Choosing and Planting Perennials

If you've been growing a vegetable garden for a while, you might feel a bit unhappy about how unusual it is to look at. I too started my career in gardening a vegetable garden, but I decided it was not as enjoyable to watch as I would have liked. I heard from a friend that the use of perennial flowers can be a great way to liven up my garden without adding extra work for me.

Perennial flowers are strong local flowers that come back every year without being replanted or no work to do. During their off seasons, the flowers and stems die off and you can hardly even tell the plant is there (instead of just dying and looking like hideous brown clumps in your garden). When it is time to bloom, entirely new flowers shoot where the old were.

Before deciding whether to put perennials or not, you must ensure that your soil has good drainage. If the water stays saturated for long periods of time, you build a raised bed. To test, dig a hole and fill it with water. Wait one day and then refill with water. All traces of water should be gone within 10 hours. If the hole is not completely dry, you need to build a raised bed.

Picking your perennials can be a complicated process. The aim should be to make them bloom as much as possible during the year, so you should provide an overview of the year. Examine the different types of flower you want, and create a timeline of flowering. If you plan well, you can use a different type of flower blooming at any point in the year. The right mixture of seeds can give your yard a constantly changing array of colors.

If you go to buy the seeds from your local florist or nursery, you may find a custom seed mixture for your area. This takes the really tough research part of the job. Usually these blends are optimized for the local climate, and do many jobs have flowers always grow in your garden. If any of these are not available, please ask the staff what they think would be a good mix. They should be happy to help you along something that will be optimal for what you want.

You should definitely use mulch when planting perennials. This reduces the total amount of work you need to do by reducing the amount of weeds and increase water retention. Bark or pine needles work great, I have found, and depending on the rest of your yard you have them handy at no extra cost. What fertilizer should you sparingly once your plants start to come alive.

When you actually plant the seeds, you need them in small, separate clumps according to the guidelines. This is because they tend to spread out, and if you have too many too close together they will end up doing, but nothing out each other asphyxiation. As you plant them, throw in a bit of extremely weak fertilizer. In no time at all you should start to see flowers blooming up.