Hobby: December 2007

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Your Plants and Your Wallet will Love Rainwater

by: ARA

(ARA) - Avid gardeners spend a good part of the winter planning what they will plant in the spring. Even casual gardeners invest plenty of time and money in their plants. Regular watering is one key to a successful garden. So what’s a gardener to do when faced with lack of rainfall combined with water restrictions in the middle of a hot summer?

More and more gardeners are turning to rain barrels to keep their gardens happy and healthy. Saving rainwater to use during dry periods is an ancient practice that is once again becoming popular. This low-tech but ingenious solution is simple and inexpensive, and provides chemical-free water that plants thrive on.

The plastic rain barrels come in a range of sizes, with 50 to 60 gallons being most common. Simply place the barrel under a downspout in an unobtrusive part of your yard and wait for rain. Instead of letting rainwater flow down your driveway and into a storm drain, it will collect in the barrel for later use.

You can harvest a surprisingly large amount of rainwater from your gutters. Just a small amount of rain -- less than half an inch -- can easily fill a 50 gallon rain barrel, so you can quickly start to collect enough to keep your flower beds, garden or houseplants well watered. “It won’t be enough o water your lawn, but it will be plenty for vegetable gardens, flowers and shrubbery,” says Lars Hundley, owner of Dallas-based CleanAirGardening.com, an online company that specializes in environmentally friendly lawn and garden supplies. To collect more water, you can connect several barrels with a pip or hose, or you can put barrels under more than one gutter downspout.

Once your rain barrel is full, you can hook a hose up to the rain barrel to water your garden (rain barrels are perfect to use with soaker hoses), or you can simply dip a watering can into the barrel. Rainwater is naturally soft and free of minerals, chlorine, fluoride and other chemicals.

“Trees and plants rely on fungus, bacteria and nematodes to help them absorb the minerals and nutrients they need,” explains Hundley. “Plants have an efficient immune system that allows them to fend off diseases and other invaders as long as they have a healthy soil environment and aren’t stressed by other factors,” he adds. Chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides and drought disrupt the balance and harmony of the soil, weakening trees and plants and allowing disease to take over. “The chemicals and hard water from many municipal water systems also add to the imbalance of the soil. Watering with softer, natural rainwater is a nice treat for your plants,” says Hundley.

In addition to being good for your plants, rain barrels can also save you money. Some experts estimate that lawn and garden watering make up almost 40 percent of total household water use during the summer; by utilizing collected rainwater, you can substantially reduce this amount. As an added benefit, collecting rainwater also helps control moisture levels around the foundation of your house.

Here are some tips to consider when shopping for a rain barrel:

* Make sure your barrel is child-proof. A safety grid at the top prevents children and animals from entering.

* All systems should use covered barrels that keep the water from accumulating leaves and other debris. They should also have some kind of filter to keep out silt and leaves; these can range from a funnel with mesh in the bottom that is covered by gravel to a rainwater washing apparatus that you can purchase.

* Keep mosquitoes from breeding in your barrel by keeping it tightly covered and using debris screens to filter water before it enters the barrel. Cleaning your gutters and downspouts frequently and using collected rainwater within a few days will also help control mosquito problems. You can place a nontoxic mosquito “dunk,” in the barrel for additional protection.

Some cities have started programs to give residents easy access to affordable rain barrel systems. You may be able to find a limited selection of rain barrels at your local garden supply store; for more options, visit www.cleanairgardening.com or call (888) 439-9101 for a catalog.

Winterizing Tips for your Lawn and Garden

by: Cheryl Summer

Your outdoor plants have worked hard for you all summer, making your yard a place you’re proud to call home. Properly winterizing your lawn and garden is an important step toward healthy soil, lush grass, and happy plants next year. Remember to take care of your outdoor accessories, including your lawn equipment, gardening tools, and all of your lawn and garden decor. A little time spent this autumn will make your gardening and landscaping efforts easier and more enjoyable next spring!

