When the weather starts getting warm, it’s time to start thinking about planting a garden. It’s a fun outdoors activity that your whole family can get involved in and will produce great results with a little time and effort. Because plants have different needs to grow and produce fruits at different times, you need to plant them in a certain time frame to give them the best chance for success and make sure they will produce fruit before winter comes. This article will focus on the gardening schedule for Utah for some of the most common garden vegetables.
Every gardener has to grow tomatoes. They’re relatively easy to grow and care for, but have a knack for making anybody feel like they have a green thumb. Tomatoes are planted later in the gardening season, usually between May 1 and June 1. Plant the tomato seeds 3 to 4 inches deep into the soil so the tomatoes can grow good, deep roots. Space your tomato plants 2 to 3 feet apart so you have plenty of room to add tomato cages once the plants are about a foot tall. Tomatoes take about 2 months of growing time before they produce fruit, so you can expect to start having tomatoes in July or August.
If you love eating salads, then you have to plant lettuce in your garden. There are two categories of lettuce – head and leaf. Head lettuce grows in a tight ball, such as iceburg lettuce. Leaf lettuces, like romaine lettuce, grow openly and do not form a head. Both types of lettuce should be planted between March 25 and May 15. Leaf lettuce seeds should be planted only .5 inches deep, but head lettuce seeds need to be planted 2 inches deep. You want 10 inches between head lettuce plants. Leaf lettuce can grow much closer together and only needs about 2 inches of space. Leaf lettuce will be ready to eat in about a month and a half after planting. Head lettuce requires a bit more waiting, but will be ready in about 2 months.
Squash is another gardener’s favorite that is easy to grow and yields a lot of fruit. Squash comes in two varieties – summer and winter. Summer squash should be planted between May 5 and July 1. It will produce fruit in about 50 days. Winter squash has a very short planting time frame and should be planted between May 20 and June 1. Winter squash takes longer to mature than summer squash and should be ready in 3 or 4 months. Both summer and winter squash seeds should be planted 1.5 inches deep and spaced 1.5 feet apart.
Bring some spice to your garden by planting pepper seeds. Pepper plants are slow to grow from seeds and may seem like their growth is stunted or stopped for a while early on, but once they begin to grow they will grow rapidly and produce fruit well. Pepper seeds should be planted between May 20 and June 1. This planting window is less than 2 weeks, so make sure to stay on top of planting your pepper seeds so you don’t miss the time frame. Plant the pepper seeds 3 to 4 inches deep and about 1 to 1.5 feet apart. The peppers should be ready in August.
For more information about the gardening in Utah, you can reference this Utah gardening schedule chart from Catalyst Magazine. This article is brought to you by All States Landscaping – “Creating Unique Outdoor Environments”. All States can help you fertilize your lawn and garden. They also provide many landscaping services to make your yard beautiful.
Archive for May, 2010
Utah 2010 Gardening Schedule
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010Landscaping Color Schemes
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010Although landscaping is often thought to be a “green” industry, many color enthusiasts will find an all-green landscape rather monotonous and boring. By adding color schemes to the landscape, you have ample opportunities to show off your creativity.
In many cases, color is often one of the most prominent factors landscape designers should consider when sprucing up their landscape.
You can achieve the following effects by adding color schemes:
- Enliven the landscape, make it bright and exciting;
- Attract attention to those areas that you’d like to be noticed such as the front door or pergola or switch the focus from dull surroundings;
- Different color schemes are very important for the exterior environment, when you want to ensure that colors match with the overal design and enhance the look of the landscape;
- Highlight the colors of other plants;
- Create a special mood;
- Bring a variety throughout the seasons;
- Attract such animals and insects as birds and butterflies
Artist’s Color Wheel
To produce a good landscaping design, you should know how to combine colors and textures to make the final product pleasing to the eye. When in certain combinations, colors can provide a beautifully harmonious effect. For instance, yellow color is thought to refresh the mind and many landscape designers recommend to plant yellow-colored flowers near windows for better visibility. With monochromatic colors, you can get the shades and tints of one beautifully pure color. A shade is darker than the pure color, a tint is lighter. The landscaping practice shows that many homeowners often choose monochromatic color schemes. To show you an example of such scheme, let’s take a red color. You can get tints and shades of this color with the help of various deep red, pink, or maroon colors.
It takes some practice to develop a good eye for color, but to get a better idea of landscaping color scheme, a good place to start will be by studying a color wheel. The colors on this wheel are arranged in accordance with their relationship to each other like in rainbow colors, starting with violet to red, red to orange, orange to yellow and so on.
Some colors like red or orange are called warm colors. They are thought to make us feel warmer, while other colors like green or blue can produce a “coolness” feeling. When using compatible colors in the landscape, such as pastels, this can create a peaceful mood.
