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If the need to
pickup a very environmentally-friendly and
‘green’ hobby has come to mind, then it must be
gardening time. Gardening is the practice of
growing plants either for ornamental or food. A
gardening effort can involve a plot as small as
a windowsill or as large as a few acres.
Gardening as a hobby can be an effective tool
for stress management as well as providing food
for the family and beauty as well. Many
gardeners who start out usually do so with a
smaller scale as in the backyard. Here they feel
more comfortable and can make the usual mistakes
that most if not all successful gardeners will
do from time to time. In the end, gardening is a
thrilling hobby and one that can be practiced
for a lifetime.
Gardening
Start-up Cost
Gardening as a
hobby is one of the least expensive ones to
start off with of all the outdoor adventures.
For starters, one only needs a patch of dirt,
some water and a few seeds. Of course this is a
very small plot for gardening as a hobby yet it
is where most of the master gardeners got their
starts. The minimal cost of gardening makes it a
perfect selection as a hobby and one that will
give years of enjoyment and beneficial grocery
items. The initial cost of gardening revolves
around seeds or sprouts, or from cuttings of
exist in more mature plant. Many novice
gardeners create their first gardening effort
from scratch and use the seeds or tops of
vegetables and fruits as beginning plantings. To
understand gardening as a hobby it is important
to realize that there are some minimal cost
involved yet none that should break the bank.
The average cost of a backyard garden for
starters would be under $100, easily. The main
important factor to recall about gardening as a
hobby is that it is labor-intensive and this is
where the fun begins.
As mentioned
earlier garden as a hobby is a minimal price and
effort and here are the first starter tools that
a novice gardener will need.
-
Hand
Shovel
-
Spade
-
Small
Rake
-
Watering Can
-
Seeds
or Cuttings
-
Time
-
Plot of
Soil
-
Compost
Pile
That’s the
short list for any beginning gardening hobby and
will provide everything that is needed for the
novice gardening effort. There are many
different types of gardening tools and manuals
and all sorts of seeds and cuttings that can be
employed. With an entire world of choices for
things to grow personal choice will be the only
real limitation to gardening as a hobby. Many
individuals that start out in gardening end up
selecting either one type of plants over
another.
For example,
there are gardeners that strictly grow only
ornamental beautiful flowers for their fragrance
and beauty. There are others that only grow
vegetable gardens and do so for a reduction of
the family food budget bill each and every
month. In the end, it is up to the individual
gardener as to what will be grown in their
garden plot. The main factor is that any garden
takes some time and patience to grow.
Gardening as a
Hobby
Gardening is
the practice of growing plants. Ornamental
plants are normally grown for their flowers,
foliage, overall appearance, or for their dyes.
Useful plants are grown for consumption
(vegetables, fruits, herbs, and leaf vegetables)
or for medicinal use. A gardener is someone who
practices gardening. Gardening ranges in scale
from fruit orchards, to long boulevard plantings
with one or more different types of shrubs,
trees and herbaceous plants, to residential
yards including lawns and foundation plantings,
to large or small containers grown inside or
outside. Gardening may be very specialized, with
only one type of plant grown, or involve a large
number of different plants in mixed plantings.
It involves an active participation in the
growing of plants, and tends to be labor
intensive, which differentiates it from farming
or forestry.
History
Gardening for
food extends far back into prehistory.
Ornamental gardens were known in ancient times,
a famous example being the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon, while ancient Rome had dozens of
gardens. Residential gardening takes place near
the home, in a space referred to as the garden.
Although a garden typically is located on the
land near a residence, it may also be located on
a roof, in an atrium, on a balcony, in a window
box, or on a patio or vivarium.
Gardening also
takes place in non-residential green areas, such
as parks, public or semi-public gardens
(botanical gardens or zoological gardens),
amusement and amusement parks, along
transportation corridors, and around tourist
attractions and garden hotels. In these
situations, a staff of gardeners or
groundskeepers maintains the gardens.
Indoor
gardening is concerned with the growing of
houseplants within a residence or building, in a
conservatory, or in a greenhouse. Indoor gardens
are sometimes incorporated as part of air
conditioning or heating systems.
Native plant
gardening is concerned with the use of native
plants with or without the intent of creating
wildlife habitat. The goal is to create a garden
in harmony with, and adapted to a given area.
This type of gardening typically reduces water
usage, maintenance, and fertilization costs,
while increasing native faunal interest.
Water
gardening is concerned with growing plants
adapted to pools and ponds. Bog gardens are also
considered a type of water garden. These all
require special conditions and considerations. A
simple water garden may consist solely of a tub
containing the water and plant(s). In
aquascaping, a garden is created within an
aquarium tank.
Container
gardening is concerned with growing plants in
any type of container either indoors or
outdoors. Common containers are pots, hanging
baskets, and planters. Container gardening is
usually used in atriums and on balconies,
patios, and roof tops.
Community
gardening is a social activity in which an area
of land is gardened by a group of people,
providing access to fresh produce and plants as
well as access to satisfying labor, neighborhood
improvement, sense of community and connection
to the environment.
Community
gardens are typically owned in trust by local
governments or nonprofits. Garden sharing
partners landowners with gardeners in need of
land. These shared gardens, typically front or
back yards, are usually used to produce food
that is divided between the two parties. The
term gardener is also used to describe garden
designers and landscape gardeners, who are
involved chiefly in the design of gardens,
rather than the practical aspects of
horticulture.
