If you’re just looking for something to look nice in your yard, you’ll
want a flower garden. These are usually filled with perennial flower.
Perennial flowers are flowers which stay healthy year-round. They’re
basically weeds because of their hardiness, only nice looking. Different
areas and climates have different flowers which are considered perennials.
If you do a quick internet search for your area, you can probably find a
list of flowers that will bring your flower garden to life. These usually
only require work in the planting stage – after that, the flower take care
of themselves. The only downside to this is that you don’t have any
product to show for it.

Another choice for your garden is to have a vegetable garden. These
usually require a little more work and research than a flower garden, but
can be much more rewarding. No matter what time of the year it is, you can
usually find one vegetable that is still prospering. That way you can have
your garden be giving you produce almost every day of the year! When
starting a vegetable garden, you should build it with the thought in mind
that you will be adding more types of veggies in later. This will help
your expandability. Once all your current crops are out of season, you
won’t be stuck with almost nowhere to put the new crops. A vegetable
garden is ideal for someone who wants some produce, but doesn’t want to
devote every waking hour to perfecting their garden (see below.)

One of the more difficult types of gardens to manage is a fruit garden.
It’s definitely the most high-maintenance. When growing fruits, many more
pests will be attracted due to the sweetness. You not only have to deal
with having just the right dirt and fertilizer, you have to deal with
choosing a pesticide that won’t kill whoever eats the fruits. Your fruit
garden will probably not produce year-round. The soil needs to be just
right for the plants to grow, and putting in another crop during its
off-season could be disastrous to its growth process. If you’re willing to
put lots of work into maintaining a garden, then a fruit garden could be a
good choice for you.

So now that I’ve outlined some of the main garden types that people
choose, I hope you can make a good decision. Basically, the garden type
comes down to what kind of product you want, and how much work you want to
put into it. If you’re looking for no product with no work, go with a
flower garden. If you want lots of delicious product, but you are willing
to spend hours in your garden each day, then go for a fruit garden. Just
make sure you don’t get into something you can’t handle!

Butterfly Garden Decor

A large, clean, clear jar will make butterfly watching easy to do without causing any disturbance to the delicate creature inside.   To ensure a safe environment or home for the butterfly, the metal lid should have several holes in it to provide plenty of air.  This can be done by pounding nails into the lid with a hammer.

Once you have the jar ready for your butterfly watching project, all you need is a monarch caterpillar.  Again, you can purchase these along with the kits, or separately, but you can find your own caterpillar.  The best time to look for a monarch caterpillar is around the end of July and August.  The places to look for them are in fields or anywhere that milkweeds are growing.

Monarch butterflies almost always lay their eggs on milkweed leaves.  When the egg hatches, the caterpillar emerges, eats the egg and begins eating on the milkweed leaf.   Carefully turn over the leaves of a milkweed plant.  If you find a caterpillar, pick it up gently and place it in the jar on top of some milkweed leaves.  The milkweed leaves will provide food for the caterpillar.  The leaves need to be replaced with fresh new ones every day.

Though a caterpillar is in the jar, butterfly watching can begin by observing the caterpillar.  Soon the caterpillar changes into a chrysalis by attaching to the lid of the jar and shedding its skin.  It starts out soft but soon hardens into a shell.  In two weeks the shell becomes clear and you can see inside the chrysalis.  The metamorphosis is complete and it is time for the butterfly to emerge and wait for its wings to dry and harden.

Butterfly watching is fun to do while the butterfly is in the jar, but that is not the natural habitat of the butterfly.  It is thankful for the safe and quiet place it has had while your student has been butterfly watching, but it needs to be released.  The lid of the jar can be removed and allow the butterfly to climb out onto your finger so that you can release it into the air, or just set the jar out with the lid removed and it will fly out on its own.

Students often want to repeat the experience and wonderment of butterfly watching each year.  Some students may become interested in butterfly watching for the rest of their lives as a hobby or as lepidopterists; or they might volunteer to rescue butterflies that are in danger during migration.  Students could work together to create butterfly gardens.  Inexpensive seed mixture packets containing seeds of flowers that attract butterflies can be purchased where other gardening items are sold.

Butterfly watching field trips are offered in some areas, especially in the south.  When monarch butterflies migrate to the south for winter, butterfly watching enthusiasts in the area are witness to groups of thousands of butterflies flying in groups and clinging to trees.  A homeschool student’s butterfly watching project with only one butterfly is just as amazing and is an easy project that can be repeated and enjoyed each year.

This will take a lot of hard work. So you better be prepared for it. Once you are already into the process, take time to familiarize yourself. Do not give up just because of a minor problem. Just think of it like nature is testing you how big your love for it is. So prove it worth your tears and fears regarding this type of gardening.

