Here are ways to keep your garden looking green
The garden is a great place in any home because not only does it on occasion supplement the diet of your family with greens, it also adds to the value of your home through its aesthetics.
Maintaining the robustness and fresh look of a garden is no easy feat, more so in these intensely hot summer months where the perky flowers might droop and the leaves wither away. It is, therefore, vital that you take into consideration these following tips that will leave you with an amazing garden.
Keep your eyes peeled when buying
One way your garden goes from healthy green to brown wilt is when you introduced a diseased plant into it.
Before the new plant is loaded into the hood of your car to bring back home, give it a look over to see if any of the parts look diseased.
The leaves should be green and not yellowing; the same applies to the stalks and twigs. The inspection should not only stop at the top end of the plant. You should also examine the roots.
They should be white and well spread over the interior of the pot holding the plant. If they are dark and soggy, this is not a sign of a healthy plant.
A collection of books and magazines on gardening will surely show you what the healthy plants look like both in the roots and the shoot.
Frequently water your plants
Water is life. No need saying that, but there, I did! Just to drive the point home. In these summer months, the blazing sun will dry up the soil in which your plants draw their water from. Not only that, the plants also lose a lot of water through their leaves via transpiration.
To replace this water, you should have sprinklers that frequently turn on to water the plants or you can use a watering can so as to manually relieve the thirst your herbaceous friends are facing.
Try to make sure that majority of the water gets into the soil and not on the leaves because the pathogens that cause disease absolutely love wet leaves. If you cannot avoid wetting the leaves, make sure that you water the plants at a time when the leaves will dry off quickly but the roots will have enough time to suck water.
Early mornings are a great time to do your watering.
Watch out for bugs feeding on the foliage of your garden
There is no avoiding bugs in your garden. However, not all the bugs you find are harmless; some of them actually feed on your plants, ruining the leaves.
Apart from ruining the leaves, there are some that infect the plant with diseases which can spread across the entire garden, wreaking havoc therein.
Consult your gardening books for the kinds and appearances of the bugs that destroy the particular plants that you have in your garden.
Prune the damaged stalks off the plant
When you notice that there are parts of the plant that are really damaged, you should cut them off. This will leave the plant looking healthy.
Apart from the aesthetics, pruning also prevents the spread of disease from the infected part to the rest of the plant and the rest of the garden as well.