Michael MacCaskey

Growing your garden requires the aid and cooperation of many forces including the climate in your hardiness zone; insects, good and bad; fertilizers; and soil amendments.Decorative material (such as mulch, stone, sand, and gravel) adds a nice finish, so know how much you need to buy. Adapting each element to your garden's needs — as best you can — leads to a successful gardening experience.

Growing perennials from seed gives you the chance to start literally hundreds of plants from one package of seeds. Most perennial seeds don’t germinate very successfully when planted outside. By starting the seeds indoors, you can create an artificial environment to meet their needs. You can grow perennials indoors any time of the year.

You may be surprised to find out that perennials can get sick by their own versions of the same organisms that attack people — fungi, bacteria, viruses, and microplasma. Plant diseases are primarily water-borne. Don’t overwater, and let the soil dry out between waterings to slow down their spread. Following is a list of the diseases that are most likely to attack your perennials: Aster yellows: Plants infected with this disease become bizarrely deformed and distorted — the flowers may start to grow strange protrusions and the leaves curl and twist.

Just like people, roses need water to be healthy and bloom beautifully. No water? No rose bush. You just end up with a dried-up dead stick poking through parched soil. Roses need more water more often in hot weather than in cool weather, and even steady rain may not provide enough water to keep your roses healthy.

Perennials that are considered to need “full sun” require an average of five to six hours of sun a day, although most will settle for less sunlight without making too much of a fuss. Here’s a list of common perennials for your sunny garden spaces: Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium): The flowerheads are large, flat clusters of tiny daisies on long, straight stems.

Rosaceae is the third-largest plant family. This family includes many ornamental landscape plants, fruits, and berries, including apples, cherries, raspberries, and pyracantha, characterized by the shape of the hypanthium (the part of the flower where the seeds develop) and by petals in groups of five. Roses are members of the plant genus Rosa.

You can plant vegetable seeds indoors or outdoors. If you plant seeds indoors, you transplant them into your garden later. With direct seeding, you skip the indoor step and sow the seeds directly in your garden. If you're serious about growing vegetables, you'll probably end up using both options. Consider these points when making your choice: You get a jump on the growing season when you sow seeds indoors.

Of all the senses, smell most strongly evokes memory. The strong perfume of sweet peas, or the spicy smell of nasturtiums can bring back an acute longing for a favorite garden from the past. The flower fragrances you prefer are as personal as the perfume or aftershave lotion you choose to wear. Plant generously so that you have plenty of flowers and leaves to pick for bouquets and bowls of potpourri.

How to mow a lawn or grass the right way is one of the most important practices in keeping your lawn healthy. Grasses are like most plants — if you clip off the growing points (for grass, it's in the crown, where the new leaves develop), the plants branch out and become denser, which in this case, turns thousands of individual grass plants into a tightly woven turf or a lawn.