What makes this hard? Unlike the ordinary kind of gardening, going organic will remove from you the freedom to use just about anything that is commercially available as long as it will help you with your venture. No way. You cannot use synthetic materials on this one. Everything must be organic. It must come from nature itself. You must have done it using elements that can be found on the ground. Or you can also buy those available in the market as long as they claim to be organic.

By going organic, you’ll be able to help nature replenish its resources. Yes, you get from it all the materials that you will be needing for this task. You will get the dried leaves, the sawdust, some vegetable peels and other materials from the ground. This is also your way of cleaning your surroundings. But such materials can be used as elements in compost.

You can actually do your own compost by going over some books on how this can be done. You can also turn to someone who is successful with this type of gardening and ask that person for tips and tricks. You can use the result of that compost as fertilizers on your garden.

Finding a guru may serve a lot of purpose as you go along in this type of gardening. It doesn’t matter if you will just be doing so as a hobby or you will turn it into a business. So start asking around and look for that person who can further mentor you in the trade of doing the stuff that surrounds such method of gardening.

By having the aid of an expert, especially if you are only beginning on this task, you will be better at helping nature. You will know what type of plants you can grow in what type of soil. You will have a clearer view as to how the elements of the ground can contribute to the success of your project. You will know what to do in cases of trouble with regards to the growth of your plants or the emergence of pests on your garden.

Nature will really love you for the way you will only utilize organic materials for the purpose of growing green things on your garden. And you will benefit a lot in the process of organic gardening. You will be able to become a guru of this type of task. You will be able to produce organic sources of food.

And you can also turn this into a business venture once you have mastered the art and you are already harvesting more than enough.

hanging butterflies

How would you feel? For a time being, you may be able to accept the fact. You may still tire yourself out without asking for anything in return. But as the days go by, you will feel the negative effects of the situation. You will no longer have the kind of energy that you used to. Your body will deteriorate until it can no longer function for the things that it used to do.

How is this related to the organic method of gardening? You can actually compare this to the state of the soil. Soil is a very important aspect in this type and all the other kinds of gardening. This is the base of everything. This will be the bed, or the house of your plants. You must choose the right one in the first place.

Depending on your location, the soils that you may acquire vary on such factor. You should base the decision in picking out the plants on the types of soils that are available in your area. Once you have picked the right kind, you are now on you way to the first steps of your gardening venture using the organic method.

Relating to the sample above, the soil must never be left untended. It must never go hungry. Or else, what happened to the example may also happen to the soil. You have to feed the soil. You have to bathe it. And you have to take care of it just like how you tend to yourself or to the plants situated on your garden.

You may know from your grade school days that the soil needs water, sunlight and air. But you are doing everything organically now. Does it carry out any differences? Yes, a lot. Although you still have to feed your soil and the plants on it enough sunlight, water and air, you have to add something else. You’ve got to have organic matters placed on the soil.

Have you ever heard of composting? This is the process where you culminate decaying matters like leaves, grasses, peelings of fruits or vegetables, even manures and fish heads to act as your soil’s fertilizer. This is organic remember? You cannot resort to anything synthetic. This is one proof that this process entails a lot of hard work than you can ever imagine.

Not only are you going to feed the soil, you also have to attend to it regularly. Mulching is like massaging the soil to keep its shape. This way, you will be able to get rid of the pests that your soil has gotten through the days or months, however long you have been gardening.

This will actually help you prevent acquiring bigger problems. There are many types of soils that need certain care and attention. For example, clay can hold up water better than the sandy kind. You have to know those kind of details to be able to improve on your organic gardening venture.

hanging butterflies

Residential Gardening

This is the most common of all gardening techniques. If you are just a beginner and not yet inclined to produce vegetables for industrial reasons, then residential gardening is for you. The primary purpose of residential gardening is to sustain a family or two of a steady supply of vegetables and at the same time, render aesthetic appeal to your backyard.

Residential gardening does not require too much space. It can also be cultivated in window sills, balconies and other small areas that have sufficient light source, easy to monitor and at the same time, easy to maintain or free from pests. The good thing about residential gardening is the ease with which it ushers the gardening wannabe from having no knowledge of planting to expanding to other gardening styles, whichever deems the fancy of the budding gardener.

Specialized Gardening

Specialized gardening involves non-residential areas that are known for its green quality and are often marketed as such. Parks, botanical gardens, amusement parts and other tourist attractions fall under this category. Often a staff is required to maintain due to its size, so effective administrative skills on top of gardening expertise may be required. It is also tailored for delivering in profit to certain causes or organizations.