Let’s start with the easy jobs - First remember to store all of your lawn and garden decor including fragile planters, gazing balls, and your deck furniture. Unglazed terra cotta planters left filled with soil outside will often break in the freezing temperatures so it is best to clean them and place them in a storage area where they are protected from the elements.

Autumn is the time to find your birdfeeders and to start stocking your winter feeding pantry. Soon your many feathered friends will be flocking to your feeders for that nutritious morsel. Remember to keep your feeders full through the winter as the birds need reliable food sources through the winter months.

Now that you’ve done the easy tasks, let’s move on to the more mundane winterizing chores. Start by simply cleaning up the vegetable garden. After the first hard frost, remove the year’s annual plants and the dead vegetation. You can add this material to your compost pile, but make sure you’re not adding material from diseased or pest-infested plants. You’ll want to pull perennial weeds before you mulch your garden down for the winter.

The best part of fall landscape chores is planting the spring-blooming bulbs. Crocus, tulips, and daffodils are a beautiful addition to the early spring landscape.

In the yard there’s the major job of raking leaves. These are great either in the compost pile or as direct mulch on the garden. Perennial flowers may be smothered by a heavy layer of mulch, however. Also, wait to prune your trees until later in the winter.

After the ground freezes you can mulch your perennial flowers and newly planted trees. Certain shrubs will need to be wrapped in burlap to protect them from wind damage, sun scald, and other winter injury.

Moving on to the mechanical tasks of winterizing your lawn and garden - While you might try to procrastinate on these jobs until spring, you’ll be well rewarded for the maintenance you perform this fall. Drain the gas from your lawnmower and string trimmer. Actually it’s best to let your mowers and trimmers simply run out of fuel. If you don’t want to ‘waste’ that little bit of fuel, add a gas conditioner before the long winter. Be sure to follow directions. Also, take the same care with your gardening equipment such as your rotary tiller.

Clean all of your landscaping equipment before you store it away for the long, cold winter. Wash with soap and water, clean the air filter, and change the oil. You’ll find that first lawn mowing job in the spring a little bit easier if you take time to sharpen the blades now. You can protect that freshly sharpened blade by applying a little spray oil to the blades. You can also apply light spray oil to other moving parts such as cables and the throttle controls.

Lastly, drain all of the water from the garden hoses and turn off the taps. Be sure to store your insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in a safe storage area that will not freeze. Make sure these materials are kept away from children and pets!

What is the Right Plant and Where Do I Put It?

by: james ellison

Know if your plants are disease-susceptible. Your choice of plants used in your garden is as important as the soil that you put those plants in. Select plants that are disease resistant and they will be much more easy to maintain and will give you the look you are wanting. Food for thought is use
plants that are native to your area.

The experience you get will tell you which are the troublesome plants. Obtain your plants from reliable sources and ask those people for their suggestions. They should be happy to help you because of return sales. The local cooperative extension service should provide much needed info for you. Some catalogs
will list disease resistance plants.

Experience will eventually tell you which plant diseases are most troublesome in your region. Your local nursery and cooperative extension service are also good sources for information on local diseases and disease-resistant plants. Seed and nursery catalogs often list disease resistance in plant descriptions.

There are resistant varieties that exist for such diseases as apple scab, armillaria root rot, bean mosaic virus, blueberry mummyberry, cherry viruses, juniper tips and twig blights, lilac bacterial blight, powdery mildew, pea enation mosaic virus, potato scab, black spot, rust, tomato fusarium and root-knot nematode, fireblight, verticillium wilt, and other diseases.

What does the wrong exposure do to your plants? Take a long look at the conditions you have in your garden and choose your plants accordingly. Plants are usually clearly marked whether they prefer sun, partial shade or complete shade.

Shade plants grown in sun turn yellowish and grow poorly. They will get a sunburn which will develope dead spots on their leaves. Avoid south or west exposure.
The sun lovers are often stunted and spindly when grown in the shade. If they grow at all, they are usually weak looking and have few leaves. Reduced flowering on many plants may result from shade placement.

