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Published on 08/19/10

Expert advice, free UGA resources help gardens grow

By Amanda Swennes
As you plant fall vegetables, bring plants inside on cold nights and dream of what your landscape will look like next spring, take a moment to check out some of these free resources written by University of Georgia Cooperative Extension experts.

Home Gardening explains everything you need to know about growing a successful home vegetable or herb garden, including location and planning, soil preparation, choosing what to plant and how to tend to it, fertilizer, weed control, mulching and composting, watering, pollination, disease and insect control, harvesting, and freezing, canning and preserving.

The Vegetable Garden Calendar is a handy reference for knowing when to plant vegetables to keep your garden producing year-round. You can also learn how to keep your garden healthy with Disease Control in the Home Vegetable Garden.

With scorching days and balmy nights, winter might seem like it will never arrive. Plan ahead for those cold nights with advice from “Winter Protection of Ornamental Plants” and learn how the pros make those pansy beds look perky all winter in Success with Pansies in the Winter Landscape: A Guide for Landscape Professionals.

Flowering Bulbs for Georgia Gardens describes the wide variety of bulbs that grow well in Georgia as potted plants, in shrub borders, as naturalistic plantings and in mass displays.

Even when there’s frost on the ground you can still have a lush, green garden by creating an indoor oasis. Experts share their advice in Growing Indoor Plants with Success, Gardening in Containers and Propagating House Plants.

And when those first days of spring finally start to beckon you into the garden again, make sure you’re ready to create a beautiful landscape by doing some basic preparations first.

These resources will help you lay a good foundation for your vegetable and flower gardens: Basic Principles of Pruning Woody Plants, Soil Preparation and Planting Procedures for Ornamental Plants in the Landscape, Soil Testing for Home Lawns, Gardens and Wildlife Food Plots and Make Every Drop Count: Proper Planting Results in Healthy, Water-Efficient Plants.

UGA Extension offers more than 600 free, research-based publications to help you learn about everything from planting the perfect vegetable garden to raising a backyard chicken flock, and from identifying stinging and biting pests to determining if your agribusiness is feasible.

For more information, go to www.caes.uga.edu/publications.

Amanda Swennes is a publications editor for the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Authors:
Amanda Swennes
Experts/Sources:
J. Scott Angle
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