Gardening Tips, Advice and Tutorials
The Gardening Cook has you covered for every gardening topic. Just click the photo or links below to read lots of different posts in each category. These articles will help you learn how to garden like a pro with information and advice on all gardening topics. Browse my how-to articles and tutorials for all your garden tasks, plus get tips to help you garden through the year, both indoors and out.
Discover how to make gardening easy. Whether you have experience with gardening for many years, or you are just a beginner, these articles will answer your gardening questions and give you loads of inspiration for your garden space.
Composting
The Gardening Cook has an extensive library of pages related to all aspects of gardening. Whether you are an experienced gardener or a beginner….whether you love flowers, or veggies, or herbs, I have tried to cover every category for you. If you are looking for articles on the site which deal with wildlife, you will find them here too. I am a life long gardener and am always happiest when I am digging in the dirt. 
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Nice to meet u. I like so much on gardening. However, I do not have much land & area to play round. Anyway, I enjoy yr material,
TQ
Nice to meet you too Law Yit. I am glad you are enjoying my site. Carol
Dear Carol, I love your site! always good ideas for gardening and garden-decoration which I am interested in. some of people of our little city (deutsch-wagram in lower autria) founded a initiative to make our city “green” – our group is: dw blüht! We think about to make the man out of old gardening pots – can you give me a hint how to make it?
greetings from austria!
Hi Uschi, I love that man made of pots. It is a public domain image and I showed it to my husband so we could make it for next year. I could not find directions for it, but am thinking that it is done a bit the way topsy turvy pots are done, with either heavy gauge wire or rebar between the pots to connect them and keep them in place. The hand could be made of hypertufa. I plan to do a project on making one as soon as the weather is warm enough and it will be featured on my site when I do. Carol
I love the stepping stones that look like pillows. What kind of corn did you use and where did you get it?
HI Deborah. I did not do this project myself but there is a link to it in both the image and a text link on the page where you found the pillow project. Carol
I am looking to purchase the Osiria rose. Can you tell me where I can find them?
Thanks
Jeannie
Hi Jeannie I have written an article on the Osiria rose. http://thegardeningcook.com/osiria-rose/. There are two links in the article to suppliers. One is a Canadian firm and the other is a US firm which has sold out of it. It is a hard thing to find.
Carol
Carol, I have 100 osiria rose seeds to share. If people want to send small self addressed stamped envelope to me I can send 10 seeds to each reply! I am going to try to sprout only 10 myself
Needhrlp using your website I want to learn about growing verbena
Hi Kathryn,
Verbena plants can take quite a bit of heat and drought. But they grow best if you give them adequate water when they are growing in the spring and summer.
Verbenas should be grown where they will receive full sun for at least 8-10 hours each day, unless you live in the
hottest summer regions, where they will like some afternoon shade.
They like soil with excellent drainage and do not do well if left in soggy soil.
Verbenas will grow and flower best if you mix in compost,
or other organic material to the planting hole before setting in your new plant.
Water them regularly and thoroughly until they are well established.
After that, you will only need to water them when the soil is dry.
Feed once, in the spring when the plants are about 6″ tall, using a good, all-purpose liquid fertilizer.
Prune them when they get leggy to produce a bushier plant and more flowers.
Carol
I’m new in gardening. I want to start my garden,but my problem is that I’m not used to gardening terminology ,can you explain to me the difference between annuals and perennials ?
HI Veronica. Welcome to gardening. I hope that you end up liking it the way I do. Basically, annuals grow for one year (and are usually a bit less expensive to buy) They flower all season and then die when the cold whether comes unless you dig them up and bring them indoors for the winter. (warm zones like zone 10-11 can grown them all year long outdoors.)
Perennials cost a big more to purchase but will come back year after year. They have a limited blooming season compared to annuals, so I plant them in stages so that I will have something blooming all the time. Once established, perennials can do with less water. Annuals need regular watering.
If you run a search on my blog for the search term “annual perennial” it will bring up additional articles about the subject.
Hope this helps. Carol
I like your site so much. tanks for beautiful site
Hi Moh. Thanks for the kind words. I am glad you are enjoying my site. Carol
I have a “Fluffy Ruffle” (Nephrolepis Exaltata) fern which has gone from winning blue ribbons to a very poor looking fern. It is about 35 yrs. old and has never been repotted. Can you tell me how to go about this? This fern is my pride and joy and I do no want to lose it. My ferns go outside every June-Sept. (I live in Chicago area) and when I brought them in last Sept. the fern had lost many fronds, esp. on one side and was half of its previous size. Now one whole side is nothing but brown “sticks”.
Boston ferns should be repotted every 2 or three years. They have a tendency to get pot bound. To repot, remove the plant from its container. Choose a new pot about 2 inches larger then the old one and add some soil on the bottom. Place the fern on the soil so it sits as the same level. Add soil to the sides around the roots. Trim off any lower dead leaves and water normally.