Use water conservation landscaping whenever you can. Most gardeners in drought climates have come to realize the importance of water conservation.But in areas where water is plentiful, however, waste in the garden is way too common. We take our water supply for granted by wasting more than we ever need and in many areas, more groundwater is pumped than nature can replace through precipitation and runoff.

Why not use drought-tolerant plants. These plants grow well with little water once they are established.
Mulch every plant you have.

Some grass species need less water than others, but lawns generally need a large amount of water to stay green and growing. If you replace the grass with drought-tolerant ground covers or flowers you'll save a large amount of water and even - money. If you can click
here to read a funny story that hits the nail on head for what I am saying here.

Probably your favorite plants will have high water requirements. By grouping and mulching these plants allows you to irrigate them together, thus reducing water waste.

What about fruit-pollination requirements! Many beginning gardeners are confused when their fruit trees fail to bear fruit. Could be a pollination problem.

Certain types of trees produce bigger and more abundant fruit with cross-pollination between different cultivars. The others, cross-pollinating is mandatory to get any fruit at all.

Learn a fruit's pollination requirements before planting. If your space is limited, pick a self-pollinating fruit, such as European-type plums or almost any of the peach cultivars.

Pollination will not happen without insects, butterflies or hummingbirds. When chemical pesticides are routinely used by a neighbor or yourself, the honeybees and other pollinating insects can be reduced so that fruit production suffers. Go organic.

What is Compost Tea?

by: james ellison

Organic gardeners all know compost is fantastic stuff. But now, there's something even better and that's
compost tea. If you start with a good compost you'll have a versatile elixir for all your garden needs.

Compost tea helps prevent foliage diseases and at the same time increase the nutrients to the plant and shutdown the toxins hurting the plants. It will improve the taste/flavor of your vegetables. So why not give this tea a try either by buying it or brewing it yourself. You won't believe the results!

Four ways that good bacteria work:
Help compete for the nutrients
Dine on the bad varmits
Help produce antibiotics to use against the varmits.
They shove the bad varmits out.

Compost tea that is correctly brewed has a wealth of microorganisms that will benefit your plants' growth and health as well as the soil that they live in. Compost tea can be considered yogurt for the soil. The microorganisms living there are both good and bad. What the tea does is make sure the good guys win by introducing helpful bacteria, fungi, protozoa and beneficial nematodes.

Harmful bacteria lives best in soil that does not have good air circulation. Good bacteria lives best and will thrive in soil that is well ventilated with oxygen. This is where a good compost tea, made the right way, comes in. When you have well oxygenated compost you automatically get rid of 3/4 of the bad varmits. Also by using harmful insecticides or chemical fertilizers we reduce the number of beneficial microorganisms in the soil.

Plants produce their own energy and food and half of that goes to the roots and some of that goes into the surrounding soil and guess who gets that? Correct, the good guys, and then it turns into a beneficial cycle.

The following is taken from the internet and shows compost tea is becoming a force in gardening.

National Organic Standards Board Compost Tea Task Force Report April 6, 2004 Introduction In 2003, the National Organic Standards Board convened a Compost Tea Task Force to review the relevant scientific data and report their recommendations on ‘What constitutes a reasonable use of compost tea?’ The
Task Force was composed of 13 individuals with knowledge and expertise in organic farming practices, organic certification, EPA pathogen regulations, compost, compost tea production and analysis, plant pathology, food safety and environmental microbiology.

Throughout their discussions, members consistently acknowledged the growing interest among certified organic and conventional growers to use compost teas, and the need to develop effective biologically-based tools to manage plant fertility, pests, and diseases.

A primary reason for producing compost tea is to transfer microbial biomass, fine particulate organic matter, and soluble chemical components of compost into an aqueous phase that can be applied to plant surfaces and soils in ways not possible or economically feasible with solid compost.

