All About Home and Garden

Buying plants from grower or nurseries is an easy way to start or enhance your garden. But, you don't want to buy problems. Taking a few minutes when you are picking out your plants, can save you lots of time and money. Buying unhealthy plants can either be a waste of money because they don't survive the transplanting, or they can bring insects and disease to your garden and cause you more time and expense to treat these on all your plants. Take a few minutes and look at these 7 areas to make sure you are getting healthy plants for your garden.

1. Leaves - This is the first and easiest area to look at to tell how healthy your plant is. Look for well formed leaves, a compact bushy growth is best. Yellowing leaves can be signs of pests, disease, or nutrient deficiency. Wilted leaves could be a temporary condition, possibly stressed by lack of water, but it could also be from regular neglect from nursery staff.

2. Color - A healthy plant should have consistent color across all the leaves. Look for the proper color for the plant. Not all plants leaves are green all year round. Do some research ahead of time and compare with other plants of the same variety at the nursery. Yellow or discolored leaves can be signs of pests, root problems, fungal infections and others. Avoid plants that don't have fresh properly colored leaves.

3. Stems and Branches - Check for scars or nicks in branches or stems. This can show damaged plants that could be future sites of disease or weakness. For bushy plants, you want to see lots of short stems and lots of leaves. Plants with spindly growth are indications of poor light conditions, poor pruning, or it has outgrown its pot.

4. Roots - A healthy plant should have a good set of roots, but not too many for the current pot. Don't be afraid to look at this before buying the plant, most reputable nurseries will be glad to help you with this if you are not sure how to check. Roots should always be firm, well formed and hold the soil together. There should be a good balance of roots to soil. Too much soil and little roots, means recently repotted. Very little soil and mostly roots means the plant has outgrown its container. Either case will put increased stress on plant when it is transplanted.

5. Soil - The soil for a healthy plant should be moist. Poke your finger into the soil about 1 inch and check below the surface. If the soil is too dry or too wet, you may already have root damage. As mentioned in the roots section, you need to make sure of a good balance of roots to soil. Avoid plants that are either 25% or less soil as this is a sign of too many roots and 75% or more soil as this is a sign of too few roots.

6. Pests and diseases - Look for signs of pests or disease like chewed leaves, sticky residues, webs, or leaf distortion, spots and mushy leaves. These are all signs of stressed plants that will not transplant well, but they can also bring these bugs or diseases back to your garden.

7. Buds or Flowers - Ideally, you want to buy your plants before they start to flower. Plants expend a lot of energy to create the flowers, so transplanting them during this time will create additional stress on the plant. The best time to buy these plants is just before they start to bud, or with a few buds.

With these tips, you should be able to find strong healthy plants that will quickly adapt and be a welcome addition to your garden. If there is any doubt put it back and keep looking. This advice will save you money and time and allow you to enjoy your garden for years to come.

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Shade can be the bane of gardener's lives. Several years ago I moved from a garden that received full sun (and I could hardly find any shade in summer) to one that was shady. It was very frustrating as I had to adjust to the fact that I could not grow my favourite summer annuals. But I began to realise I could grow other things beside impatiens. I brought 6 inch pots (14cm) or tubes 3 inch (7cm) because they were cheaper and they recover from transplant shock quicker. I brought a Cheiranthus sp. (Wallflower), a new mini cultivar Abutilon (Chinese lantern), of a course Daphne odora plus lots of Helleborus sp.

There are a couple of basic rules for successful gardening in the shade. The first is chose plants that suit the position. It is no good putting full-sun plants in shady positions because they need light to provide them with energy to grow. They will struggle and cause lots of disappointment. The second is to remember that the summer sun is higher in the sky than in winter. That means in summer a garden bed might be in full sun and in winter receive none. So you need plants that can tolerate these huge variations. In the front garden I had roses and in winter they only receive mid day sun. Deciduous plants suit this situation perfectly.

