Here are some great ways to create beautiful container gardens and growing your flowers, vegetables or fruits in plastic, terracotta or clay pots.

Don’t have the time or space to manage a complete garden? One simple way to enjoy beautiful flowers (and even vegetables!) is to start some container gardens around your home. If you have a deck, consider adding window boxes around the perimeter. Flowers planted in these will look great all summer long with minimal maintenance.

What to Fill Plant Pots With

Start with a pot in a color you like- and make sure it has good drainage and a pot liner beneath it. You can put some small rocks or broken shards of an old terracotta pot in the bottom, to add additional drainage. Fill the pot ¾ of the way with a well-fertilized potting soil. At this time you can also add plant food sticks to the soil if you’d like. Now add your plants, tucking them in gently with some additional potting soil and water well.

Best Plants for Pots

Many plants thrive in container gardens, but some of the best plants (the kind that really spill down the sides and look fantastic!) include:

• Lantana – comes in a bunch of varieties- primarily reds, yellows, and oranges, is drought tolerant, grows well from May to October, loves sun.
• Verbena – comes in pinks, purples or reds, drought tolerant, grows May to October, loves sun.
• Petunias – come in a million colors (try the tiny “Million Bells” variety), not picky about sun or shade, hangs well.
• Spike – a must-have to give height to the back of your container arrangement.
• Nasturtium – gorgeous colors, love sun, smell great- and are edible!
• Impatiens – a must for the shade container. Any color, they last forever, may even self-seed on the ground and surprise you next year.
• Sweet potato vine – gorgeous foliage, stunning hanging down the front of your container.
• Herbs – a huge variety of herbs can be grown in containers and may help you keep them- well, ‘contained’!
• Fruits/vegetables – strawberries are the classic container plant and come back year after year; cherry tomatoes, and even carrots or onions can be grown in containers – be creative!

Water your containers a few times a week if there is no rain, and add a good flower food once a week to your water to create a gorgeous, long-lasting container garden. Pots and other containers can be placed on porches, near windows inside the house, or around the corners of your deck or patio. They are great for adding color to a spot in a garden that ‘needs something,’ and they can be moved around for when you are entertaining in a certain area.

Container gardens will bring you colorful enjoyment through the summer and into fall.

It is easy to build a perennial plants garden if you have an unlimited budget. With time and patience you can create the same floral landscape for very little money.

Garden centers offer a huge variety of plants to choose from and books to help you design a beautiful botanical show of colors and textures for sun and shade, but the cost of creating a perfect garden showplace can be prohibitive. Here is how you can create the same sanctuary for very little cash.

Dividing Perennial Plants

Perennial plants are a great investment. They come back year after year, require very little maintenance, and every year, perennials typically become bigger and better. But if you have limited growing space in your yard, bigger is not necessarily better.

You may eventually have to split some of your plants to keep them at a size that works for your space . This tendency of perennials to occasionally need downsizing can be exploited to help you build a virtually free and literally fantastic garden.

Using Your Own Perennials

Over several growing seasons you can split your own plants and use the extra stock to fill in other areas of your yard with more of that same variety. For example, it is very simple to slowly fill in a fence line with black-eyed susans, which both reseed and occasionally need dividing. Just a few plants spaced sparsely the first year can fill in, over the course of just a couple growing seasons, to become a solid wall of fall color that comes back year after year.

Trade with Neighbors

You may not want more of the same in your garden, and this is where it pays to make friends with your gardening neighbors. Other gardeners will also occasionally have plants that need dividing (and you’ll need something to do with the black-eyed susans that will soon be overpopulating your yard).

Let other gardeners in the neighborhood know which plants you may be dividing and giving away this growing season and ask them to share any extra perennials that they may have on hand. Many perennials spread aggressively, and gardeners are often happy to get the extras off their hands.

Join a Garden Club

Garden clubs are a great way to expand your collection of plants, particularly the rare and interesting varieties that serious gardeners are more likely to take on. These clubs meet regularly and exchange helpful information, sometimes organize trips to tour area gardens or state and national botanical gardens, and best of all, garden clubs frequently have plant swaps!

Gardening Knowledge on the Cheap

You really don’t need to purchase expensive tomes to increase your gardening expertise. Your local library may have dozens of gardening books and the internet is also an excellent free resource. Garden club members often share books and magazine subscriptions as well.

So, although you will not be able to create a spectacularly garden instantly by dividing and swapping plants, you will, over time, be able to achieve this goal with patience and a little effort. And isn’t this what gardening is all about?

Indoor gardens offer a year round experience for experienced and novice gardeners alike. With a completely controlled environment anything can be grown.

One of the reasons for having an indoor garden is to have all year long a varieties of plants that can be grown in one place. The advantages of having an indoor garden are many, while the disadvantages are few. Putting together a simple indoor garden can be done with ease, just like a bed from IKEA.