Weed Dangerous to Hummingbirds

by: Marilyn Pokorney

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If you love hummingbirds, keep your garden, yard, and
property clear of weeds. Especially burdock. The prickly
seedheads of common burdock can trap and kill hummingbirds.

During September, 1998, three hummingbirds were caught and
died in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. A fourth
hummingbird was rescued by bird watchers.

According to National Park Service biologists, the burrs act
like Velcro. The barbed points on the burrs cling
steadfastly to fur, clothing, skin, feathers--almost
anything that comes near.

As the tiny birds thrash around trying to free themselves
they become even more entrapped.

While not much has been written about the subject, a
consulting ornithologist in Burnaby British Columbia reports
that the weed does occasionally claim the lives of small
birds and even brown bats.

Burdock, also known as Cockle Burr, is a biennial plant
which can grow to nine feet in height. Other names include
Fox's Clote, Thorny Burr, Beggar's Buttons, Cockle Buttons,
Love Leaves, Burr Seed, Clothburr, Turkey Burrseed and many
others.

Burdock was imported from Europe and is now widely
distributed in waste areas, abandoned farms, or any
uncultivated area in North America. It can also appear in
gardens and lawns.

The plant produces a rosette of large leaves, produces 15 to
40 or more pink or lavender flowers, and has a taproot of up
to 40 inches in length.

The plant must be eliminated before the flowers ripen and
form the brown prickly burrs which spread the seeds.
Selective or spot herbicide treatment isn't always effective
because of it's deep taproot. Pulling up or digging the
plant is the most effective but the entire taproot must be
removed. The sooner this is done the easier it is to do.
Smaller plants can be dug up using a standard garden fork or
dandelion digger, and larger ones using a long-handled bulb
planter.

Weed Control Facts - Winning the Battle of the Weeds

by: Michael McGroarty

You are welcome to use this article on your website or in your newsletter as long as you reprint it as is, including the contact information at the end. Website URLs must be active links. You are welcome to use this article with an affiliate link,

WEED CONTROL FACTS: WINNING THE BATTLE OF THE WEEDS

Keeping your landscape plantings, flower beds, and nursery crops free of weeds is a battle, but if you approach it with a strategic plan, you will prevail. In order to develop a plan, you first must understand how weeds work, and what kind of weeds you are dealing with.

Basically weeds grow either from seed, or they reproduce from their roots. As the roots grow outward from the parent plant, new plants sprout up from the lateral roots, creating more parent plants and the process continues and the weeds thrive. Weeds that tend to reproduce from the root are usually more difficult to control.

Weed control facts? Weeds are plants, and they function just like the desirable plants in your yard. They need water, sunlight, and nutrition to survive. Of these three key survival needs, the easiest one for a gardener to eliminate is sunlight. Through proper mulching you can eliminate the sunlight.

But first, let’s look at the steps you should go through before you mulch, then we’ll discuss the best mulching techniques to use. In order for your weed control efforts to be truly effective, you should do everything in your power to make your gardens as weed free as possible before you plant or mulch. There are a couple of ways you can go about this, either organically or with chemicals. I don’t like using chemicals, but I do use them for weed control, and I use them for pest control when necessary.

I’ll discuss organic control first. The first thing you should do is remove all unwanted vegetation from your planting area. Using a hoe, spade or other digging device, undercut the roots and remove the undesirable plants, roots and all. Then you should work the soil by rototilling or turning the soil by hand.

Once worked, let the soil sit for four days or so, and work it again. Keep doing this over and over as long as time permits. This process serves two purposes. It brings the roots that were left in the soil close to the surface so they can be dried by the sun, which will make them non-viable, and it disturbs the weed seeds that have started to germinate, which makes them non-viable as well. The longer you continue this process the more weeds you are eliminating from your garden.

Weed control facts? Depending on the time of the year, there are a few billion weed seeds drifting through the air at any given time, so to think that you can eventually rid a garden of weed seed is false thinking, but at least this process is effective for the remaining roots, which are the most difficult to control.

