At Brookstone Park Apartments in Covington, Louisiana, nothing is more important to us than your health, happiness, and overall well-being. We offer these informative blogs as a way to enhance your lifestyle beyond the scope of the physical features and services that we provide in our beautiful and welcoming community.
Speaking of enhancing your lifestyle, everyone must start somewhere when beginning a new hobby! So, if you’re looking to brush up on your gardening skills and make it one of your favorite past-times, you should start by refining your green thumb. Check out these tricks below to get yourself started with a new or developing hobby:
Choose the right plants for your soil. Before you buy any plants, check your soil type you have on-hand: is it light and sandy, or heavy and clay? Many plants thrive better in one type than the other. If you’re not sure, take a look at what plants are growing in your neighbor’s garden.
Give the plants enough space. Don’t be tempted by the displays at the garden center and buy too many plants for the size of your garden bed. If you place young plants too close together, not all will survive, and if they do, they will need more frequent watering and fertilizer.
Be gentle with new plants. If you remove new plants from their pots by pulling their stems, you’re likely to break or bruise them. Instead, gently squeeze the pot sides and turn it upside-down, using your other hand to catch the plant as it slides out.
Soak your roots. Thoroughly soak the roots of a new plant before you put it in the soil. Also, make sure the hole is bigger than the root ball before you attempt to put it in. A plant’s roots need to be able to spread to obtain moisture and absorb the soil’s nutrients.
Water your plants mindfully. Plants are designed to live outside and to draw natural moisture from the earth without the need for daily artificial irrigation. As a rough guide, poke your fingers about two inches into the soil around the plant. If it’s very dry, add some water, but if it isn’t, step away from the plant!
Be brutal with weeds. It’s important to learn early on that weeds are a gardener’s worst enemy. Weed regularly and make sure you remove all their roots. If there are seeds clinging to the weeds, don’t put them in the compost heap, as you’ll end up re-seeding your weeds when you spread the compost.