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Do you want plants in your yard that thrive? There are many elements to a lush garden. There is much fun and much work involved in gardening. Here are a collection of nifty little horticulture tips that will make the your time spent outside more fun and less demanding.

The handles on your gardening tools can be used as a convenient measuring instrument. Tools that can be used for more than one task are quite handy to own. Lay the tools down on the floor, then place a measuring tape along the handle. With a permanent marker, note pertinent measurements on the tool handle. You will never find yourself looking for a ruler thanks to this simple tip.

The first thing you can do to avoid pests is to start with healthy soil in your garden. If you are producing healthy plants, they will be stronger and better able to resist bugs and diseases. If you start with balanced soil, your garden will produce healthy plants with the best yield. Refrain from using chemicals since these will increase the salt content of the soil.

Do a soil analysis prior to planting. An inexpensive soil report can be used to adjust soil nutrients to optimum levels, which will ensure your garden thrives. Before you ruin any crops, make sure you do this. Soil can be analyzed at a lot of cooperative extension offices, so make sure you plan accordingly.

It is very important to keep the weeds from taking over in your garden. Weeds steal nutrients from plants, robbing a garden of its potential harvest. For this task, try using white vinegar. Use it instead of chemical solutions to kill weeds. Load up your spray bottle with some white vinegar, and spray the weeds away instead of breaking your back removing them by hand.

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Vegetable plants should be planted where they can benefit from a minimum of six hours of sunlight every day. Almost all vegetables need this much sunlight, so that they can grow correctly and in a shorter amount of time. This is true of some flowers.

Be sure your garden is fertilized. Manure is great in enabling plants to grow, although it's vital to use commercially composted products in order to lessen the risk of a variety of pathogens. It is important that you use some sort of fertilizer, although it doesn't really matter which variety you choose.

Another way to help them grow is by watering them with the liquid that is left from cooking vegetables. In order to help acidify the soil for plants like gardenias and rhododendrons, you can use coffee and tea grounds. If your garden has a fungus problem, a highly effective treatment method is to sprinkle it with chamomile tea.

Prevent damage from the sun by making sure you dress correctly whenever you go outside to garden. Wear wide-brimmed hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen. Protecting yourself from the sun will lower the possibility of sunburn and skin cancer.

Add aspirin to your plants to help them fight sickness. Try dissolving around one and one half aspirins into around 2 gallons of water for your plants. You can easily spray the plans with this concoction to help them fight of disease. Spraying should be one time every three weeks.

Get more value out of your property. Landscaping your yard will bring you a big return on your investment. Investing in plants can raise the value of your property by 20%, or sometimes even more. The plants you buy should be able to withstand normal regional weather conditions.

One of the more rewarding hobbies is organic horticulture. Any form of horticulture gives a basic outline for all others; teaching you the general methodology behind sewing, planting, and harvesting properly.

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Make sure you actually take a look under the surface of the dirt at the roots of your plants before you transplant anything into your garden. When you are buying seedlings for tomatoes, look at the roots as well as the green parts. As time goes by, the starts will begin to fall off, but you shouldn't transplant your seedlings until this happens.

A good tip for an organic garden with tomatoes, is to plant an additional set of tomatoes once three weeks have passed since you planted the original ones. The reason is, this will prevent your entire harvest from coming in all at once. Also, if something goes wrong during one harvest, all your tomatoes won't be ruined.

You need to mulch your flowerbed and garden using at least 3 inches worth of organic material. You will ensure your garden will be nourished by keeping moisture inside the soil, thus creating a neater appearance of your garden, and repelling weed growth.

Using a soaker hose to water the garden is probably your best choice. This type of hose allows the gardener to get a small, but steady amount of water near the roots without getting the leaves wet constantly. Compared with sprinklers, a soaker hose wastes less water and is far more convenient to use.

With these tips, you're better equipped to grow the most beautiful garden you can imagine. In learning how to create your dream garden, you'll also be growing as a person. That's because learning how to nurture your plants will not only help you reach the goal of having a great garden, but it will help you learn to nurture yourself.