With that process complete, go ahead and plant your garden. When you’re done planting you can either mulch the bed, or keep turning the soil on a weekly basis to keep it free of weeds. Most people opt to mulch. Not only does mulch help to control the weeds, but if you select a natural mulch it also adds organic matter to the soil which makes for better gardening results down the road.

Before mulching you can spread newspaper (7-9 layers thick) over the soil and place the mulch over top of that. The newspaper will block the sunlight from reaching the surface of the soil and help to keep weed growth to a minimum. The newspaper will eventually decompose, and not permanently alter the make up of your garden. Paper grocery bags also work well, so the next time you hear, “Paper or Plastic?”, you’ll know how to answer.

What about black plastic, or the weed barrier fabric sold at garden centers? I don’t like either and I’ll tell you why. For one, neither one of them ever go away, and the make up of your garden is forever altered until you physically remove them, which is a real pain in the butt.

Weed control facts? Plastic is no good for the soil because soil needs to breathe. Plastic blocks the transfer of water and oxygen, and eventually your soil will suffer, as will your garden. It’s all right to use plastic in a vegetable garden as long as you remove it at the end of the season and give the soil a chance to breathe.

Weed barrier fabrics allow the soil to breathe, but what happens is that when you mulch over top of the fabric, which you should because the fabric is ugly, the mulch decomposes and becomes topsoil. Weeds love topsoil, and they will grow like crazy in it. Only problem is, they are growing on top of the fabric, and you are stuck with a ton of problems, like a weedy garden, and a major job of trying to remove the fabric that is now firmly anchored in place because the weeds have rooted through it.

Weed fabric is also porous enough that if an area becomes exposed to the sunlight, enough light will peek through and weeds below the fabric will grow, pushing their way through the fabric. I don’t like the stuff. I’ve removed miles of it from landscapes for other people because it did not work as they had expected.

Weed control facts? Controlling weeds with chemicals is fairly easy, and very effective if done properly. I know that many people don’t approve of chemical weed controls, but millions of people use them, so I might as well tell you how to get the most effect using them.

There are two types of chemical weed controls, post-emergent, and pre-emergent. In a nutshell, a post-emergent herbicide kills weeds that are actively growing. A pre-emergent prevents weed seeds from germinating. Of the post- emergent herbicides there are both selective and non-selective herbicides. A selective herbicide is like the herbicides that are in weed-and-feed type lawn fertilizers. The herbicide will kill broad leaf weeds in your lawn, but it doesn’t harm the grass.

One of the most popular non-selective herbicides is Round-up®, it pretty much kills any plant it touches. Rule number one. Read the labels and follow the safety precautions!!! Round-up® is very effective if used properly, but first you must understand how it works.

Round-up® must be sprayed on the foliage of the plant, where it is absorbed, then translocated to the root system where it then kills the plant. It takes about 72 hours for the translocation process to completely take place, so you don’t want to disturb the plant at all for at least 72 hours after it has been sprayed.

After 72 hours you can dig, chop, rototill, and pretty much do as you please because the herbicide has been translocated throughout the plant. The manufacture claims that Round-up® does not have any residual effect, which means that you can safely plant in an area where Round-up® has been used. However, I would not use it in a vegetable garden without researching further.

No residual effect also means that Round-up® has no effect whatsoever on weed seeds, so there is absolutely no benefit to spraying the soil. Only spray the foliage of the weeds you want to kill. Be careful of over spray drifting to your desirable plants. To prevent spray drift I adjust the nozzle of my sprayer so that the spray droplets are larger and heavier, and less likely to be carried by the wind. I also keep the pressure in the tank lower by only pumping the tank a minimum number of strokes. Just enough to deliver the spray.

