How To Plant Celosia

Last fall I attended a dinner where the host used a huge garden carrot as the centerpiece. The spring after my cutting celery made seeds, I had hundreds of volunteer celery seedlings around the compost pile.

Alternatively, use sheets of cardboard. Regularly sharpen your hoe so that the blade slices through weeds like a knife. Remain Vigilant With the ground cleared it's important to act quickly to remove any resurfacing weeds.

Mulch thinly with grass clippings every week or two throughout the summer. Using them to mulch around established fruit trees and bushes or perennial vegetables is usually fine however.

I love the way plants stack up in a hillside garden, layer upon layer, so that it looks even more lush than it really is. Very steep slopes that require steps to navigate need beds that sit atop one another and must be maintained from the sides, while...

When I do use compost to top-dress fall veggies, I place old boards or pieces of weathered cardboard along the edges of the bed to provide shelter for fall crickets , which eat weed seeds for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The easiest way to coax those final fruits to ripen is to make life more stressful for your plants. Fellow blogger Barbara Pleasant recommends gathering the first fruits of the season before they are mature, at the ‘breaker' stage when they show the...

It's better to use a more powerful tool and make a clean cut than to struggle to force the blade of a lightweight tool through a thick branch. Avoid removing branches that are less than three years old unless you have to.

Arrange the chili peppers by spacing them out in a spiral formation – each chili should be offset about 30 to 60 degrees from the previous one. Gloves will shield your hands from the fiery fruits, so once you're done harvesting you can whip them off...

Another option is to use a portable tank to cart water to where it'll be dispensed. Allow the water to completely drain away, then fill and drain once again before you sow. Protecting Seedlings from Drought and Heat Drought can play havoc with seedlings,...

A small pot just 30cm (one foot) tall and wide can hold one potato plant, while larger containers up to the size of a trash can could hold up to four. Apply an occasional feed of liquid fertilizer ( home-made fertilizers are great for this purpose).

I'm using a sharp pair of pruners for the job, but if the fruits are really close to each other you may find it easier to use scissors to get in between them. We need to thin them to just one or two fruits per cluster.

Grow some of them next to the greenhouse door to tempt these beneficial bugs closer. Once these are devoured, the whitefly turns black and just over a week later, adult Encarsia hatch out to go on a morbid hunt for their next victims.

Keep on Picking to Keep Plants Producing The first rule with any fruit or pod-producing vegetable is to keep up with the picking. Leave those zucchinis to swell into marrows and you'll inadvertently slow the initiation of new flowers and fruits.

With no predators and no existing pests, this creates a gap in your garden's ecosystem for other pests to surge in unchecked, meaning you need to apply ever more pesticides just to keep on top of the problem.

Cabbages can be started in pots under cover for an earlier start Their roots prefer firm soil, so prepare seedbeds by treading on the ground in a shuffling motion before raking to a fine tilth for sowing.

Make the most of late summer's abundance by seeking out imaginative recipes to turn any gluts into delicious drinks. Consider the look and feel of the bench, which will become a feature in its own right.

Some of the newest daikons are purple rather than white or green. Watermelon radishes have stiff, serrated leaves that resemble those of turnip, and the only tricks to growing them are to plant them early enough so they mature before cold weather, and...

No matter how meticulous you are with planning crop timings, there's always going to be a hardcore of homegrown hooligans that arrive en masse, intimidating gardeners with more fresh produce than can be coped with! Common culprits include the likes of...

The roots will push up as they gain size, and garden-grown rutabagas tend to be more top-shaped than round. I like to sidestep hot summer sun by starting the seedlings indoors and setting them out when it's cloudy, but the seeds are such willing germinators...

It'll save you money, closes the loop on your growing but, above all, it's delightfully satisfying. Once the plant displays its fluffy seed heads, pull it out of the ground and hang it upside down indoors to dry.

Bold, bright and distinctive, these plants feature unusually shaped clusters of blooms that sit proudly atop tall, slender stems. They grow as perennials in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 10 through 12, and as annuals elsewhere.

You may have heard that nicking plant seeds before attempting to germinate them is a good idea. Most plants in thefamilies also have impermeable seed coats and will germinate better after scarification.Seeds that have a low germination rate or that are...

When you go out to collect seeds from the plants at the end of the flowering season, you may find that the seed pods are soggy. However, dampness is the number one enemy of seeds, so you have to act immediately to save what you can.freestar.queue.push(function()...

These seeds are designed to carry the plant's genetic material on in the form of new plants. While some of these may offer a nice surprise, at other times they can become a nuisance.

Dip your cuttings in this solution just before planting.freestar.queue.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-300x250-ATF-1"); });Not all natural rooting methods involve mixing up a solution.

The plantable pot can absorb some water, so it may be necessary to increase watering depending on the type used. How long it takes the container to degrade, climate, soil, and cost.freestar.queue.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-300x250-ATF-1");...

Either way, water only enough to keep the potting mix slightly damp.Some gardeners prefer not to cover seed trays, while others use plastic wrap or a dome cover. If you water from the top, be sure not to water seedlings directly.