Impact Gardening
If you are up to the challenge of blocking weeds with minimal costs, then impact gardening is for you. It involves using a relatively small space and maximizing its gardening potential. The plants are often crowded together.

Indoor Gardening

Residential gardening is under the huge scope of indoor gardening. Other types under this category include the gardens of conservatories, greenhouses and academic institutions. Systems for heating and air conditioning may also be found for certain breeds of plants. If you are the type of gardener who really loves cultivating plants in and out of season, then indoor gardening is for you.

Water Gardening

If you want to garden with minimal supervision and love water organisms, then water gardening is for you. This is a bit of a challenge for most gardeners because it usually doesn’t involve the initial conditions of other traditional gardening techniques. The novelty of water gardening appeals only to those who have ample water facilities to cultivate this type of gardening style.

Community Gardening

If you are motivated by group efforts, community gardening may be for you. It involves concentrated efforts of the different members of the community to be able to help make a greener place. It involves a huge scope, but the members of the community are given autonomy to style their areas in whichever way they choose.h

Hanging Butterflies

A large, clean, clear jar will make butterfly watching easy to do without causing any disturbance to the delicate creature inside.   To ensure a safe environment or home for the butterfly, the metal lid should have several holes in it to provide plenty of air.  This can be done by pounding nails into the lid with a hammer.

Once you have the jar ready for your butterfly watching project, all you need is a monarch caterpillar.  Again, you can purchase these along with the kits, or separately, but you can find your own caterpillar.  The best time to look for a monarch caterpillar is around the end of July and August.  The places to look for them are in fields or anywhere that milkweeds are growing.

Monarch butterflies almost always lay their eggs on milkweed leaves.  When the egg hatches, the caterpillar emerges, eats the egg and begins eating on the milkweed leaf.   Carefully turn over the leaves of a milkweed plant.  If you find a caterpillar, pick it up gently and place it in the jar on top of some milkweed leaves.  The milkweed leaves will provide food for the caterpillar.  The leaves need to be replaced with fresh new ones every day.

Though a caterpillar is in the jar, butterfly watching can begin by observing the caterpillar.  Soon the caterpillar changes into a chrysalis by attaching to the lid of the jar and shedding its skin.  It starts out soft but soon hardens into a shell.  In two weeks the shell becomes clear and you can see inside the chrysalis.  The metamorphosis is complete and it is time for the butterfly to emerge and wait for its wings to dry and harden.

Butterfly watching is fun to do while the butterfly is in the jar, but that is not the natural habitat of the butterfly.  It is thankful for the safe and quiet place it has had while your student has been butterfly watching, but it needs to be released.  The lid of the jar can be removed and allow the butterfly to climb out onto your finger so that you can release it into the air, or just set the jar out with the lid removed and it will fly out on its own.

Students often want to repeat the experience and wonderment of butterfly watching each year.  Some students may become interested in butterfly watching for the rest of their lives as a hobby or as lepidopterists; or they might volunteer to rescue butterflies that are in danger during migration.  Students could work together to create butterfly gardens.  Inexpensive seed mixture packets containing seeds of flowers that attract butterflies can be purchased where other gardening items are sold.

Butterfly watching field trips are offered in some areas, especially in the south.  When monarch butterflies migrate to the south for winter, butterfly watching enthusiasts in the area are witness to groups of thousands of butterflies flying in groups and clinging to trees.  A student butterfly watching project with only one butterfly is just as amazing and is an easy project that can be repeated and enjoyed each year.

Nylon Butterflies

The very hard thing about pest control is the fact that there are so many types of pests that can invade your garden; it will really be quite a challenge to recall them in one sitting, so full immersion to your gardening activities is the only surefire way to inculcate ample knowledge on pests to watch out for.

One of the tried and tested tactics for pest control is by familiarizing yourself with the famous insects and animals. These enemies of the garden will really hamper the growth of your crop only if you let them.

Beetles

You have two options for beetles: manually remove them by hand or spray them with insecticide that is poisonous to them. If left untreated, beetles have the capacity to bore so much holes on your leaves and eat away at your vegetation over time, especially when their population has already burgeoned. Beetles comes in a variety of types, but the remedy for it is usually the two techniques mentioned above.

Aphids

You will often find sticky groups of insects that are invading your garden in hues of red if you have aphids in your garden. Fortunately, you can easily remedy this by spraying it with soap insecticide or any similar material. Aphids are common to almost every garden vegetable you can possibly imagine, so if you are growing vegetables, you are most likely to encounter these sticky organisms.

Cabbage Worms

Neem oil is the cabbage worms’ worst enemy, so if you spray them with it, they will be out of your garden in a jiffy. The thing is, you can determine whether cabbage worm are in the garden if you find green caterpillar and holes on the leaves of your plants. You can also pick them by hand if you are more courageous or maybe spray them with insecticide if you don’t have neem oil handy at the time of infestation.

