Prepare Your Soil For Fall Flowers: Remove annuals. Break up and till the soil and generously add compost or organic planting mix. You may want to wait a week or two before adding fresh plants. This will give weeds enough time to germinate. Remove the weeds while they are small so they will be less of a headache later on.

Plant Your Winter Flower Garden: Begin planting your fall and winter flower garden towards the end of September. While blasts of hot, Santa Ana winds will blow from September through November, September nights are generally cool and days pleasantly warm–perfect growing conditions. Your fall garden can include calendula, delphiniums, larkspur, Iceland poppy, pansies, snapdragon and stock. In shady areas, plant primrose, daisies and cineraria.

Trim Perennials: Perennials are beginning to lose their summer luster. Trim excess plant growth and remove sagging summer flowers.

Plant Wildflowers: Instead of scattering wildflower seeds on the surface of the soil and hope they will grow, for best results, rake the soil gently, spread the seeds and cover lightly with soil. The seeds will begin to germinate once wet weather arrives.

Plant Spring Bulbs: Spring bulbs will soon be available at local nurseries. Now is the time to plant bulbs for such plants as tulips, daffodils and hyacinth.

Plant Your Vegetables: When summer vegetable plants stop producing a robust crop (late September or October), remove the plants and replace them with vegetable plants that will produce through winter. Cool weather vegetables include cabbage, peas, broccoli, lettuce and green onions.

Prepare for the Santa Ana Winds: Santa Ana winds can wreck havoc on newly planted trees, shrubs and gardens. New, shallow root systems can’t replace water as fast as water is drawn from leaves by the winds. The winds can devastate a garden in a matter of days if water is not provided. When winds kick up, be prepared to quickly get out the garden hose and give your plants the moisture they need.

Plant Bulbs and Flowers: Plant bulbs including hyacinths, daffodils and tulips in 5″ to 6″ of soil. Plant hardy plants such as camellias and azaleas. Consider adding natural California wildflowers (desert bluebells, California poppies, mariposa lilies) to your flower garden for early spring blooms.

Clean Up Debris:  Collect fallen leaves, clean up dead portions of perennials and vegetable plants and pinch back winter-blooming annuals so they produce more blooms. Place fallen leaves in flowerbeds as mulch to keep soil in place and prevent erosion during rain.

Be Water Aware: December can bring Southern California much rain or the month can be bone dry. Trees and plants need water, even when the weather cools. Warm, dry winds can still occur in December and will suck moisture from plants in as little as one day. Be ready to water your plants if the winds and heat come and rainstorms stay away.

Winterize Your Lawn:   Rake leaves, grass clippings or other debris from the lawn. This allows winter sunlight and nutrients into the soil. Raking will result in better aeration, resulting in greener grass when spring arrives. Remove weeds. Weeds allowed to produce seeds in fall and winter are guaranteed to flourish and wreak havoc in spring. Lay down compost over the lawn that is specifically formulated for winterizing. This compost should be fortified with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and penetrate into the roots for a quick start for spring growth. 

Buy a Living Christmas Tree: Before buying a living Christmas tree, decide where you want the tree planted in your yard once the holidays are over. Talk with an expert at your local nursery to help select the best tree for the location. Keep the tree outside until Christmas week. The tree can stay indoors for no more than 10 days. Any longer and it will begin to drop its needles. Consider giving your tree a natural look–decorate with berries, popcorn, seeds and cookies. After the holidays, take the still-decorated tree outside and let birds have their own holiday feast.

For more gardening tips, go to www.agromin.com.

If you are looking to have a beautiful flower garden full of thriving plants, the best thing you can do is take it one plant at a time. Start small and prepare that small area well by taking into consideration that each flower or plant you put into your garden has special needs. When you take the time to consider those needs, you will ensure the success of each plant and eventually your garden overall.

* Hardiness/Heat Zones

The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map can help you determine which plants will survive the cool temperatures of your geographic location. Typically a plant tag will show two numbers 3-8. This means your flower or plant should grow well in USDA Zones 3-8. Another important factor to consider is how warm your temperatures can become. The AHS Heat-Zone Map can help you with determining plant heat tolerance. If the plant tag is showing four numbers…3-8, 8-1…the first set of numbers indicates the Hardiness Zones, the second set of numbers indicates the Heat-Zones.

* Sunlight

Your beautiful flower garden will depend on sunlight to some degree. Most perennial plants do well in 8 or more hours of direct sunlight each day. However, there are some perennials that prefer a little less sun, maybe 5-8 hours, with shade in the morning and full sun the remainder of the day. There are also those few plants that actually have a strong preference for just a touch of sunlight throughout the day. Keep in mind that most plants that can thrive in full sun in the northern US may need some shade in the mid-summer heat of the south.

* Water

All plants need water or some measure of moisture. Some plants, black-eyed susan, coneflower, and sedum for example, can be categorized as drought tolerant, meaning that they can get by with a bit of moisture from time to time and still manage to grow quite well. Other plants, such as hosta, have an actual need to be watered on a regular basis in order to stay healthy and flourish well for any length of time. If possible, make it easy on yourself and your plants by locating your beautiful flower garden area near your water source.

* Soil

All plants appreciate a nutrient rich soil. Most flowers and plants prefer a loamy soil that is moist but also drains well. If you are fortunate enough to have nutrient rich loam in your garden areas, continue to care for it well to ensure it remains healthy and able to provide you with many years of beautiful blooms. If your soil is mostly sand or clay, you may need to amend or improve it by adding a good peat humus mixture. You can do this easily with each new flower or plant you put into the ground. If your soil is a poorly draining, heavy clay you may even prefer to make raised beds to put your flowers and plants in.

