How to maintain a garden at home: 11 best garden maintenance tips

A beautiful garden mesmerizes your heart and soul, especially if it’s well-maintained.

A garden filled with vegetables, fruits, and colorful flowers is aesthetically pleasing for one and all. But, it comes with its responsibilities!

One of the deadliest things that can happen to your garden is when a plant is affected by a disease. And, you don’t know how to deal with it.

How to stop it from spreading? How to prevent such occurrences in the future?

How to maintain a garden at home?

Maintaining a garden, even if it’s small, and keeping it green and healthy is quite daunting.

So, here are the best 11 garden maintenance tips you could follow to keep it happy and healthy!

11 Easy Garden Maintenance Tips

1. Soil: First Things First

Firstly, plants need to be surrounded with healthy soil.

• Make sure you use a digging spade and turn the soil in your garden, every month.
• This will keep the soil light and loose, especially if the soil is hard. Harder soils like clay tend to become crumbly and rock-hard with time. And, you need to prevent that from happening.
• Hence, the regular turning of soil is great to make it porous and improve its absorption abilities.

2. Top it Up with Compost

Clay soils tend to remain loose and healthy for a long period if you top it up with organic compost.

If using yard waste, make sure it is fully and thoroughly composted to kill any pathogens that might be present. That’s because already infected debris will only cause diseases in your garden!

3. Make Use of Best Gardening Tools

Just as a Chef needs to have precisely arranged knife collection, a Gardener also needs to own the best gardening tools.

Good-quality rakes, spade, shovel, wheelbarrows, trowel and mowers are essential to keep your garden healthy.

4. Water Them Nicely

Plants cannot survive without the right amount of moisture.

• Flower beds need to be watered evenly.
• Make sure you water your plants early in the morning or evening, as the weather is much cooler. Hence, water won’t get evaporated.
• Avoid watering leaves, or else they might catch mold.

If you are too busy and don’t have time for daily watering, you can opt for plants like Jasmine, Verbena or Blanket Flowers, as they require less watering.

Or, you can opt for a self-irrigation system for proper watering of your plants.

5. Give Them Space to Breath

While planting bulbs, shrubs, vegetables or fruits, always make sure you keep some space around, for them to breathe.

Every plant will require proper sunlight, moisture and nutrients from the soil for its healthy growth.

Overcrowding will only make it difficult for them to grow and for you to access them.

For better use of space, you can use railings, walls, hanging baskets and containers on your balcony. That is much better than overcrowding your garden.

6. Get Rid of Those Stubborn Weeds

Weeds can be a nightmare for every plant in your garden, as they grow rapidly. They even eat up essential nutrients from the soil that is primarily required for plants.

• You need to plant beds densely, to prevent the growth of weeds. This won’t provide them with space to develop.
• Use of mulch will hinder and prevent sprouting of weed seeds.
• Use weeding trowel to pull off roots of weeds from the soil, if any.
• For permanent plantings, use landscape fabric on top of the soil. This will act as a barrier for weeds.

7. Mulch Regularly for Healthy Soils

Wondering, what is mulch? Well, Mulch is more like an organic compost that is added above the soil to prevent moisture loss and hinder weed growth.

Mulch works amazingly well in keeping soils healthy, cool and also suppresses weeds. It’s like a long-term weed control.

• Mulch your garden once, every few months.
• Just add a layer of mulch over entire soil up to 1 or 2 inches deep.
• Mulching will also provide nutrients to the soil when it gets mixed up nicely with soil over time.
• Don’t cover up the base of the small shrubs and plants with mulch. Or else, they might not grow properly.

8. Watch out for the Bugs

Bacteria, Fungus, and Viruses can easily affect plants if they find some opening in plants caused by bugs.

Insects and bugs can carry and spread diseases to different plants in your garden, if not controlled on time.

You can get rid of these bugs and insects on your own.

Or, for larger gardens, you can always seek help from professional pest control companies to eradicate insects from your garden.

9. Chop Off Dead Branches at the Right Time

Dead branches can spread and affect the rest of the plant, just like a disease.

• Make sure your plants are free from dead, dried, brittle and brown branches.
• Use pruners or pair of gardening shears to cut off these branches from the base. The tools need to be sharp enough to make clean cuts. This will allow for healthy tissues and quick healing.
• Don’t use these dead branches as compost, instead throw them away. That’s because, if these branches are infected, they can attack plants with diseases.
• Trimming shrubs and plants in late winter is much better, instead of waiting for spring to arrive.

10. Deadheading Flowers

“Deadhead” means cutting off the head of dead and brown flowers. This will allow the growth of new buds all over again.

• Use gardening shears to cut off the flower right below the bud. In just a few days, you will witness the growth of a new bud.
• To stimulate the growth of leaves, you need to cut flower buds before they begin to bloom. With that, your plant’s energy will be conserved.

11. Fertilize Them All

Outdoor plants need to be fertilized well to meet their mineral requirements. You can opt for a 10-10-10 or 6-12-6 average fertilizer mixtures.

Sprinkle the fertilizer onto the outdoor plants once a month, as per directions were written on the package.

• Don’t leave fertilizer on top of the soil, rather mix it nicely into top few inches of soil.
• You can even choose organic mixes or mature organic compost for fertilizing.
• An overdose of fertilizers can burn the roots of plants. Thus, making them prone to cold and heat. So, make sure you don’t go overboard with fertilizing.

Conclusion

Plants can uplift the aura of your house.

And let’s not forget, a garden is also quite fun to maintain.

This article throws light on how to maintain a garden at home with a few simple and effective garden care tips. These tricks will surely come handy for you, be it for small or large gardens!

If you are confused as to how to take care of your garden, check out these easiest ways to keep it green, clean and healthy!