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Herbs are one of the delightful pleasures of life. They add flavor to your food, scent to the air and beauty to your garden. In colonial times, no home was complete without an herb garden for the lady of the house to use in her kitchen, and it wasn’t unusual for those herb gardens to be separated by use – savory herbs, tea herbs, medicinal herbs. That’s a tradition that’s made a comeback in many modern gardens.

One of the more popular types of kitchen gardens is a spaghetti garden. Oregano, basil, garlic, bay and parsley are such easy to grow plants that it’s a pity for anyone to use dried and bottled herbs if they have a sunny patch of ground or a window-box. A few square feet of garden space can easily yield all the herbs that you’ll need for delicious Italian meals. They’re even easy enough to grow in a sunny window for year round use.

Bay Laurel

Bay leaves add a piquant hint of spice to stews, soups and especially spaghetti sauce. The bay laurel is a small tree that grows slowly – about a foot per year – making it eminently suitable for growing in a container. Unless you live in a mild climate zone (where the temperatures don’t drop below 25 degrees in the winter), you’ll do best to keep the tree in a pot and bring it indoors during the winter.

Basil

Basil is an annual, but it seeds itself so easily that I’ve never had to buy another after planting my first year. There are many varieties of basil, but all grow fast and require frequent pinching back to keep them from growing leggy and tall. To harvest: when the plants have reached about 6-8 inches tall, you can begin harvesting. Simply use your thumb and forefinger to pinch off the top 1/3 of the plant, just above a leaf intersection. Be sure to pinch off any flower buds before they go to seed. Six to eight plants will provide enough basil to make pesto for the entire neighborhood.

Garlic

Garlic is possibly the easiest plant in the world to grow. Simply break apart a clove of garlic (yes, right from the grocery store!), and plant the cloves about 4 inches apart, 2-4 inches deep in light soil. Water lightly, and watch them grow. Harvest when tips of leaves turn brown – do NOT let them flower. To harvest: dig up the bulbs, and use them. In the interests of keeping a fresh supply going, plant one or two cloves from each bulb!

Parsley

Parsley is easily the most used herb in the world. It comes in both flat (Italian) and curly varieties, and complements the flavor of everything from delicate sauces to hearty stews. It’s often used as a garnish on plates, or chopped and added to soups, dressings and salads. It adds vitamins and color, and subtly brings out the flavor of other ingredients in the meal. The parsley plant is a biennial, flowering in its second season. It prefers a little shade on a hot sunny day, and should be kept well watered to avoid wilting and drying. To harvest: pinch back woody older stems all the way to the base, allowing new leaves and branches to grow.

Oregano

A perennial ground cover plant, oregano is a prolific grower that can send out shoots that grow up to six feet in a single season. If encouraged with pruning and bunching, oregano can grow into a small border plant. It prefers light, thin soil and lots of sun, so keep it on the south side of your garden. Harvesting can start when the plants reach 4-5 inches. Simply pinch back as you would basil. The young leaves are the most flavorful part of the plant, and are actually considerably stronger dried than fresh. To dry, lay the harvested leaves out on newspaper or drying screens in the sun until the leaves crumble easily. Dried oregano will retain its flavor for months.

To get your herbs growing healthy and strong, be sure to learn about garden composting.

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• Hobbyist Enjoy Healthy Foods With Their Home Garden (hbb2obm.com)

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Welcome, thanks for visiting Backyard Gardening Tips. This blog post is brought to you by John Saunders who has recently taken up gardening as a hobby, just like my wife and I have here in New Brunswick Canada. John was smart and managed to buy cheap gardening equipment and also items such as blubs, lights etc., at great prices from places like eBay.

Sunflowers, what are they and why am I writing about them?

When I take my daily walk through our city I don’t see a lot of sunflowers growing but the ones I do see make me stop and stare. Why, well to put it frankly, sunflowers really do liven up any garden and they are so easy to cultivate. Literally, all you need to do is plant a sunflower seed and then just add water and BAM a beautiful flower on a big stick.

The advantages of growning flowers like sunflowers is they also attract bees. Due to there size, they also add a focal point to the garden. We are planning to have them as the center piece in one of our garden areas. I think four will look great with a number of popular flowers around their base.

I have only ever seen a full field of sun flowers growing and it was amazing. They flowers follow the sun so the heads all seem to be facing the same direction which just makes them look like happy little soldiers protecting the farm. they were all about 5 or 6 feet high, maybe a little higher but they just stayed in my mind for days they were so beautiful.

We are planting a few sunflowers around our backyard garden this year and will put up some photos from planting to harvest so you can see how they grow. I also highly recommend growing sunflowers for yourself, they are easy to grow and don’t need a lot of space. Just a bit of sunlight and they definately bring sunshine to your garden.

How To Start Your Sunflower Seeds

Remember back to when you were a kid and your teach had you grow beans sprouts in a jar using a damp paper towel and a jar. It was fun and amazing to see them sprout after just a few day. Well starting your sunflowers this way makes it so easy.

You don’t even need a jar, a plastic bag and a damp paper towel will work just fine. You will need to check them daily and be sure to add a bit of water if your paper towels is drying out a bit.

Once your sunflower seeds have sprouted you are ready to plant them into your yard or even into pots. Bury them so that the seed is below the soil but the sprout is still sticking out.

At this point you want to continue to keep them moist but don’t drown them and don’t let them dry out or the sprout will not survive.

