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The Ultimate Orchid Care Guide

April 17th, 2009

The Ultimate Orchid Care Guide

If you are crazy about orchids, you have come to the right place and you better take off your sandals because you re standing on holy ground when it comes to Orchids care tips. Caring for orchids is actually an ancient custom, as people have been growing and harvesting orchids for hundreds of years. With so many different species of orchids growing in so many different climates, the different types of care are too numerous to mention. However, there are a number of general care tips and techniques that will hold true for most of the orchid species that are commonly grown.

Although these flowers are naturally wild plants and they grow in numbers in one area, growing orchids, as growing any plant successfully, is a task that can be easy but must be approached with care. Beginning orchid growers will usually find that they can keep their plant alive and green and even growing, but they have trouble getting it to bloom well or none at all. That s why, for those who are tyros, they can try to learn how to grow and take care of orchids by choosing the correct type first. For the tyros, they can choose either Cymbidium, Denrobiums, Phalaenopsis and the Vanda. Of the four types of orchids shown above, the third one or Phlaenopsis can be easy to grow because in the Philippines, particularly in Davao, they can grow wildly in great numbers without human intervention. But to make them grow the way you want, you can learn how to do some proper caring tips right in your own home with the help of an appropriate Orchid care book guide.

But the only problem is, where can you seek the right Orchid care book guide? Well, you can go for the conventional leg and drive approach or you can go to the Internet and find a site that promotes an Orchid care book guide for orchid lovers.

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Roses 101

March 31st, 2009

Beginning gardening is the best project to start in spring, because it gives you the opportunity to learn all about roses and how to grow them.

 

Roses 101
by National Gardening Association Editors

Rose

 With their great beauty, tremendous variety, and luscious scent, it’s easy to become passionate about those all-time favorites, roses. For many, roses are the symbol of a well-cared-for home, evoking images of that picket-fenced cottage awash with rambling roses. Like Oscar Wilde, who could "resist anything except temptation," those who give in to the temptation of roses are richly rewarded. In addition to being beautiful flowers for arrangements, roses lend themselves to a wide variety of crafts, providing everything from petals for creating potpourri, to the vitamin C-rich seed pods (called rose hips) for rose hip tea.

If you decide to plant a rose garden, do it with the understanding that, as with all temptations, there will be a price to pay. To do what they do so well–namely, produce quantities of beautiful, fragrant flowers–roses need special attention. Although it’s possible to mix any number of roses in with a shrub border, it’s far easier to be lavish with that attention if they are segregated in a small bed. Ten to 12 rose bushes will make a magnificent display, provide plenty of flowers for cutting, and require a bed only 8 feet by 12 feet or so. Any shape of bed will do, but generations of gardeners have favored the formal look of square, rectangular, or round beds, edged with stone or brick, often with a birdbath or sundial placed in the center for a little added interest.

When choosing roses, it’s helpful to know some of the terminology and uses:

Hybrid tea roses.

These are tall, long-stemmed roses ideal for cutting. They are usually the kind you send from the florist. In the garden, they are often featured as single specimens.

Floribundas.

Developed during the last century, these roses are shorter and bloom more freely, setting clusters of blossoms rather than a single bloom on a stem.

Shrub or landscape roses.

These can be tall or kept trimmed. They can be treated like a hedge and bloom from spring through fall. Their foliage fills in. They are spaced 18 inches apart in cool climates; 24 to 36 inches apart in warmer climates.

These roses have changed the way many people view roses. Landscape roses, especially when compared with traditional varieties, are impressive for many reasons: their natural disease-resistance, their willingness to grow in a variety of climates with a minimum of attention from the gardener, their compact growth habit (very little pruning required), not to mention the great beauty of their flowers, which are borne consistently over a very long season.

Tree roses.

These elegant roses grow in a cluster at the top of a stake. Miniatures grow 18 inches high; patio varieties 24 inches; and full tree roses 36 inches high. Tall ones can frame a doorway or line a walk. Smaller varieties can be grown in containers on the patio or porch.

Patio roses.

These grow two to four feet tall, bloom all season, and are well suited to growing in containers in small spaces. Sometimes they are planted in hedges as foundation covers. The foliage tends to be dense.

Climbers.

Climbing roses can form dramatic cascades grown over an arched trellis or trained over a fence, pillar, or post. They are sometimes used to create a privacy wall.

 

 

 

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