Cut Worms

If you see crawling, dull caterpillars that are brown in color, then you have found cutworms invading your territory! Placing paper collars around plants after digging around the area may help prevent cutworms from taking up your precious soil and nutrients. Some chemicals may also work like insecticides, but this is a general cure. You also need to dig a lot because the cut worms have this tendency to snuggle up on your plants for shade and life.

Maggots

Maggots are extremely disgusting, and they tend to make your landscape ugly if you do not try to get rid of them. Bleaching is one of the best ways to get rid of maggots. If your organic garden is also situated beside a garbage bag, you may choose to transfer your garbage bag elsewhere because leftover meals like meat tend to attract these maggots and they might decide to branch out of the garbage bin and into your garden.

There are many other kinds of pests that you can control in your garden given the right handy tools and knowledge on how to best eliminate them from your organic garden.

nylon butterflies

You might be surprised to know that, according to scientists’ estimates, there are over 20,000 butterfly species in the world.  In North America there are over 700 species of butterflies.  That is a lot of butterflies available for the butterfly watching enthusiasts!

Butterfly watchers are called lepidopterists.  Another name for butterfly watching is ‘butterflying’.  Besides butterfly watching, they love to study the life cycle of the butterflies, catch and collect them, create and enjoy butterfly gardens, and some work hard to preserve the natural habitat of butterflies.  Some adults and students become involved in doing an annual butterfly census to track the butterflies’ traveling habits and their numbers in their species.

Capturing and mounting butterflies for collecting as a hobby is no longer encouraged.  However, the Field Museum in Chicago has collected from all over the world over 90,000 specimens of butterflies.  Besides visiting the museum, you can join groups like the North American Butterfly Association, the Lepidopterist Society and subscribe to journals like the Journal of Lepidopterists’ Society.

Scores of books dedicated to butterfly watching are available in libraries and bookstores.  There are butterfly watching clubs and seasonal festivals and parades devoted to butterfly watching activities.

You could spend very little for butterfly watching expenses or you could spend as much as you care to.  There are butterfly nature reserves, field trips, butterfly releases, migrations watches, and general butterfly watching opportunities all over the world.  Some species of butterflies thrive only where certain plants for food available to them, so it would be necessary for you to travel to observe them in their habitats.

Besides in your backyard butterfly garden, some points of interest where you can enjoy successful butterfly watching are Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia, Niagara Park, Ontario, Butterfly Kingdom in South Carolina, and Wings of Paradise in Cambridge, Ontario. People from all over the world visit these butterfly watching hotspots.  They provide butterfly watching enthusiasts a view of many species of butterflies and rare plants.

There are some suggestions to get you started in the hobby of butterfly watching.  Though butterfly watching can be done alone, it is recommended that you go with a buddy.  Accidents do happen and if you should happen to fall and sustain injuries, the buddy system will work for you.  There are differing opinions on what color clothing is recommended for butterfly watching.  Some say you should wear browns and greens so that you blend in and will not scare the butterflies away.  Others recommend wearing bright colors to attract the butterflies.  White clothing would cause the butterflies to see you from a distance and fly away.  You might want to bring along binoculars and a notebook to record what you found while you were butterfly watching.  You might want to keep a record of the species you find, notes about their habitat and food plants available where you found the butterflies.

If you are just beginning butterfly watching, start out by going out on bright, warm, sunny days when the butterflies are active.  Look for them in backyards, wetlands, meadows, woods, where there is fruit and anywhere you see brightly colored flowers.  You are sure to see those delightful “flying flowers” around somewhere.

nylon butterflies

Compost is not soil.  It is a common misconception that the end-result of composting is the dirt that you find in the ground.  It is a substance that acts as a fertilizer (enriching the soil) to grow hardier and healthier plants and flowers and is composed of decomposed materials.

It is a breakdown of waste materials as they are digested by microbes, such as bacteria and fungi, and earthworms.  The microbes are the workers of the composting equation.  They need air, water, and food to do their job and it is up to you to supply it to them in the right amounts.  If you have heard that having a compost bin or pile creates a foul odor it is most likely the result of not enough air circulating throughout the waste material.  Without air, the material will still breakdown but it will be done by anaerobic microbes (organisms that do not need oxygen) as opposed to aerobic (ones that need oxygen).  So if you do have an unpleasant smell coming from your compost bin or pile you can rotate the material to let in more air or add a substance to create more room for the air to circulate.  Wood chips or hay are good for this.

Composting is good for the environment and your garden and it eliminates the amount of waste you throw away and enriches the soil your trees, flowers and lawn grow in.