February 24, 2011 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged dragon tree, home decor, houseplants, indoor gardening, Isabel Sacks
Plants are the perfect indoor accessory, as long as you choose plants that will thrive in your home and learn how to care for them. Isabel Sacks explains how to keep your indoor plants healthy and use them to enhance your home.
Houseplants can make an instant impact in any room, especially if well chosen and maintained. They have added health benefits of clearing carbon dioxide by recycling the air. Plants use this gas when they undertake photosynthesis to produce food from the light energy… read more
June 9, 2010 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged gardening, glory lennon, growing herbs, medicinal garden, medicinal herbs
Glory Lennon explains how to grow a medicinal garden.
Let us assume you want to be healthy, you want to stay alive and well for as long as possible and you want to accomplish this naturally. So what better way to do this than to create a medicinal garden full of herbs to cure what ails you or just to keep you in tip-top shape before you get ill…
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May 6, 2010 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged gift ideas, gifts for gardeners, gifts for mom, Laura Leigh Fields, mothers day gifts, Sid De Knees, Virginia L. Allen
With Mothers’ Day just around the corner, it’s time to find that perfect gift. If your mom, wife, or grandmother has a green thumb, then you can bet there are a few gardening-related items on her wish list. Helium writers share their thoughts on great gift ideas for the gardening mom:
“Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man (or woman) gives his heart.”- Karel Capek. Such is the sentiment of the gardening mother.
Gardening often provides mothers with a great escape from the daily grind of everyday life. When searching for the perfect gift, thinking from the gardener’s perspective should make your search fairly easy… read more from Virginia L. Allen
I could endeavour to write you all a long list of gardening tools and other items, and chemicals for you to purchase. My Mum is an avid gardener, though would hardly be called so, if she needed tools or the everyday chemicals that we find gardeners use. No disrespect intended to the avid collection of list makers here at Helium, I too like a good list. Though this time it is not of things to buy but rather, that money cannot buy…. read more from Sid De Knees
I have dug up and given and been given many plants from friends and family over the years. It means a lot to be able to say that someone else nurtured and loved the original plant and cared enough to share its beauty with you… read more from Laura Leigh Fields
February 24, 2010 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged caring for houseplants, choosing houseplants, home decorating, houseplants, indoor gardening, raven lebeau, watering houseplants
For those of us who love all things green, houseplants can help stave off the winter blues. Raven Lebeau shares some thoughts on home decorating with houseplants.
Plants are beautiful and add a touch of nature to the indoors. It’s tempting to come home from the nursery with an armload of gorgeous greenery to accent your empty nooks and bright up a bookshelf or two. The problem with using plants for home decor, however, is the simple fact that plants are living things with unique needs, and they will die if those needs are unmet… read more
December 1, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Charlene, Christmas gifts, gardening gadgets, gardening supplies, gifts for gardeners
Helium writer Charlene shares some ideas on getting the perfect gift for a friend or relative with a green thumb.
Because my Aunt loves plants and flowers of any kind, it’s easy to find a gift for her during the Holidays. Because she is so active in her hobby Gardening, she always needs something and has welcomed the following with great enthusiasm, I hope you find my suggestions helpful, if you have a friend or relative that is a gardener, it is actually quite easy to find a gift they will enjoy…read more
October 2, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged frugal gardening, harvesting seeds, saving seeds, seed swapping, storing seeds, Theresa Rose
Helium writer Theresa Rose explains how to store seeds you have harvested from your own plants. Next Spring, you can grow a second generation!
Harvesting seeds from your own flowers can be an ideal way to expand your garden, but many gardeners save the seeds they harvest so they can trade them with other gardeners. Seed swapping is fun, economical and provides gardeners with a way to create more diversity in their gardens than they ever could if they had to purchase the plants or seeds for the plants they trade…
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September 27, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged autumn, autumn decorations, decorating with dried leaves, dried peppers, fall colors, fall decor, home decorating, Laura Leigh Fields
The warm colors of autumn leaves are a welcome sight, arriving along with the cooler weather. Laura Leigh Fields shares some ideas on incorporating a touch of autumn’s natural beauty into your indoor decor.
There are many beautiful and fun ways that you can bring autumn indoors by spreading the warmth of nature throughout your house with a creative flair. Adding an autumn harvest to your home will give it a cozy and inviting appeal and it will serve as a constant reminder of the beautiful features of nature.
Start by framing leaves. Picture frames are inexpensive and leaves are easy to come by… read more
September 24, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged autumn flowers, chrysanthemum, fall blooming flowers, gardening, hardy mums, iris, mums, raven lebeau
Summer blossoms may be fading, but as Raven Lebeau explains, you can still have plenty of color in your garden if you choose the right plants.
1. Re-blooming iris
Most iris varieties bloom in the spring or early summer. The “re-blooming” cultivars bloom again in the fall and have attractive green foliage in between. Irises will need to be dug up and divided after three to five years. Their rhizomes grow into large clumps that will become clogged and infected if not split into their individual pieces… read more
September 20, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged annuals, autumn, container gardening, gardening, keeping annuals alive, raven lebeau, saving your annuals, winter
Helium writer Raven Lebeau describes how to save your annuals indoors over the winter so you can enjoy them again in the spring.
Many of the plants labeled as “annuals” are anything but. Sure, they may not have what it takes to winter over in zone six, but their lives were never meant to be nasty, brutish, and short… read more
August 12, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized
Mold is one of the most difficult gardening problems. Kelly A. Mello explains how to handle this problem.
Ugly, dark, fuzzy and devouring. No, I’m not talking about your neighbor’s sorry excuse for a pet. The foe here is mold. Mold may develop on your plants for a variety of reasons. It all depends on where they are planted, the condition of the plant, how they are being taken care of, and the kind of insects are lurking around your soil… read more
