Protect Your Landscape Plants From Hot, Dry Weather

Here in the Upstate of South Carolina we are experiencing severe drought conditions. plants are dying for lack of moisture. People such as yourself have stopped improving your yards. Why spend time and money and effort, just to see your plants dry up and die? I can show you how your plants can beat the heat with ease. And, by protecting your plants from drought conditions, you will also be reducing the growth of weeds and automatically be saving yourself the effort of putting down costly ground cover cloth.

One very simple way to help your plants stay moist all summer long is to build layers of water-saving mulch. While you are saving your plants, you will be doing yourself and your community a huge favor; you will be recycling. That mulch is already waiting for you at no additional cost to you.

If your home or business is anything like mine, you generate loads of junk mail, phone books, catalogs, cereal, cracker and cardboard boxes every day. If it is made out of paper, it will bio-degrade! Keep it out of the landfill. Why purchase bagged soil amendments when you are hauling free mulch home in every grocery bag or picking it up by the handful from your mailbox every day? A shredder is nice, but you don't really need a shredder if you don't already own one.

Here's how you do it:
1. Use a shovel to loosen the soil in a small area around where you want to put your new plant.

2. Wet down the ground, either with water from a bucket or garden hose.

3. Set your plant in the ground. Set it high in the hole. Leave some of the potting mix showing above the ground to start with.

4. Place at least 10 layers of newspaper all around the plant. Don't crowd the paper up too close to the plant. Mice might like to chew on the paper and enjoy your tree, too.

5. Wet down the newspaper so it will not blow away while you start the next step.

6. Flatten out a large cardboard box. Cut a hole about 3-6 inches larger than your plant.

7. Lay this cardboard around your plant to hold down the wet newspaper. Or, you can use several smaller boxes and overlap the edges so weeds can't get through.

8. Wet down the cardboard.

9. Mulch over the cardboard and up around the new plant. (Bark or pine straw mulch, leaves, grass clippings, anything that will eventually rot down, but will hold moisture now.

10. Wet down the mulch as you put it down so it is nice and damp.

11. Inspect you tree after several days. Stick your hand in under all that mulch and see if the ground is moist. If not, water again.

12. It is possible that you may not have to water again all summer. Please do check under the mulch every few weeks if there is no rainfall. Some plants require more water than others.

13. Fertilize in the spring. Do NOT fertilized late in the summer. It will encourage tender new growth too late in the season and you plant may be damaged by frost during the winter.

14. Renew the mulch as needed. If the grass and weeds really take over, put down more layers of wet newspaper and cardboard and mulch.

Growing Bamboo As a Landscape Plant

Bamboo is one of the most versatile plants in the world. The wood from bamboo is extremely light, strong, and durable, yet it grows far faster than even much softer woods. For all of its marvelous strength as a building material, it can also be processed to create some of the softest fabric available today. All of this is in a plant that is also very disease-resistant, easy to grow, and quite beautiful. For these reasons and more, it is quickly becoming a popular choice as a landscape plant. Big bamboo is especially popular as a privacy plant for it's extraordinarily quick growth. With a little care, it can be an excellent addition to your garden or landscape.

Choosing the Right bamboo plant for You

The main considerations when choosing your bamboo should be hardiness. This is a pretty simple thing to factor in, as any reputable nursery or plant source will be able to tell you the hardiness by zone of any bamboo they sell. When choosing your bamboo, keep in mind the eventual height and potential for invasiveness. Many types of bamboo spread rapidly, and this can become a problem in coming years. To reduce this, either choose a bamboo that is of a non-running or clumping type or install a spread barrier. A spread barrier can be just a sheet of thick plastic (about 40 mil) creating an underground border defining the edge of the area in which you want your bamboo to be spread. Bury your plastic from the surface to around three feet deep to block the rhizomes from spreading the plant underground. The height to which some big bamboo varieties grow can also surprise many new growers. Most common varieties can be trimmed fairly easily to a wide range of heights, but trimming the top ten feet off of a thirty-five foot tall plant can be somewhat difficult. Thus, it is sometimes best to keep upward growth limitations in mind when choosing your bamboo if you won't be willing or able to trim it down.

