted a bean plant (a mystery type that I think at the moment is a bush bean, but as time goes on we will see) at school and brought it home. As it was getting sun on the railing of our house one afternoon, we pulled down the driveway and immediately saw that it was uprooted and one of the beans was in a neighboring pot half eaten. My daughter 'bandaged' it and splinted it with a drinking straw. We think it was a chipmunk. Over the next week we will see if it survives.