Go on give it a try

John ‘the hobby gardener‘ Sanders

Affordable Gardening From eBay

John Sanders

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Koi are the beautiful Japanese fish that have been around for centuries. They are graceful creatures that live in ponds and other water formations and are highly prized for their size and colors.  There are any varieties of Koi and many of these grow up to more than a meter long and live up to several decades.

Some people build their own koi ponds and fountains to suit their preferences while others employ the help of experts in making their koi ponds and fountains. The best thing to do if to study the fish first and their habitats and preferences before embarking on a do it yourself dilemma that can be left hanging or could cost you some money just because of your spur of the moment decision. Koi are sensitive fish that need care and attention so make sure you have the time to do this. Koi ponds and fountains will also need care and attention.

Building Koi Ponds and Fountains

The first thing to do when thinking of building koi ponds and fountains is to look for the right location. You must remember that koi do not like direct sunlight and ponds under direct sunlight also gather more moss. This competes with the koi for oxygen in the water so it is better to have a shady area for the pond or to put water lilies with big leaves floating on the water to ensure shade.

You must also consider a water filter unit and a good aeration unit for the pond. Man made ponds and pools need to be aerated artificially to sustain the fish. Koi ponds and fountains need a good water pump to keep the water moving sufficiently enough to have no stagnant water.

One thing to keep in mind when building Koi ponds and fountains is that Koi can grow rather large and you must give a great margin for their growth especially if you intend to keep them for a long time. Each Koi can grow up to a meter long and live up to more than 50 years.

Regularly check the chlorine of the water in the pond since this is dangerous to fish and so are other chemicals and elements in the water. Koi ponds and fountains are very attractive to fishing birds so it is best to make the pond a little deeper than what wading birds can stand up in. Herons and egrets can eat a lot of koi in one sitting so it is best to safeguard from them.

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Vegetable gardening is certainly on the rise here in Canada and it’s really not much wonder that vegetable gardening is on the rise when you look at the economy these days. Anything that will make the trip to the grocery store less costly is a good thing isn’t it?

My wife and I didn’t start our vegetable garden to save money but when the economy started to slide we didn’t feel the pinch like some of our friends did. We are so happy we start gardening as a hobby.

The really cool part of vegetable gardening is that you can make mistakes and still save yourself money. Jen and I have a lot to learn but we are saving more than we are spending so imagine how much we will save once we learn all the little tips and tricks to a great and productive vegetable garden.

BTW: We share the tips we learn with our readers here at Backyard Gardening tips and we share what we grow with our neighbours if there is more than we can eat.

NOTE: Your first year of vegetable gardening can cost you more than later years as you will need a few tools that will help you get the job done without breaking your back.

Gardening tools do make your life easier so you get more done with less effort and that makes the investment well worth it.

To be even more efficient we chose to go with square foot gardening and with raised beds so we did have a few extra things to get but the resulting vegetable garden produces much more produce per square foot that using rows and to make a long sentence even longer using raised beds saved us a huge amount of time and energy preparing the clay soil we have.

What’s really cool to see are all the people that have started up their own backyard vegetable gardens to help keep expenses down. Then it turns into a hobby and then there’s no stopping us.

Since I have been walking around the neighbourhood we moved into three years, ooops four years ago, how time flies when you’re having fun, I have seen backyards converted from wasted space into fine looking veggie gardens. I know I am stretching the truth a bit here but it seems like half the people in our city have turned to backyard vegetable gardening.

So vegetable gardening is on the rise and you should take a crack at it. Start small, we started with tomatoes in containers, so that you are not overwhelmed and see how fast you get hooked on the great taste of garden fresh vegetables.

The following is a hydroponics and grow lights introduction covering the fundamentals of the systems and methods commonly used for growing plants via hydroponics based systems.  Our expectation is to give you enough information to get you started with evaluating the different hydroponic systems and choosing the right one for your needs.Hydroponics systems include:  Nutrient Film Technique (NFT); Drip (or Top) Watering; Aeroponic; Cloning; and Ebb & Flow (flood & drain) methods. Primarily, all systems feature a reservoir and some type of container for the plant(s) to grow in, such as pots, trays, etc. What separates them is how the hydroponic nutrient solution is delivered to the roots.

Media-based systems use some form of growing media or plant nutrients, which provide support for the roots.  There is a greater selection of media-based systems to choose from to accommodate diverse plants and plant sizes.  Water culture systems can be used either with or without growing media.  These systems, however, require more attention since growth rates are very high.  Abundant and high-quality clean water and electricity must be readily available. Also, quickly growing plants need to be maintained. Vines call for trellising and fruit and flowers must be harvested in a judicious manner.  Some familiar water culture systems are raft nutrient film practice and aeroponics.

There are three principal grow lights choices; Metal Halide, High Pressure Sodium (HPS), and Fluorescent.  Fluorescent grow lights gives off little heat, lower light output and are primarily used to establish seedlings and cuttings.  New T8 and T5 higher output systems are now obtainable that produce enough lumens to grow various plants to adulthood. Metal Halide grow lights are green/blue/violet-oriented in the spectrum depending upon the Kelvin temperature, and is an excellent light when natural light is not available and predominantly during the vegetative growth stages. High Pressure Sodium grow lights are  red/orange-oriented in the spectrum is the great lamp choice for secondary or supplemental lighting and promotes budding, flowering and fruiting.