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When it comes to caring for your yard, garden, or property, there is a fairly long list of things you need to be doing. There’s a lot of standard maintenance, of course, but there’s also the need to critically examine your approaches and the health of your plants to ensure that what you’re doing is helping them grow tall and strong and not harming them in any way. The following will explore some of the benefits of hiring a horticultural expert for your home.
What Is A Horticulturist?
Before you decide whether or not to hire a horticulturist, it’s a good idea to develop a firm understanding of the profession. A horticulturist is someone who uses scientific knowledge in order to propagate and cultivate plants. They are often hired by people who grow fruits, vegetables, flowers, and other plants to share their knowledge and can conduct investigations into pests and diseases. They might also work in landscaping with individuals or parks, natural resource preservation, and regeneration of land that has been damaged by mining or other environmentally strenuous tasks. A portion of their work might include conducting experiments or research in order to learn more about disease resilience, plant breeding, or other topics.
Soil Analysis
Horticultural experts know what healthy, and biologically diverse soil looks like. Soil health is a crisis occurring all over the world as many human activities are damaging to soil nutrition and biodiversity, which in turn is undermining food security across the globe. They can conduct an analysis of PH levels and other factors that can impact your soil health. This information is critical when it comes to managing a garden or a farm as it can let you know which plants will thrive in which places and let you know if you should be adding anything to your soil to make up for years of degradation by your gardening efforts or by previous owners.
In the long run, this can save you a ton of money as planting something somewhere where there isn’t enough nutrition for it to grow will result in dead plants and, in many cases, several more attempts to grow something in that spot and more money down the drain. It can also save you a ton of time if you find yourself devoting an excessive amount of time to keeping plants alive. Perhaps a tweak to the soil will cut the maintenance hours down.
Combat Disease
Once your plants begin to get sick, it can feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle with no end in sight. Fungal issues, bacteria, and other diseases can spread quickly and take over your garden, harming flora and fauna alike. Working with an expert in horticultural services often means having someone inform you about disease prevention as well as disease diagnosis and treatment plants. Depending on the issue at hand, this might include applying specific fertilizers, eliminating insects and fungi, breaking up soil that has become compacted, or modifying any irrigation systems in place. Most plant diseases are the result of an unhealthy balance in the ecosystem that is your yard. If you don’t understand what an ideal balance is or how interconnected all of your plants and gardening efforts are, it can be easy to miss a critical point that could save your plants.
Save Water
This point often goes undiscussed, but it is very important. When you’re making errors in your approach to gardening, you often end up using far more water than you would otherwise need to. Water conservation is a huge topic and well worth reading into, but the spark notes version is that saving water can help save energy and protect the overall environment. Depending on your source of water, it can also save you money. A healthy, happy lawn uses far less water than a struggling one, and a horticulturist can help you get your property to the point where it doesn’t need excessive watering in order to support growth.
Cut Down On Produce Loss
If you’re trying to grow fruits or vegetables and are finding that much of your product is going to waste, a horticulturist might be able to help. This is especially critical if you’re trying to grow a nice chunk of your household’s food in a small space and cannot afford to plant hundreds of something you want so that losing some doesn’t hit as hard. Food security is a growing concern for many as is the nasty processing that a lot of conventionally farmed food goes through. Many families are looking for healthy alternatives (and ways to cut down exorbitant food costs). A horticulturist can help you identify and address any problems that are resulting in the loss of produce.
The above list contains only a few of the benefits of working with a horticulturist. Depending on what you’re trying to grow and what challenges you’re facing, you will likely encounter several more benefits of speaking with a horticultural expert.