Taking Care Of Your Trees

Time to get the garden ready for spring and the nice weather. There are a lot of jobs out there in the garden but a few are the most important, so you should get them out of the way early.

Pruning the roots of your trees and bushes will be necessary if you are going to be transplanting or if you want to cut back growth. If it is small plant, you just have to spade down into the ground around the plant to cut away the roots. It will then grow new more vigorous roots. IF you plan on moving the tree or bush, do this 6 weeks before you move it so that it has a chance to grow some of this healthy root. One reason to prune roots is to prevent girdling. This is a condition where the roots of the tree or shrub are not spreading out and down as they should, but turning back over other roots. Take out these girdling roots because they are strangling the tree and you will have sparser growth and may even lose the tree.

Weeding is the next important duty for the spring gardener. Early in the season, you can pull out small weeds before you put in your annual plants. Some weeds are necessary for the soil since they have deep roots that aerate the soil. You can till them into your garden and add the nutrients that your plants need in the soil.

Some people want perfect gardens and want to eliminate all weeds. Organic gardener tend to let things go a little wilder and let certain of the weeds stay and use mulch to stop the growth of others.

Pest control is another garden duty that has to be attended to. Most of the time, if you use sensible gardening techniques, you should not have too much of a problem with pests. Let your plants have air and space between them, don't let them get or stay too wet. Make sure they have the sunlight or shade they need. And, keep them fed since strong plants don't attract pests as readily as weak plants.

If you buy disease resistant plants and you use companion plants, you will have less of a problem. Encouraging bees and flowers in the garden will help and you should make sure you do not eliminate beneficial bacteria. The natural mold and fungus that lives in the soil provide nutrients and certain living creatures are great natural pesticides: praying mantis, trichogramma wasps, lady bugs and lacewings eat aphids and ants.

You can attract birds to your garden with birdhouses and shrubs that have berries. You can purchase lady bugs, wasps and praying mantis as well. Natural sprays made from garlic, hot pepper and other botanical ingredients will be another natural solution to pests. Combination planting is a very organic way to prevent pests, since certain combinations repel them. You can also try to trap pests the molasses or bran bait, putting tangle foot at the base of a tree, or using black lights to attract nighttime insects.

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