Buy a sprayer that you can use as a dedicated sprayer for Round-up® only. Never use a sprayer that you have used for herbicides for any other purpose. Once you have sprayed the weeds, waited 72 hours and then removed them, you can go ahead and plant. Mulching is recommended as described above. To keep weed seeds from germinating you can apply a pre-emergent herbicide.

Depending on the brand, some of them are applied over top of the mulch, and some are applied to the soil before the mulch is applied. A pre-emergent herbicide creates a vapor barrier at the soil level that stops weed seed germination, and can be very effective at keeping your gardens weed free. They usually only last about 5 or 6 months and need to be re-applied.

Visit a full service garden center and seek the advice of a qualified professional to select the pre-emergent herbicide that will best meet your needs. Never use a pre-emergent herbicide in your vegetable garden, and be careful around areas where you intend to sow grass seed. If you spill a little in an area where you intend to plant grass, the grass will not grow. They really do work.

That’s what I know about weed control. Read this article several times. Your success depends on getting the sequence of events correct.

Want a garden, but don’t have enough dirt or space? Hydroponics gardening is the answer!

by: Mike Yeager

Hydroponics gardening is the perfect solution for anybody who wants a garden, but does not have enough space or dirt. Hydroponics gardening is, simply put, a method of growing plants using a nutrient solution instead of dirt. With hydroponics gardening, you are able to grow beautiful flowers and delicious vegetables virtually anywhere you want. In addition, hydroponics gardening requires much less maintenance than a normal garden would. In fact, you will usually spend less than five minutes a day maintaining your hydroponics garden. Every few weeks the nutrient solution will have to be replaced, but that too will only take a few minutes. While some heavy fruiting vegetables like tomatoes and peppers may not be able to thrive in the nutrient solution, almost all other types of flowers and vegetables will just fine in a hydroponics garden.

Tips for the person new to Hydroponics Gardening.

While hydroponics gardening might seem difficult to a person doing it for the first time, you will be able to quickly get the hang of it. Just like you need gardening supplies for a regular garden, you will need hydroponics gardening supplies for hydroponics gardening. The most common method of hydroponics gardening is the passive system. In the passive system, plants will sit directly in the nutrient solution. Because the solution might cause the plants to rot if not oxygenated, all passive systems come with an aquarium air bubbler, which will oxygenate the nutrient solution. If you find the hydroponics gardening method that is right for you, you will soon be enjoying all the gardening hydroponics vegetables, flowers and fruit that you could possible want.

Using Retaining Walls in Your Garden

by: Hege Crowton

Beautifying your garden by the construction of a retaining wall, behind which is a lawn or expanse of flowers, is not a difficult task. But, like all garden problems, it requires a certain amount of effort and care.

The retaining wall must be strong enough to hold back the pressure of a great weight of soil, and yet porous enough to allow drainage.

The most popular types of walls are built of stone, either dressed or rubble. In using stone for a retaining wall, there are two basic types of construction: dry-wall, which uses earth as a filler between the stones, and mortar, which uses cement as a bonding agent.

The base of any retaining wall must be sunk below the frost line. This is about 6 inches in the northern half of the United States.

For a flat wall (one without buttresses or projections), the width of the base should equal one-fourth the height of the wall. The wall can taper to a width of about one-fourth of the width of the base.

For buttressed walls, the base should be one-fourth as wide as the wall is to be high. This refers to the widest points, where buttressing is to be used. In the narrower areas, the base may be of slimmer proportions.

At intervals of about 24 inches, and about 6 inches from the lower ground level of the retaining wall, drainage pipes should be imbedded in the wall.

In some walls, if the wall itself is porous enough, it is possible to eliminate these drains. But in any construction using mortar as a bonding agent, these drainage pipes are essential.

In dry-wall construction it is possible (although not advisable) to start at ground level, and not sink the wall below the frost line.

The most inexpensive way of constructing a dry wall is to choose local stone, picking large ones for the main stones and smaller ones for the chinks. The largest stones should form the base of the wall with the smaller ones leading to the top.

The side of the wall which faces out should be as level as possible, with obstructions and edges of outside stones facing inward.