Understanding the type of shade you have in your garden is the trick to your success. There are different types of shade for example there is deep shade often down the side of the house or under trees, light shade and dappled shade. If you are struggling with deep shade and nothing will grow, accept defeat gracefully and mulch. Light shade is where there is some illumination and plants with low light requirements will grow there. Dapple shade is where the light filters through the canopy and receives some sunlight during the day. If you are creating a bed under trees, be aware that some trees such as gum tree secrete allopathic chemicals to limit competition. You also need to be careful of building up the soil level around the trunk as you could inadvertently kill the tree. You should be able to see the flare of the trunk at the base. This is a sign that the ground level hasn't been altered. By raising the soil level around the base, you are not only encouraging the collar rot (a fungal disease) you are starving the surface roots of oxygen. This could cause the tree to die. Lemon trees take about 5 years to die.

Finding plants for shady spots is difficult so that is why I dug out some of my favourites and took cuttings of others. I dug out a couple of shade loving salvia's and a delphinium which I moved rather hastily to my new house. A word of warning when you move into a new place theoretically you should observe the garden for at least a year before you do any major alterations. But I didn't have time, so I quickly worked out the east and west sun, plonk them in and hoped for the best. Well the Salvia miniata and S. forskaohlei were absolutely fine. S. miniata has the most beautiful glossy leaves with the most brilliant bright red flowers, great for adding colour in a dark area and S. forskaohlei has the most wonderful mauve with white dots on the throat and a bonus it will self seed. The Delphinium requienii also survived and is an absolute boomer in the shade sending up lovely purple flowers and lots of seed.

Shady areas can be dull and another trick is to put variegated foliage plants such as Aucuba japonica 'Variegata' at strategic points. The lime green leaves will brighten up a dark corner and when the sun shines on them will dazzle you for a moment.

Finally, here are some not so common plants (but obtainable) that will tolerate shade: Nicotiana 'Prelude Mix', Tornia 'Blue', Hosta sp., Streptocarpus saxorum, Sarcococca ruscifolia, Mahonia sp. Euphoribia sp., Fuchsia sp., Mackaya bella, Murraya paniculate and Eupatorium megalophyllum. Clivia miniata will survive superbly in dry shade. Except for the clivia you will need to visit your local nursery and ask them to order the above plants in for you.

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In addition to oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, anthurium flowers like practically all other varieties of plants demand thirteen elements to live. A lot of these elements are only essential in trace amounts, but there are half a dozen elements that are required in greater portions and hence are deemed macro nutrients. They're: nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium; and magnesium, sulfur and calcium. In this posting, I am about to take a look at the most important macronutrients: potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorous.

Nitrogen happens to be an inert gas that makes up roughly 78% of the air we inhale. Can you believe that there's much more nitrogen within the atmosphere than oxygen? Anyway, nitrogen is extremely important to plants. It helps them to grow bigger, with out it your plants will probably be stunted. Yet plants don't use gaseous nitrogen they usually call for it to be fixated or coupled with other components. Most of the time microbes are usually accountable for fixing nitrogen.

Phosphorus in the pure form is very reactive and really dangerous. Luckily it is not found within this form normally. It's quite important to cellular membranes. Without having it cells in all plants and animals would expire. Vegetation suck plenty of phosphorus out from the earth therefore fertilizers contain huge amounts of it. It governs the growth rate of plants and if it isn't provided, crops will certainly quit thriving. A small deficit will result in stunting of anthurium plants, while a serious insufficiency will cause necrosis of the foliage.

Potassium is quite comparable to sodium and in elemental form it is going to liberate hydrogen gas if dropped in h2o. The heat generated from this reaction may then spark the hydrogen. A lack of potassium will cause the foliage of the plant to become yellow. If the insufficiency is extreme enough the yellowish areas will at some point become necrotic and the leaf may expire.

So that is just about all there is to it. These happen to be the essential macro nutrients that most anthurium plants require. Without them your plant will quit growing and producing blossoms and could even pass away. So ensure that your anthurium gets these nutrients. And it most likely is actually a very good idea for you personally to receive these nutrients as well, but needless to say we have to get these kinds of nutrients via food, definitely not from a bag of fertilizer.

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