Planting bamboo

Choose a spot for your bamboo that gets a fair amount of sun; either full sun for part of the day or filtered sun all day. Most bamboo types do well near water, but don't thrive with wet roots, especially when young. For most bamboos, plant in a moderately acidic, loamy soil. In very heavy soil, digging organic material into the dirt where you are planting can make a big difference, as can heavy mulching (which will attract earthworms, who will loosen the soil for you). Depth and hole size will vary depending on the type of bamboo you're planting, so following the instructions of your plant source is best. Generally, though, you'll dig a hole to about the same depth as the root ball and break up the soil around it to allow the roots room to grow out. Water thoroughly once you've filled in around the root ball, and keep the plant watered for the first several weeks, taking care not to overwater (the ground should be moist but not wet a few minutes after watering). Too little water is better than too much water for newly transplanted bamboo, but keep in mind that new bamboo in hot or windy weather will need more water. The best time to plant bamboo varies by area, but spring is usually best, as it will give the bamboo plant lots of time to establish itself before winter comes. However, in mild climates most of the year works well, and even in cooler climates nearly any warm part of the year will work, so long as there is time for your bamboo to get established for winter.

Bamboo plant Care

Bamboo is a pretty versatile, adapting plant, and if you've chosen the right type for your area and planted it in a good spot, it should do well with very little care once established. However, if you want to maximize growth, there are three important parts of bamboo care to keep in mind: mulching, fertilizing, and watering. A thick mulch can do a great deal to protect the roots of your bamboo, especially if you are growing bamboo that is only borderline hardy to your area or if planting later in the year, and it can also provide nutrients and help the soil to stay moist. Just about any organic mulch will work. The leaves that fall from your bamboo throughout the year, and especially in spring, are best left on the ground where they can act as part of the mulch and recycle nutrients back into the soil. Grass is the best mulch for bamboo, but hay and wood chippings are also great choices. For quickest growth, fertilize in the Spring after the plant is well established. A general chemical fertilizer is OK, but a light layer of cow manure (or any other cool manure) will work better (as well as being cheaper and better for the environment). bamboo does pretty well without too much water, but if you want your plants to thrive throughout the dry seasons, you'll need to water them regularly, letting the ground dry out between waterings.

Bamboo is an extremely tough plant, capable of surviving many types of mistreatment. It is also a beautiful plant with unique characteristics that make it a perfect plant for privacy, sound dampening, or just as an accent for almost any property or garden.

Suit Your House - Choosing Landscape Plants

The plants you select and plant in your landscape can create a dramatic effect to accentuate the positive or ruin its charm.

Choose plants to Suit the House

If a house is high and narrow, use tall, spreading shrubs such as lilac or honeysuckle placed beside the front corners. This "pulls it down," especially if you plant smaller shrubs next to them to taper off to ground level.

Emphasize upright lines of Georgian or Colonial doorways by framing them with columnar cedars or junipers, or "pull them down" by planting low, globular cedars or mugo pines. If the house is wide and rambling, use soft, spreading deciduous shrubs to match its lines and upright, columnar ones to break the monotony.

Ranch style houses call for low shrubs and trees that have a rounded or horizontal branching form. You can also use more contrasting textures and colors with these homes than with older ones.

Plants Alter Proportions

Plants can do much to modify the proportions of the house and the size of the lawn. Just as narrow houses can be made to appear wider by planting shrubs and candle bush beside them, or wide wall spaces can be broken up by upright-growing shrubs, so parallel lines of flower borders or street trees give an illusion of added length. On the other hand, any line that cuts across our line of vision, such as a hedge or a terrace slope, foreshortens distance and gives breadth.

Plants in the center of a lawn draw our attention and seem to reduce the size of the lawn.

Small areas appear larger if you use shrubs with foliage of tine texture. Large areas need large shrubs with stout branches and large coarse-textured leaves for proper proportion.

Take advantage of the textures and colors of shrubs to lend emphasis to particular spots. Variegated, golden, or red foliage stands out against the darker green of other shrubs and holds attention. A large-leaved, coarse-twigged shrub stands out boldly against a background of finer foliage. Profuse bloom, particularly of light color, also draws attention for its period but it may spoil the general effect if it is in the wrong spot.