This not only gives the wall a better purchase on the soil it retains, but also insures a good appearance. Stones with round surfaces should be discarded since they do not form a good wall.

Stones should be placed in a good bond. This simply means that edges of stones on one course should overlap spaces in the lower courses.

Where a stone on an upper course is crooked or does not fit firmly, earth and small stones can be packed in to improve the bond. No vertical crevices should be left.

The wall itself should slope back against the soil it is retaining. This gives it greater strength. The width of the base of the wall should be, again — as a rule of thumb — one-third of the height.

It is the practice in many areas to slope the wall as much as 5 or 6 inches for each vertical foot, although this degree of slope is not essential. Soil should be firmly packed in all pockets in the wall and should be continued back into the earth being retained.

Using candles in feng shui decorating

by: Jennifer Hall

The basic belief behind Feng Shui is that there are five elements, some combinations of which create a productive cycle, and some a destructive cycle. When one of these five elements – water, wood, fire, earth, and metal, respectively for the productive cycle – are combined with an element adjacent to the main element, a productive cycle is perpetuated. The reason being that water sustains wood, wood feeds fire, ashes create earth, earth creates metal, and metal holds water. So if you have a room where wood is the main element, it would be good Feng Shui to add a water or fire element to the room, as water feeds wood and wood feeds fire. This is where candles would be a nice touch of good Feng Shui.

A look at the destructive cycle will show which elements do not work well together: water, fire, metal, wood, earth. And we can see that water puts our fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood, wood clogs earth, and earth muddies water. Although these elements are generally considered bad Feng Shui combinations, one can be used with an adjacent element in the destructive cycle to minimize an overpowering element. For instance, if a room has overpowering metal elements, maybe filled with modern metal furniture, you can minimize that with wood elements like some green leafy plants, or with fire elements such as red throw pillows, a fireplace, or even candles.

It is beneficial to bear in mind the productive and destructive cycles while decorating, but for optimum Feng Shui, a room would have an equal balance of all five elements – none being too overpowering. If this isn’t the case and there is not one overpowering element, then the productive cycle is a good place to start when decorating.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the elements, we can see how to best utilize candles in our decorating. In areas with predominately metal or water elements – rooms which would have a lot of blue or silver colors or metallic furnishings – a candle would help minimize the overpowering colors and add balance. If you want to start using Feng Shui in a room with no overpowering elements, you could bring in a candle and a complimentary element like a plant or a brown oval rug since that color and shape are associated with the earth element.

Candles can be an easy way to bring a natural element into your home and can be a good starting place for implementing Feng Shui design. Not to mention that scented candles are often great Feng Shui because of the mood-enhancing qualities certain scents have. Candles provide a simple start in creating a pleasant ambiance and good decorating style.

Use Ladders Safely

by: Marilyn Pokorney

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that each
year more than 511,000 people are treated for cuts, bruises
and fractured bones from improper use of ladders. More
than 300 people a year die from ladder related injuries.
When choosing a ladder be certain the ladder is able to
carry the amount of weight that will be applied.

Inspect the ladder. Be sure the spreaders can be locked
when open and that there are safety feet on the ends.

Check for loose or bent rungs.

The ladder should be clean of grease, oil, mud, snow and
other slippery materials.

Carry a single or extension ladder parallel to the ground.
Hold the side rail in the middle of the ladder for balance.
Always carry a stepladder in the closed position.

The ground under the ladder should be level and firm. Do not
set the ladder up on a muddy surface.

Set the base of your ladder one foot away from the wall for
every four feet of ladder height.

Do not use bricks, boxes, etc. to raise the height of the
ladder.

Keep all ladders and other tools at least ten feet from any
power lines.

Keep ladder off of window panes or sashes.

If using the ladder in an orchard, turn the ladder sideways,
and ease into the tree. Place a straight ladder so that if a
limb breaks, it will fall into the tree.

