Shopping for Plants? Here Are Some Helpful Tips

When shopping for plants, sometimes things can become a bit confusing. It’s not uncommong to come home with too much or too little, and you might even find that you purchased things which weren’t overly compatible either. Then of course, there is the quality of the plants themselves… did you pick a dud that can’t be revived, or did you pick a very slow growing plant while it’s too small for your tastes and needs?

While none of us is perfect, there are some things you can do to help make your plant shopping trips more productive, so we’ll create a general checklist for you which may help.

1. Where do you intend to put the new plants? If you’re shopping for new plants which will be kept in pots inside your house, try to decide where you think the new plants will actually reside. This will allow you to know how much or how little sunlight that specific place in your home has available.

The same rules apply to outside plants too. Whether you’re putting them in a new garden bed or a container, you need to have an idea of where exactly you’ll be putting them.

2. Are there other plants already in place? If you’re shopping for plants with the intention of filling out or supplementing an existing garden bed or container, you’ll need to be aware of what you already have in place so that you don’t cause yourself additional headaches down the road.

For instance: Are those existing plants at their full mature sizes? If not, then how much extra room will they take up once they’re fully grown? If they’re not fully grown, then you may want to consider buying annual plants so there will still be room for your existing plants to grow as needed. If you buy perennials to fill the bare spaces, then by the time everything is grown up you may find that your garden bed is over filled, and this may even cause growth problems with the plants in time too.

Also think about the plants which are already there. If you have a garden bed with invasive plants such as ivy or mint planted for instance, you may not have much luck trying to put rose bushes or tulips in there too.

3. What do you want to accomplish? When you go shopping for plants, it helps to have an idea of the end results you’d like before you start actually buying the plants and flowers. If you want to simply add some different flower colors or textures to a garden bed, then it’s usually safe to buy whatever catches your fancy. If however, your garden bed already has too much red in it and you want to balance that out, then it may help to make notes about which colors you’d like to add to the existing mix.

If there’s a certain garden design style you’re trying to attain, knowing this before going shopping helps dramaticly too. If you want an old fashioned English cottage garden for instance, you’d need to look for different types of plants than those which would go into a desert cactus garden.

4. How to the plants themselves look? Once you’re at the garden center or nursery, you want to pay attention to how the plants actually look, and be honest with yourself about your personal gardening abilities. If you’re not sure how to take care of a Begonia for instance, then it might not be wise to buy one which looks like it needs extra tender loving care.

5. What is your budget? This may seem obvious, but most of us plant lovers tend to spend much more than we ever intended every time we go plant shopping. So if you have a budget that must be adhered to, keep this in mind as you’re shopping. It may help to write down your budget, and write down the cost of each plant you want too. Then if you find yourself over extended, go through your list and decide which ones can be left for the next shopping trip instead.

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More Gardening Mistakes to Avoid

Planting your plants in the wrong areas – Even when you know for sure the new plant will grow in your garden zone, you may have problems with it if you plant it in the wrong area of your yard. In fact, one of the reasons some of your plants may get too much water while others are getting too little, is because you planted them into the same container or flower bed even though they had different watering requirements.

When you buy new plants, be sure to pay attention to it’s particular requirements. If it needs a lot of sun, don’t choose a shady spot to plant it and vice versa. Sometimes this exercise is more of a trial and error process too though. You may plant something in an area that you feel fits the description of "partial shade", only to find that there’s too much sun for it.

There are many other common mistakes gardeners can make without knowing it too. Not keeping the weeds under control for instance. Most gardeners are unaware that the weeds can sap water and nutrients from the soil, and this effectively starves your plants and flowers. Some weeds can even grow quite tall and steal sunlight from your plants too. So keeping these under control goes a long way towards making sure your garden is able to thrive.

Not deadheading or pruning - Some gardeners are afraid to do anything which they feel may hurt their plants and flowers. So when they see a dead flower or dead branch, they hesitate to snip it off because they worry they’ll hurt the plant somehow, and make it start dying. The truth of the matter is though, that getting rid of dead flowers and branches actually makes your plants and flowers healthier.

In fact, getting rid of live and healthy plants and branches can help make your plants healthier too. And this is why you’re advised to deadhead and prune your plants regularly.

Deadheading is the act of removing dead or dying flowers from your plants. In most cases, new flower buds are trying to develop beneath the old ones. So when you remove the old ones, you’re making it easier for the new flower buds to appear. This causes your plants to bloom much more often and in much more volume.

Pruning your plants is the act of trimming off dead or dying areas – even when it means cutting off whole branches of the plant. Sometimes pruning is also done to help the plant grow better too. So branches are cut even when they’re still alive and healthy.

Pruning off healthy branches of a plant or bush can often help it to grow fuller. If the plant or bush is growing almost straight up, and looks a bit thin, then you can selectively prune areas of it that will force it to start branching outwards, and creating a more filled out look.

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