* Flowers and Plants

Finally, when choosing items to plant in your beautiful flower garden, you will want to be sure that you purchase flowers and plants that are healthy and strong. If you buy from a nursery, take a look around while you are there. Are all of the plants healthy looking or are most of them wilting and “on sale” or discounted? You will want to choose plants with healthy stems that are strong and upright. Look for plants with buds as they will have stronger root systems and will adapt easier when transplanted. If all of the flowers in the nursery have blooms, choose healthy looking plants and before planting them in your garden, cut off all the flowers. Your plants will be able to develop new strong roots quicker without flowers and then will be able to produce new blooms for you within a couple weeks time.

By starting small and preparing that small area well, taking into consideration each plant’s special needs in regards to:

hardiness, heat-zone area

sunlight requirements

water requirements

soil requirements

you WILL be ensuring the success of your beautiful flower garden…one plant at a time.

I know you arent supposed to plant bulbs in the summer so I was just wondering if i should replant.

More often than not, the approach to bonsai art comes with a present. A friend, a relative or a partner gives a new little tree in a short pot and he canâ??t tell us how to handle it.

Those bonsai trees are set on a piece of furniture or next to a window and normally die in a couple of months. Here comes the misconception that bonsai trees die after a short time.

But a bonsai can live among hundreds of years (there are specimens of 1000 years and more), so you are not excused if you let your bonsai die. But what to do with that strange thing?

This is a brief kick start guide to help you in the first months with your bonsai:

Establish what species it is: first thing first you have to know what species your bonsai tree belongs to. It is important because every species has different needs. This may be a hard task, there are hundreds of species and each can have a lot of varieties and cultuvar.

To start you donâ??t need to know the exact variety or cultuvar, you just need to know the general name of the species: it could be a maple, an elm or it could be a pine or a juniper.

Arborday.org has a guide on the trees classification that can help you. Also Wikipedia has a classification list.

Set your bonsai tree outdoor: unless your bonsai belongs to a species native of tropical regions, you have to put it outdoor (of course if you live in a tropical place you can set your tropical bonsai outdoor). A bonsai cannot survive indoor due to a handful of reasons, if you assume your bonsai is an ornament you are wrong. Period.

If you identify the species, you can know the precise spot where to set it. Usually conifers should go in full-sun, the other species should be set in mid-shadow or even shadow. This is a really rough distinction and there are a lot of exceptions, a good cultivation sheet can help you a lot.

Learn how to water it: watering is a crucial task and one of the most difficult of bonsai cultivation. Every species needs different quantities of water, and you should understand the needs of your own bonsai tree.

The bonsai lives in a small pot, thereâ??s a relatively small quantity of soil in it and the tree can certainly suffer dryness and temperature excursions.

As a general rule, if it is summer you have to water your bonsai every evening. If you water it in the morning the soil will dry in no time and the tree will suffer. If you water it in the evening itâ??ll have all the time it needs to adsorb water and nutriments and, even if the next day the soil will dry, the bonsai will not suffer.

During spring and fall you have to diminish watering, just wait until the surface of the soil starts to dry out and only then water. It is easy to over-water your bonsai tree, so follow the rule above and you should be ok.

During winter the bonsai wants little water, just keep the soil humid, not wet, and water when it begins to dry.

There are two watering methods: the first is giving your tree a shower and continue until the water exits from the drainage holes; the second is to immerse the pot in a can of water and let the soil adsorb.

In both cases remember to bathe the foliage too (never if the sun still hits).

Fertilize your bonsai: fertilizing is the most underrated task by the novice. It is really important to fertilize the bonsai because the soil in the pot will easily loose itâ??s nutriments for the tree.

The quantity of soil is limited and it is an isolated environment so itâ??s our duty to provide nutriments. If your matter si if water is sufficient, the answer is no. Can you live just drinking water? No. For your bonsai is the same thing.

Until you become an expert, a balanced fertilizer (10:10:10) will do itâ??s work. You donâ??t have to acquire a bonsai specific fertilizer, the bonsai has the same physiology of all the vegetables, every fertilizer will do. Remember just to dilute it more than the recommendations say or youâ??ll risk to burn your bonsai.

A simple and good solution would be to use the hanagokoro, a Japanese organic fertilizer, very strong, easy and safe to use as it is almost impossible to overfeed.

You should fertilize during spring, when the vegetation begins, until July (in the boreal hemisphere) then stop in the hottest period. Restart in the second half of August until October (November for the conifers).

Get another bonsai: only action will allow you to gain the sufficient experience to manage a bonsai. Keep collecting bonsai and make your own, with try and errors you will become an expert.

Needless to say it is a great satisfaction to produce your own bonsai and a lovely feeling to watch your bonsai garden growing.

You may have noticed I have omitted such tasks as pruning, wiring, jin, shari and so on. This is a primer, a kick start guide, born just to help you keeping alive your bonsai.

Defining what is a bonsai isnâ??t easy, but we can resume it in the â??perfect balance between the tree, itâ??s form and the pot hosting itâ?. If you donâ??t learn how to take care of your tree, and limit your experience to this primer, your bonsai will survive but itâ??ll loose its â??bonsai titleâ? in a couple of years or less.

If you are serious with bonsai art, you want to study. You can buy books – I will soon post reviews – or read some good online resource – in the sidebar there are a phiew -.

Of course keep reading this blog, I will post a lot of things about bonsai.

If you think this list isnâ??t complete (keep in mind itâ??s a survival guide), feel free to add your points.

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