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Articles & Books From National Gardening Association
Article / Updated 08-03-2023
To get all the best flavor and highest nutritional value from your vegetables, you need to pick them at just the right time. Some vegetables taste terrible if you pick them too early; others are tough and stringy if you pick them too late. ©Jacob Lund / Adobe StockAnd after you pick your vegetables, what if you can’t eat them right away?
Article / Updated 08-03-2023
After you choose a good sunny spot for your vegetable garden and draw a plan on paper, you need to clean up the area so the soil will be easier to work. ©New Africa / Adobe StockYou can clear your garden area any time during the year, but the season before planting works best — clear in the fall for spring planting, or clear in the spring for summer or fall planting.
Become a plant parent to some of the most stunning flowering plants you’ve ever seen Orchids display more beautiful and exotic flowers than you’ll find on other flowering plants, but they do require some love and care to grow well. With help from Orchids For Dummies, anyone can be successful in growing and flowering these gorgeous and fragrant plants in their garden or home!
Create an eye-catching outdoor oasis with this no-nonsense guide to landscaping As families spend more time at home, they're expanding their living space to their yards, decks, and patios. When you're ready to upgrade the look of your landscape, Landscaping For Dummies offers advice on installing fences and walkways, choosing hardy plants and trees, and enhancing natural habitats for the critters and creatures lurking in your neighborhood.
Cultivate your passion to grow In a 1625 essay, Francis Bacon called gardens "the purest of human pleasures," and what was true then is even more so today—gardening can give you a serene refuge from the short-lived (and noisy!) distractions of modern life and a fertile basis for satisfaction that will bear fruit long into the future.
Vegetables from your own farm to your own tableWe all love good food, and the fresher it is, the better! And what could be fresher than farm-to-table terms than vegetables you've grown at home? The new edition of Vegetable Gardening For Dummies puts you in touch with your roots in a thousands of years old farming tradition by demonstrating how easy it is to grow your own.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-15-2022
Growing orchids at home isn’t as difficult as you might think. This handy Cheat Sheet will help you get started. Take a look at the list of fragrant orchids to decide which sweet scents you want around your house. You'll also find some helpful tips about knowing when and how to fertilize and water your orchids.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-27-2016
You can find lots of reasons to grow herbs in your home garden. Most herb plants are both ornamental and useful; most are fragrant, many taste good, and some are highly nutritious. Plus, herbs are just plain interesting — many have colorful names and equally colorful lore associated with them. Grow your own herbs, and you get the freshest harvest, you can control how they’re cared for and stored, and you can grow unusual varieties.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Not only are orchids beautiful, some have an amazing fragrance. Here's a list of some of the most sweet-smelling orchids and a brief description of their fragrance:
Angranthes grandiflora: Just about all the angraecums and their hybrids, like this one, have a sweet jasmine fragrance.
Brassavola nodosa: Its common name, Lady of the Night, gives you a hint of its sensuous freesia or lily-of-the-valley night fragrance.
Article / Updated 06-28-2021
You have only two choices when you harvest crops from your vegetable garden: Eat the veggies right away, or store them to use later. Specific vegetables need different storage conditions to maintain their freshness, such as:
Cool and dry: Ideally, temperatures should be between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 15.