Caring for Ground Covers

Planting ground cover on your property requires careful consideration of the best type of plant for the location. Ground covers might be the perfect plant for tough locations but they do require maintenance. To perform the correct function of beautifying your landscape, these plants require fertilizing, mulching and weeding like any other plant in the landscape.

Enhancing the Soil

Plant care begins with soil preparation. The best case scenario features adding peat moss, compost or another type of soil conditioner to the garden bed before planting the ground cover. If not, don't panic. You can still carefully stir up the soil between juvenile plants to add organic matter to the soil. Use a rake, hoe or wheeled cultivator between plants. Strain out and remove any weeds during this process.

Soil pH Primer

Spring is a great time of year to create a plan to improve whole landscape health. Gardens and lawns both benefit greatly from soil additives and amendments. The root cause of failure to see drastic improvement with any landscape amendment is lack of proper planning.

Soil pH is absolutely key to selecting the correct additives to apply to your landscape. Before you purchase a bag of lime, manure, peat moss or anything else, take a soil sample and run it up to your nearest gardening center for evaluation. The minor cost of the test will save so much money and time in the long run, preventing the wasted expense and application time of very costly soil amendments.

Check out this article for more basics on soil pH A Beginners Guide to Soil pH

Photo: Wikimedia Commons,  Public Domain.

How to Mix the Perfect Soil for Annual Beds

The life of an annual plant is compressed into a very short period of time. Annuals make the journey from seed to adulthood in a single growing season. For this reason, keeping annuals healthy from start to finish provides the best impact in your home landscape. Seasoned gardeners know that great soil tops the list of most important items for a successful garden. But how do you mix the perfect soil for annual beds?


Ingredients

The best type of garden soil consists of particles of rock, organic matter and sand as well as a mixture of air and water. This combination produces nutrient rich soil that drains water quickly without pooling that can cause root rot. The perfect soil for annual beds doesn't just happen. Gardeners need to create it through a little hard word. The rewards are fabulous and noticeable in healthy annuals with full foliage and plenty of blooms.