9 Tips to Grow Plants and Trees Faster

Hanging baskets bring gardens up to eye level, making a garden feel fuller and more complete. On the porch they create an immediate sense of welcome, while plants hanging outside windows create a connection between the indoor and outdoor worlds. Use them to dress up walls or decorate tree branches. The best plants for hanging baskets take advantage of their heightened locations, with trailing stems that cascade over a container’s edges. They also stand up to the challenging conditions of container life. Container plants need consistent moisture. Locate hanging baskets close to a water source and consider attaching a watering wand to the hose to extend your reach. Drip irrigation also works well for containers. Hanging baskets will likely need watering every day in the heat of summer. Try combining several varieties with similar needs, and experiment to find the best mix for your porch or patio.

If you want to learn How to Grow Rudraksha Tree in your garden, this guide will help you with all the necessary information!

There are two approaches to fertilization. First, have the soil analyzed by a reputable lab and follow the scientifically based recommendations. The second often referred to as “a general approach,” is to buy a bag of fertilizer and follow the instructions noted. The recommended method is to have the soil tested and analyzed. This informs us which nutrients are required and the specific amounts. This method is the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to approach fertilization. Soil test results provide us information on which nutrients are deficient and the quantity to add to help improve the tree’s health and production.

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

As the text on Boston Public’s Flickr photostream explains, Louis Prang (1824-1909) was a German immigrant whose highly successful Boston-area printing operation made high-quality prints and also, in the 1870s, began producing America’s first Christmas cards, virtually starting that tradition.But what caught my eye when Flickr-lurking friend Pam Kueber of the Retro Renovation blog passed me the Boston Public link, were juicy heirloom tomatoes (above) and tender portraits of familiar animals and local vegetation. Some of what I loved from the giant trove of riches you simply must “go” see is in the show below.Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows beside each caption. Enjoy!Giant thanks to Boston Public Lib

We’ll cover everything from what makes a good potting medium and how to read the labels of those bags at the garden centers, to why not just annuals but also perennials and even trees and shrubs belong in outdoors pots (a philosophy I call, “Hosta pot? Why not?”). Also on the agenda: overwintering tactics for “investment plants” so you can learn to extend your palette without breaking your budget. (Those are some examples in the photo shot by Bob, below, of Phormium and succulent pots in his garden. Want more pot ideas? All my container-garden stories can be browsed at this link.)And, of course, design and staging of pots in the landscape—speaking of which, the workshop includes a garden walk-through at my place. Featured plants–really special things from Landcraft Environments–will be available for purchase as well, so that registrants can get the raw materials for their own home creations.‘Contained Exuberance’ Details

Timing: Sometime in the second half of October, ideally about five weeks before frost is in the ground, I plant the biggest cloves from the biggest heads of my July-harvested crop.  (I eat the rest, whether while cooking up easy soups and tomato sauce to freeze in the late summer and fall, or through the winter from heads hung in net bags in my 45ish-degree barn loft, with some of the harvest peeled and frozen right now like this to use next spring and summer, when even the best-stored heads would have sprouted otherwise.)An expert 101 on how to plant garlic, and which type is best for your area. How deep? I poke the cloves, pointy side up, so that the tip is about 2 inches below the surface of the soil in my raised beds.  Mulching at planting time in areas with cold winters is recommended, so I simply layer on some leaf mold or composted stable bedding, which also helps come spring in weed control (it’s essential to keep garlic beds weed-free!).How far apart? Spacing is

Bob was VP of Horticulture at Brooklyn Botanic Garden before opening Loomis Creek Nursery a few minutes’ drive from me about 10 years ago.  He has since relocated to Portland, Oregon, and debuted a new container-garden business in 2013 in South Portland. It’s a 4,500-square-foot indoor-outdoor pop-up shop specializing in great containers, ready-to-go pot designs, and plants for containers, too, in collaboration with the until-now-wholesale-only growers at Xera Plants. (Bob still designs gardens, too–in a pot or not!)‘keep it simple’ doesn’t mean boringLET GO OF THE “IDEAL” that is so often seen in books, magazines, catalogs—the notion that you can have 7 or 9 or 10 kinds of plants in one container “all perfectly blooming in unison and perfectly coiffed,” as Bob describes this semi-fantasy.Let go of the notion, too, that annuals are exclusively what belong in pots.

As a policy, I don’t like to complain about winter. I’m hardy but herbaceous, inclined to hide quietly and regroup each offseason—happy for the downtime and change of scenery, happy for moisture in any form to recharge the system around me. But this is silly:The back door hasn’t opened since December; the front one will, but not the storm door just beyond. Just a single portal to the forbidding outer world beyond is operable, and it requires cardboard shims (below) to stay shut, the latch and strike plate no

A popular lecturer and author, Niki gardens in Halifax, Nova Scotia, producing harvests in all four seasons and not just your basic everyday edibles, either. I welcomed her back to the program to talk about a wacky wide range of things to grow this year—and especially about eight surprising substitutes for spinach, in case you crave the flavor but have trouble with spinach in some portion of your growing season, like maybe in the hottest part of summer. I learned that we can eat our hosta shoots (well, not if you want to look at the plants all season) and also purple hyacinth beans and more surprises.Plus: Enter to win a copy of “Veggie Garden Remix” at the bottom of the page.Read along as you listen to the Feb. 5, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).unusual edibles to grow, with niki jabbourQ. I see that you’re going to be in my area pretty soon, Niki. In March, I think you’

Craig is known to many as the NC Tomato Man and to others as the straw-bale gardening guy. But besides his expertise in both breeding tomatoes and writing a book about them—enter to win a copy of “Epic Tomatoes” in the comment box below—Craig also has an epic collection of seeds of heirloom eggplants and peppers. Shop the catalogs with us, from some new developments in greens, plus learn to grow beets unexpectedly from indoor sowings, and to succeed with eggplants and peppers, too. Craig shares his over-the-top dense planting method for seeds, and other tricks.Note about the audio: An undetected electrical short in the studio computer system caused background noise to be recorded along with our conversation, as if a radio was on in the distant background in places, and we apologize.Read along as you listen to the Jan. 8, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).seed shopping, plus growing eggplants and peppers,with craig lehoullierQ. Welcome back, Craig.A. It’s

Background: My keenest gardening friends–some really tough customers–make annual pilgrimages across Massachusetts to Dartmouth (not to be confused with the college in New Hampshire, but under an hour from Newport, and just a bit farther from Boston). They’d come back from Avant Gardens having outspent their budgets, with one gem after another packed into their cars.I eventually called owners Katherine and Chris Tracey, plant collectors since the 1980s (who have in recent years become seasonal sponsors on A Way to Garden, too). Katherine says the nursery was born “when it really got out of control with our hobby.”  They’ve got 25 years of nursery experience–selling both retail and mail-order—and a particular passion for foliage and especially succulents, two big loves of mine.Listen to our entire conversation on my public-r