Gardening

You might have a place by the front door or a spot within view of your patio or driveway where a beautifully colorful rock garden showpiece would make an inviting visual. Sunny areas or shady spots make no difference as you'll choose your plantings accordingly. Rock gardens are low maintenance, in season all year long, and provide an eye-catching element for your garden. Just keep in mind that a rock garden should end up looking like a natural rocky landscape and be low maintenance. Here's your chance to be creative!

If gardening makes you happy and brings not only delicious food to your table but also satisfaction, you might want to garden year-round. It's entirely possible to garden in Zones 8, 9, and 10 by using a medium weight row cover. A mulch of straw, leaves, or pine needles will also help you discover the joys of winter gardening by keeping the plants warmer and the soil moist. You may plant some short season crops and root vegetables. I would recommend beets, carrots, and onions as your root crops, and cruciferous vegetables like Broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Cauliflower, and Cabbage for their tolerance to cold weather.

August in the garden is a month filled with harvesting the tasty fruits (or veggies) of your labors like tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. Taking lots of notes on the successes and failures of your 2019 garden to help you plan for next Spring, and finally planting a Fall crop.

Pull out or divide perennial flowers that may be taking over and replant them in bare spots making room for new plantings. You may want to deadhead flowers, encouraging them to rebloom until the first frost. Prepare sunny areas now where you'll be able to plant perennials like fruiting trees, shrubs, and berries for future years of harvest.

If you want to start a garden this year, it may not be too late. Look for a sunny spot near your house to start gardening as it will be easy to keep an eye on it. With the right soil and adequate watering, your garden is sure to be a great success.

If this is your first garden, start small. Two or three 3’x 12’ raised beds or a 12’ x 12’ plot is a reasonable size that you could begin to, plant in one weekend, and be successful. A small garden irrigation kit (Small Garden Bed Kit) can have you set up for watering in an hour without having to search for parts. Even a small garden can produce as much or more like a larger one. Extensive gardens often become very time-consuming and overwhelming for the first-time gardener. Keep it simple, and you will enjoy hours of gardening each year.

Plant your garden with a purpose this year by choosing veggies and berries that can be juiced daily all summer long. To that end, Dripworks demonstration garden will be growing heirloom varieties of carrots, beets, kale, cucumbers, parsley, celery, tomatoes, and melons that will provide the raw ingredients for juicing and smoothies to keep your immune system strong. At the end of this blog, I’ll recommend my favorite powerful juicer.

If you haven’t already started your seeds for this year’s garden, now is the time! With a few basic supplies and careful attention, you can start your entire garden’s worth of plants and save on the expense of buying plant starts. It is not difficult! Sourcing high-quality seeds is the most important step.