Harmonious or analogous colors use hues of the same color that is placed next to each other on the color wheel. They create a calming sense and make us feel peaceful. With such a variety and abundance of annual and perennial cultivars available throughout the year, color combinations are really easy to achieve.
Contrasting or complementary color schemes use colors that are on opposite sides to each other on the color wheel. Their combinations are very vibrant and bring life, energy and excitement to the landscape. Such colors catch the eye and are usually a good place at your front door or any place you want to draw attention to. However, remember that too many contrasting colors scattered throughout the landscape may cause confusion for the eye. The examples of complementary color combinations can be orange against blue, yellow and violet, red and green, and so on.
Polychromatic colors contain every color from the color wheel and are placed next to each other. The appearance can be random, but brings the sense of play and amusement to the landscape design.
Most color wheels contain 12 colors only, however nature gives us almost an endless number of shades, tints and tones of these 12 main colors. In any case, the artist’s color wheel is a good starting point that will help you train your eye on the choice and combination of the colors you’d like to use in the landscape.
Color Design Principles
When developing color palette of your landscape, it is a good idea to look at all the colors as potentially good choices. Colors should be grouped with an utmost care. For example, a magenta bloom may look harmonious near other plants with purple or pink flowers, however when combined with red, orange, or yellow flowers, magenta will be hideous.
You should remember that many flowers’ bloom may not last long, while bark, foliage, or even seed heads may have a much longer life and add an entirely different texture to your landscape throughout the seasons.
It is important to know that the color palette in your landscape is not limited to plants only. Consider adding such hardscape colors as colored concrete, bricks, rocks and the like. Make sure that your plants contrast or blend with their surroundings depending on what goal you try to achieve. For instance, when you select a plant that will grow near red bricks, yellow and white flowers will be a good idea. However, if you choose red flowers, they will simply fade into the surroundings.
In case you use contrasting color combinations, they will give your landscape a much more distinctive look. To brighten shaded areas, use light-colored flowers with hues of white, pale blue, or light pink colors. If you plant dark-colored plants, they tend to get swallowed up in the shade, unless you surround them with a lighter color to get some contrast.
No matter what color palette you choose while designing the landscape, remember that there is no point in creating a riot of colors. Everything should look pleasant to the eyes.
Utah Rock Landscaping
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010Rocks can be a great design and aesthetic statement for any yard. They come in a wide range of sizes from pebbles to giant rocks weighing more than 150 pounds. You can also buy them in many different colors including gray, tan, white, brown, green, pink, red, and gold. They also have varied textures, smooth and rough, and differing shapes, such as round, rectangular, or jagged. Rocks can be used in a variety of ways to add an interesting feature to your lawn.
Small rocks can be used as a ground covering in place of grass or mulch. This is a great option for places that are hard to mow, such as small beds near the house or under trees and shrubbery. These rocks are typically sold in bags. They might be all the same type and color of rock or they might be a mixture of shades to add dimension. Because they are small in size, you can usually go for a bolder, more contrasting color to make them stand out more. Popular choices for small rock beds include shades of brown or red. Simply spread the rocks out to fill the area you wish to cover just like mulch and weed to keep unwanted plants from growing in the rock bed. Buy as many bags as you will need at once so that you can make sure you get the same color or mixture of rocks for the entire area.
Flat rocks are great for making stepping stones or walkways. These paths can create an extension of your driveway, a path through your garden and flowers, or even a sidewalk leading to your door. For a pathway that will be connected to a driveway or other walkways, you may wish to match the color of the rocks to the existing pavement. A gray stone path is very classic and beautiful. If you wish to use the rocks as stepping stones, then you can choose a bolder, contrasting color. A stronger color will help them to stand out more. As with small rocks, make sure you have enough rocks of the same style and color to complete your project before you begin.
Big rocks are perfect for creating walls and borders. Round rocks can be placed side by side to create a border. Jagged and flat rocks can be stacked to create a rock wall. Both the border and rock wall can be used as an edge for a flower bed or terrace. Rocks also look great as an edge around a pond. You can enhance this even more by using the rocks to create a waterfall flowing directly into the pond. To help make the placement of large rocks look more natural, bury the bottom 1/3 below the level of the ground. Because these rocks can be extremely heavy and difficult to move, you need to be sure about what you want to do with them so that you only have to move them once. Garbage bags stuffed with paper can make great approximations so that you can determine the size, shape, and placement of the rocks before you purchase and move them. Because these large rocks make a big statement on their own, you should choose shades that compliment other features in your yard and your house color.