How to Start an Indoor Garden

The ability to control the environment is the number one reason when you want to build an indoor garden, whether it is a greenhouse, solarium, or a porch. With the ability to control temperature, humidity, light, and soil there is no vegetable, herb or flower that can’t be grown indoors. Indoor gardening has become quite popular in recent years in urban areas due to the lack of access to planting areas. Container gardens can be utilized on even the most compact apartment balcony or in extreme cases a south facing windowsill.

The design of an indoor growing space can be both aesthetic and practical at the same time. When it comes to aesthetic & practicality, vertical interior gardens have become popular due to limited space people have in their home. The indoor hydroponic gardens have also started to get traction thanks to the lack of using soil for growing crops.

So with almost no restrictions to the plants you can grow in an indoor garden, you can start considering what type you want. From flower gardens, vegetable gardens to water gardens, or any combination of these. In the end, the only limitation you might be face is your available space, but that also can be overcome with a clever design ideas.

Things to Consider for an Indoor Garden

Before starting with your indoor garden you should first consider some things first:

• Do you have enough space for a garden?
• Where are you going to place it?
• What plants are you going to grow?
• What type of planting system are you going to use?
• What type of light source will the garden have?
• How will the temperature be controlled?

First things first, you have to take into consideration where are you going to set up and install the indoor garden. If it is a small place like an apartment then you are probably going to go with a vertical indoor garden. If you have a house then you can go with the traditional one and if you want it to be place outside then you have to go with a greenhouse. All in all it all comes down to the size of property and budget. If a greenhouse is the choice do some shopping around and check out the different types available. If the choice is a front porch or other room with large windows space planning will be key.

After deciding on the place to install the garden you can start thinking about what plants to grow. Although there are no limitations to the type of plants that can grow in an indoor setting the easiest ones are those with small root systems simply because large root systems may outgrow the container where they are planted. A good rule of thumb is to have a container that is one gallon for each foot of height that the plant will reach. Vegetable and herb gardens can be grown indoors.

An important thing to decide when planning an indoor garden is the growing medium, either traditional soil or hydroponic. Both have their pros and cons. As always, it comes down to your budget. A hydroponic system will be more costly initially and will require more maintenance and diligent use of water soluble plant foods. The traditional soil garden needs only containers, which can range from reclaimed milk jugs to fully built square foot gardening tables, and standard fertilizer.

The lightning plays an important part for any garden and growing houseplants. It is an essential environmental factor affecting plant growth and development. If the choice of room provides adequate light year round then there is no need to augment it with grow lights. If lighting is needed it can usually be purchased at a local home improvement store at a much better price than at the garden shop.

Like the growing medium and lightning, another essential factor for any garden is the temperature. Plants will only germinate under certain conditions. It is advisable to have a heating source that can be controlled to help plants better germinate as this will keep soil temperatures constant while allowing for a slightly cooler air temperature. Depending on the type and placement of a garden within a home the temperature may fluctuate throughout the year. For a vegetable garden it is just as easy to vary the climate for seasonal vegetables as it would be to have them outdoors

Helpful advice for the beginner gardeners on which plants to start with and how best to harvest, prepare and save the seeds for a disease-free garden next year.

For a gardener the most productive and cost effective way for planting vegetables is to use the saved seeds from previous years. There are a couple of vegetable that produce the same seeds each season as planted, don’t require pollinating and won‘t cross-pollinate. Some of these vegetables are cucumbers, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas and many more.

As a good gardener be mindful of always harvesting seeds from the best looking and tasteful plants available. Always be on the lookout for healthy disease-free plants with the best qualities. The ones that have the most flavorful vegetables or beautiful flowers have a better chance of giving you seeds that will results in the same plants next year. Always wait until near the end of their production season to save fruit for seed because only then the seeds will get be best nutrition and will be ripe for harvesting. Seeds are mature when flowers are faded and dry or have puffy tops.

How to Harvest and Save Tomato Seeds

Before harvesting tomatoes for saving seeds allow tomatoes to completely ripen. After harvesting, slice the tomato in half and squeeze or use a spoon to scoop out the pulp and seeds and place them in a jar or a transparent container. Add water over them and swirl a bit. Set it aside for a couple of days until the residue and the dead seeds will rise and collect on the top of the water. After the water clears up and the good seeds sink to the bottom pour the water through a strainer to catch the seeds. Place the seeds on a white paper towel for drying.

