Garden Tips

Enjoy these 662 Garden tips created by Sheri Ann Richerson, our exclusive Garden Guru and industry expert contributor. If it's Garden information you're looking for, you'll find it here with 22 different categories ranging from Annuals,Perennials and Bulbs to Vegetable Gardens.

Indoor Gardens and Pets

By Jennifer G






Why Crop Rotation is so Important in Vegetable Gardens

By Susan B


Soil Nutrient Depletion


Why Rotate Crops



What is Crop Rotation?




Propagating House Plants

By Jennifer G


African Violets (Saintpaulia Ionantha)



Christmas Cactus (Schlumbergera)



Pothos and Ivy Plants



Build a Simple Outdoor Worm Bin

By Betsy S

If you have a few square feet of garden that you can spare, a worm bin can be easily set up on it. Just nail together a few boards into a square configuration, or cut the bottom off some sort of square container. Basically, you're just looking for four walls, at least 10 inches deep, which will hold their shape if they get wet. Now find something that will serve as a roof or lid, to keep the rain off. Bingo, you're done!

Scrape the soil flat in the garden where you're going to put your worm bin, and set your bottomless box on the soil. The worms won't try to get away. Now add some moist bedding material, which can be the black and white pages from newspaper, or portions of plain brown cardboard boxes. Wring out this material in water to give the worms the moisture they need.

Red wiggler (composting) worms can be ordered year-round through sellers on eBay. Once your worms arrive, put them all together into the bedding, and add some kitchen scraps. You can monitor the rate at which they consumer their food, and add more when they're getting low. It takes a few months for them to transform your leftover food waste, but their rate of consumption will increase as their population grows.

When the worms have produced a bin full of rich black compost for your garden, you can move it all to one side of the bin and add fresh bedding and food to the empty side. Then, after waiting for several days, the worms will have moved into the new area of their box and you will be able to harvest the compost.



By Betsy S

Stinging nettles are a valuable source of vitamin C, vitamin K, minerals and iron. When they emerge in the spring, the fresh shoots make a delicious bright green blood-purifying tea. Nettles have traditionally been used to encourage the production of breast milk, and to aid the kidneys and immune system. They stimulate the lymphatic system in a slow, gentle way and they are used as nutritional support for long-term and chronic disorders. They can be cooked fresh in the same manner that you would cook spinach - or, they can be dried and added to soups and casseroles.

If you wear gloves while you pick and prepare nettles, you won't get stung. Once they've been cooked, their stinging properties disappear. Clip their stems with scissors, rather than pulling them up by the roots, and the plants will continue to sprout in that location every year.


Wildflowers for the Garden

By Melanie F

In an era of growing sensitivity to environmental challenges, wildflowers can play an important role in the garden.

Wildflowers have a bad reputation because they compete with the gardener’s chosen flowers. Often, wildflowers compete so well because they are better suited to the environment than the flowers purchased from a nursery. Does it really make sense to raise cardinal flowers in an arid climate? Does it make sense to plant azaleas in clay soil? Sure, it can be done, by wasting water and wasting money on soil amendments. But doesn’t it make more sense to work with Mother Nature?

There is no shortage of lovely indigenous wildflowers that can be assets in the garden. One man’s weed is another man’s cultivar. In the United States, for example, goldenrod is often dismissed as a junk plant, growing amidst the untended brush. But that North American native is highly regarded in Europe, where it often sells for stiff prices in nurseries.

When planning your next flower garden, consider including -- intentionally -- a few wildflowers. Consider coneflowers for sunny spots, wood asters and native ferns for heavy shade, California poppies for drought-prone, low-nutrient soil. To get ideas about what wildflowers will work in your area, simply be observant. If yarrow is thriving along roadsides in your neighborhood, the odds are that it will do well in your garden, too.

Think outside the box. And you may just spend more time appreciating your garden and less time struggling to keep it alive.

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Sheri Ann Richerson
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