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How to Take Care of Your Flower Garden

By Louisa Price

Knowing how to take care of a flower garden can make a big difference in the look and over-all health of your plants. Use these 5 easy gardening tips to make your flower garden bloom with health, and leave your neighbors green with envy.

1. Always consider the essentials.

Your flower garden must have an adequate supply of water, sunlight, and fertile soil. Any lack of these basic necessities will seriously affect the health of your plants.

Before you plant, it’s a good thing to make sure that the soil has the required nutrients. Use the information on the seed packet or the tag on the plants to find out how to plant your flowers. As a general rule of thumb, water your flower garden more frequently during dry spells.

When planting bulbs, always make sure that you don’t heap soil or mulch up around the stem. If you do, water will drain off instead of sinking into the ground, and the stem could develop rot through overheating.

2. Mix and match perennials with annuals.

Perennial flower bulbs need not to be replanted since they grow and bloom for several years while annuals grow and bloom for only one season, hence they have to be replaced every year. By planting a few perennials with annuals, you will always have blooms coming on.

3. Deadhead to encourage more blossoms.

Deadheading means simply snipping off or pinching off the flower head after it wilts. This will make the plant produce more flowers. However, also make sure that you don’t discard the deadhead on the garden or else mildew and other plant disease will attack your healthy plants.

4. Know the good insects from the bad insects.

Contrary to popular belief, most garden insects actually do more good than harm. There are good good insects and bad insects. You want your flowers to attract butterflies, beetles and bees since they are known pollinators. They fertilize plants through the transfer of pollen from one plant to another. Eighty percent of flowering plants depend on insects for survival.

Sow bugs and dung beetles together with fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms are necessary to help in the decomposition of dead plant material, thus enriching the soil with more nutrients for your growing plants.

You will want to see insects such as lacewings and dragonflies around your flower garden to help keep your plants healthy since they are natural predators of bad insects like aphis which will destroy your flowers.

5. Use fertilizer and prune regularly

To care for your flower garden, an occasional application of liquid fertilizer when plants are flowering is necessary to keep them blooming for a longer period of time. Always prune any dead or damaged branches.

Fuchsias are particularly prone to snapping when you brush against them but the broken branch can be potted up to give you a new plant, so it won't be wasted.

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