All States Landscaping can help you choose the rock features best for your yard and install them. They can install a retaining wall to create a terrace, rock wall, or to help prevent water runoff. They also offer decorative concrete or pavers for walkways. You can see a selection of the rock colors they have available on their website or request an estimate.
Utah Fertilization Suggestions
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010Fertilizer is one of the greatest secrets to have a beautiful, lush lawn. It may seem simple, but there is actually a delicate balance. More fertilizer is not necessarily better. Over fertilization can harm your plants and pollute streams and groundwater. The key is to use the right amount of fertilizer at the right times.
Bags of fertilizer have the nutrients they contain listed on a label. This is usually expressed as a series of three numbers, such as 12-10-6, which represents the percentages of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, respectively. There is no one type of fertilizer that is “best” – it depends on the needs of your lawn. The best way to know what your lawn needs is to do a soil test. If you cannot do a soil test, the next best thing to do is determine what type of soil you have in your yard.
The two main types of soil are clay and sand. Most soils will fall somewhere on a spectrum between the two characteristics. Clay soil puddles water and has a smooth texture. Sandy soil feels gritty and absorbs water more easily. In Utah, clay soils typically have sufficient supplies of phosphate and potassium, but require additional nitrogen. Sandy soils are often deficient in all three nutrients.
Nitrogen is the most important of these nutrients. Plants that lack nitrogen will be slow to grow and will be yellow-green in color. Unfortunately, soil tests cannot detect the level of nitrogen, so you will have to determine the correct amount through trial and error. Typically in Utah, you should apply 1 pound of nitrogen every 4 weeks per 1,000 square feet. Begin fertilizing by the end of April and continue through the summer. An application of fertilizer in the fall will help your yard endure the winter and prepare it to bloom in the spring.
Use a spreader to apply fertilizer to your lawn. The bag of fertilizer usually tells the best spreader setting to use. Only fertilize when the grass is dry, otherwise you will burn the plants. To prevent streaks, fertilize in two directions, 90 degrees to each other. You should also apply grass clippings, which are another great source of nitrogen.
If your grass starts yellowing in the middle of summer, you probably have an iron deficiency. Dissolve 2 tablespoons of iron sulfate into 3 gallons of water per 1,000 square feet and use this mixture to water your lawn. To help with the absorption, avoid watering again for at least 24 hours and try to plan around rain and storms. Take care to avoid your sidewalks and driveway as iron sulfate and cause permanent rust stains on them.
With fertilization, you can have the beautiful, green yard that your neighbors will envy. All States Landscaping provides utah fertilization programs that can help. These programs help your plants grow while controlling weeds and insects. They also specialize in deep root treatments to stimulate large, strong growth of trees and shrubbery. You can see sample of All States’ work and request an estimate at their website, www.asl1.com.
Residential Putting Greens
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Just about any golfer would love to own their own golf course. The convenience and privacy of being able to practice one’s game on their own turf is a dream for most golfers. By planting putting greens in your backyard, you can make this dream a reality. Whether you create a simple putting area or an elaborate and decorative landscaping project, a relaxing game of golf can be right out your back door. It is no wonder that this is quickly becoming very popular with golfers across the country.
The biggest decision you have when creating your golf paradise is whether to use natural or synthetic turf. The most common types of natural putting greens are Bermuda grass and bent grass. Bermuda grass is best for warm, tropical climates; where as bent grass is better suited for cool or moderate climates. Both are beautiful and will provide a very authentic look.
In addition to the initial cost of the landscaping, natural putting greens require a lot of maintenance. Because these grasses grow best in sandy soils which retain less moisture, natural putting greens will need a lot of water. When planting putting greens, water drainage is very important to consider. Water that pools on the greens will create sink holes where you don’t want them. The grass must be mowed at least every other day to keep it trimmed to ¼ inch or shorter. Otherwise it will quickly become an unkempt mess. In addition to the time investment, you will need a special lawn mower that can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000. Other routine gardening will also be required such as fertilizing and weeding.
If you don’t want to invest the time and money in maintaining natural turf, synthetic turf is a good alternative. Though they can still look nice, they might not look as authentic or “real” as the real thing. You will spend more to install synthetic putting greens; however you will save greatly on maintenance costs. The holes will be stationary, unlike the natural greens where they can be moved around. While this may take away some of the spontaneity and variety, if you carefully think about the hole placements it does not have to be an issue. Many golfers enjoy synthetic putting greens and say they cannot tell a difference between them and natural turf.
If you’re ready to improve your game and have your backyard become the hot spot for all of your golfing buddies, then transform your backyard with putting greens. All States Landscaping installs putting greens in Utah for $15.00 per square foot. You can request an estimate or contact All States Landscaping at their website, www.asl1.com. All States provides landscaping and maintenance services geared for today’s lifestyles.