Gardening
Departments and Centers
Gardening
departments and centers mainly sell plants,
sundries, and garden accessories, but in recent
times, many now stock outdoor leisure products
as diverse as spas, furniture, and barbecues.
Many garden centers now include food halls, and
sections for clothing, gifts, pets, and power
tools. There are also a number of online garden
centers that now deliver direct to customers'
doors.
Comparison
with Farming
In respect to
its food producing purpose, gardening is
distinguished from farming chiefly by scale and
intent. Farming occurs on a larger scale, and
with the production of saleable goods as a major
motivation. Gardening is done on a smaller
scale, primarily for pleasure and to produce
goods for the gardener's own family or
community. There is some overlap between the
terms, particularly in that some moderate-sized
vegetable growing concerns, often called market
gardening, can fit in either category.
Planting in a
Garden
The key
distinction between gardening and farming is
essentially one of scale; gardening can be a
hobby or an income supplement, but farming is
generally understood as a full-time or
commercial activity, usually involving more land
and quite different practices. One distinction
is that gardening is labor-intensive and employs
very little infrastructural capital, sometimes
no more than a few tools, e.g. a spade, hoe,
basket and watering can. By contrast,
larger-scale farming often involves irrigation
systems, chemical fertilizers and harvesters or
at least ladders, e.g. to reach up into fruit
trees. However, this distinction is becoming
blurred with the increasing use of power tools
in even small gardens.
In part
because of labor intensity and aesthetic
motivation, gardening is very often much more
productive per unit of land than farming. In the
Soviet Union, half the food supply came from
small peasants' garden plots on the huge
government-run collective farms, although they
were tiny patches of land. Some argue this as
evidence of superiority of capitalism, since the
peasants were generally able to sell their
produce. Others consider it to be evidence of a
tragedy of the commons, since the large
collective plots were often neglected, or
fertilizers or water redirected to the private
gardens. The term precision agriculture is
sometimes used to describe gardening using
intermediate technology (more than tools, less
than harvesters), especially of organic
varieties. Gardening is effectively scaled up to
feed entire villages of over 100 people from
specialized plots. A variant is the community
garden which offers plots to urban dwellers; see
further in allotment (gardening).
Gardens as Art
Garden design
is considered to be an art in most cultures,
distinguished from gardening, which generally
means garden maintenance. In Japan, Samurai and
Zen monks were often required to build
decorative gardens or practice related skills
like flower arrangement known as ikebana. In
18th century Europe, country estates were
refashioned by landscape gardeners into formal
gardens or landscaped park lands, such as at
Versailles, France or Stowe, England. Today,
landscape architects and garden designers
continue to produce artistically creative
designs for private garden spaces. Professional
landscape designers are certified by the
Association of Professional Landscape Designers.
Social Aspects
People can
express their political or social views in
gardens, intentionally or not. The lawn vs.
garden issue is played out in urban planning as
the debate over the "land ethic" that is to
determine urban land use and whether hyper
hygienist bylaws (e.g. weed control) should
apply, or whether land should generally be
allowed to exist in its natural wild state. In a
famous Canadian Charter of Rights case, "Sandra
Bell vs. City of Toronto", 1997, the right to
cultivate all native species, even most
varieties deemed noxious or allergenic, was
upheld as part of the right of free expression.
People often
surround their house and garden with a hedge.
Common hedge plants are privet, hawthorn, beech,
yew, Leyland cypress, hemlock, arborvitae,
barberry, box, holly, oleander, forsythia and
lavender. The idea of open gardens without
hedges may be distasteful to those who enjoy
privacy. This may have an advantage to local
wildlife by providing a habitat for birds,
animals, and wild plants.
The ‘Slow
Food’ movement has sought in some countries to
add an edible school yard and garden classrooms
to schools, e.g. in Fergus, Ontario, where these
were added to a public school to augment the
kitchen classroom. Garden sharing, where urban
landowners allow gardeners to grow on their
property in exchange for a share of the harvest,
is associated with the desire to control the
quality of one's food, and reconnect with soil
and community.
In US and
British usage, the production of ornamental
plantings around buildings is called
landscaping, landscape maintenance or grounds
keeping, while international usage uses the term
gardening for these same activities.
Garden Pests
A garden pest
is generally an insect, plant, or animal that
engages in activity that the gardener considers
undesirable. It may crowd out desirable plants,
disturb soil, eat young seedlings, steal fruit,
or otherwise kill plants, hamper their growth,
damage their appearance, or reduce the quality
of the edible or ornamental portions of the
plant.
Because each
gardener may have different goals, a garden pest
is what the gardener considers a pest. For
example, Tropaeolum speciosum, while beautiful,
can be considered a pest if it seeds and starts
to grow where it is not wanted. As the root is
well below ground, pulling it up does not remove
it: it simply grows again and becomes what may
be considered a pest.
As another
example, in lawns, moss can become dominant and
be impossible to eradicate. In some lawns,
lichens, especially very damp lawn lichens such
as Peltigera lactucfolia and P. membranacea, can
become difficult and be considered pests.
There are many
ways to remove unwanted pests from a garden. The
techniques vary depending on the pest, the
gardener's goals, and the gardener's philosophy.
For example, snails may be dealt with through a
chemical pesticide, an organic pesticide,
hand-picking, barriers, or simply growing
snail-resistant plants.
Compost
The practice
of composting has been around since the earliest
of gardening and presently has seen a return in
both usage and exploration. Almost anything that
is organic can be returned to the state in which
it came. |
slowly work on developing their garden into
what they want to achieve.