Harvest and Save Pepper Seeds

If you want to plant different varieties of peppers make sure they are at least 50 feet apart to ensure purity. If not, don’t bother harvesting the hybrid ones because their seeds will likely won‘t grow true to the original parent plant. To harvest viable pepper seeds for saving, make sure that your peppers have matured and turned red. If frost threatens, harvest the peppers and place them in a dry location until peppers mature. Cut open mature peppers, scoop out the seeds and place them in a container. Add water and let them for a couple of days until the dead seeds collect on top. Remove the dead seeds and strain the water. Lay the viable seeds out in a single layer on white paper towels until the seeds have thoroughly dried.

How to Save Pumpkin and Cucumber Seeds for Planting

Being in the same family pumpkins and cucumbers have a similar method of harvesting and saving seeds for planting next year. Choose the ones that have are not hybrid because their seeds will not reproduce a true copy of the parent plant. Both plants are completely ripe with ready to pluck mature seeds when their fruit is orange or yellow. Next step is to cut them open and scoop out the pulp and the seeds. Remove the excess pulp and place them in a container filled with water. The float “test” helps with identifying the dead seeds and cleaning seeds that have recently been removed. Spread and place the good seeds on a screen or on paper towels to dry thoroughly. You can check which seeds are dry/hollow by gently blowing over them to see which ones move.

How to Save Beans and Peas Seeds

Toward the end of the season and while healthy bean and pea pods are still being formed, allow the pods on some plants to dry yellowish/brown before harvesting. This is about six weeks after eating stage for beans and four for peas. If frost threatens, pull the entire plant, and hang in a cool, dry location until the pods are yellowish/brown in color and the skin is dry. Before planting any seeds, you can do a float test to check which seeds viable and which are dead.

Storing Seeds

Before starting to store any seeds, be sure to check them if they are sufficiently dehydrated. If the seeds bend instead of snapping then it means they have to still dry for some time. When they are dry enough you can start storing the seeds in simple paper envelopes which can then be labeled accordingly.

Small mason jars with lids that have holes also work well for storing seeds. Of course the jars have to stored in a place that is a cool, dry, and dark where the temperatures remains fairly stable.

A few weeks before planting time perform a test germination of saved seeds by placing them in a germination jar or wrapped in a moist paper towel and keep it near a warm place until germination starts.

Proper pruning methods can increase fruit and flower production, and discourage diseases by increasing air circulation and allowing light to reach the plant. Trimming accomplishes more than improving the appearance of plants . When organic gardeners administer the right pruning methods at the right time of year, they can improve plant health without the use of a single chemical or pesticide.

The Right Tool for the Job

While gardeners can purchase a pair of garden clippers for under $10 at the local big box store, a quality pair of pruning shears or an electric saw is a delight to use. You can use a pair of anvil clippers for lightweight stems like rose canes, a set of heavy loppers for the small greenstick branches you find on hydrangeas or butterfly bushes, and a small handsaw for tree branches. Organic gardeners managing arthritis can buy ratcheting clippers, which require minimal hand strength for operation.

Fruit Tree Pruning

Pruning fruit trees in the late winter, early spring before bloom, but you can prune dead or damaged branches any time of the year. The goal of fruit tree pruning is to allow more light and air into the interior of the tree, to increase fruiting and reduce fungal diseases. Never top a tree by pruning the central leader, or you’ll permanently stunt its growth.

If you’re unsure how to prune your apple, peach, fig or other fruit tree, here’s a tip , aim for a herringbone effect. In other words, remove branches growing from above or beneath the primary branch, and leave side branches alone. If you live in a climate affected by heavy snows or ice storms, consider trimming any branches growing at a 90-degree angle from the trunk. These structurally weak branches are the first to break in bad weather.

Pruning Shrubs & Bushes

The best time to prune spring-flowering shrubs or bushes is right after flowering. If you trim when the shrub is still dormant, in the late winter or early spring, you’ll reduce the beauty of the flower show. Spring flowering shrubs include lilacs, azaleas, forsythia, and viburnum.

Prune summer bloomers, such as butterfly bush and rose of Sharon, late in the winter season. These shrubs bloom on new wood and pruning encourages the formation of new flowering shoots.

Prune all broken branches and suckers. You can recognize suckers as vigorous-looking branches that sprout a few inches away from the parent plant. Suckers detract from the tidy appearance of the shrub, and weaken the parent plant by diverting nutrients. If you wish to train your shrubs into a hedge, keep the base of the hedge wider than the top. This decreases the chance of snow building up on the flat surface of the hedge and causing damage.

Pruning Roses

The best time to prune roses is in the early spring, when the buds on the canes have begun to swell. Remove any crossing canes, and any weak canes smaller than a pencil’s circumference. Make sure you trim above an outward-facing bud, to encourage an open, vase-shaped growth pattern. In the past, rose experts advised painting each cut with glue or sealant to prevent cane borers from entering the plant. This isn’t necessary, as long as you make a clean cut with a well-sharpened pruning tool. Ragged cuts heal poorly if at all, and borers seek these crushed stems for their homes.