Never lean a ladder against a movable object.

Never use a stepladder as a straight ladder.

Face the ladder when you climb up or down. Hold on to the
side rails with both hands. Carry only necessary tools on a
belt, use a rope to raise heavier equipment.

Never overreach. Always keep your body centered between the
rails.

Wear shoes with nonskid soles. Don't wear leather-soled
shoes; they can be slippery. Shoelaces should be securely
tied. Make sure shoes and hands are clean and dry.

Don't try to "jog" or "walk" the ladder to a new location
while standing on it. Climb down and reposition the ladder.

Never use a ladder in high wind.

Never use the top two rungs of a ladder.

On stepladders, never stand on the paint shelf, spreaders or
back section.

Never stand on the top rung of any ladder.

And finally, never, never leave a raised ladder unattended.

Tulip Bulbs - Fall is the Time to Prepare the Perfect Spring Flower Garden

by: Linda Jenkinson

When the air begins to get cooler, and the leaves start to fall from the trees, most people immediately think of storing the gardening supplies for the winter and getting ready to bundle up. But Wait! Before packing away your gardening equipment, don’t forget to pick up some tulip bulbs to plant in your garden. Fall is the perfect time for planting tulip bulbs.

Tulip bulbs are easily the most recognizable bulb flower in the world today. Most people think first of a tulip, when they are asked to name a flower bulb. Tulips are easy to grow, and require very little care, which is one of the reasons that they are so popular.

There is a very large variety in the color selection of tulip bulbs. The colors of tulips typically follow the color trends that are generally popular. Right now, pastel tulips are extremely popular color choices. The most popular tulip color has always been, and remains to be red. However, red is followed closely by yellow as the second most popular color.

Of course, you can find tulips in a variety of color as there are over 3500 varieties of tulips. You can purchase traditional tulip bulbs as well as fancy bulbs, which have a feathered, frilly petal. You can find tulips in solid colors as well as striped petals, or variegated colors.

You can purchase tulip bulbs that are early bloomers, maturing early in the springtime, or you can find tulips that will bloom later. So you can plan your bulb flowers so that you will consistently have flower blooms all spring, until your perennials begin blooming. Tulips come in tall varieties as well as shorter varieties, this can be important when you are planning a garden design. As well, you will have a choice between single blooming tulips and double bloomers.

With so much variety and selection, it is no doubt why tulip bulbs are such popular flowers. Coupled with the excellent selection and the ease of care and planting for tulips, they make an excellent addition to any garden design. Tulips look wonderful in both formal garden designs as well as informal styles.

Tree Pruning Tips

by: Michael McGroarty

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TREE PRUNING TIPS
There are two kinds of winter gardening. The first method usually starts in January as the gardening catalogs begin to arrive in the mail. This type of gardening is as easy as sitting in your favorite chair, browsing the catalogs, and either dreaming about what you're going to do this spring, or actually drawing designs for the gardens you intend to work on.

The second type of winter gardening is to actually get out in the yard and do a little work. Of course if it's bitter cold, you'd be better off waiting for a good day. Winter is a good time to do some pruning if the temperatures are around 30 degrees or so. I don't recommend pruning if it's considerably below freezing because the wood is brittle and will shatter when you make a cut.

One of the advantages of pruning during the winter is that you can see much better what needs to be cut out and what should stay. At least that's true with deciduous plants. The other advantage is that the plants are dormant, and won't mind you doing a little work on them.

Ornamental trees should pruned to remove competing branches. Weeping Cherries, Flowering Dogwoods, Flowering Crabapples etc. have a tendency to send branches in many different directions. It is your job to decide how you want the plant to look, and then start pruning to achieve that look.

But first stick your head inside the tree and see what you can eliminate from there. This is like looking under the hood, and when you do you'll see a lot of small branches that have been starved of sunlight, that certainly don't add anything to the plant. They are just there, and should be cut out.

Any branch that is growing toward the center of the tree where it will get little sunlight should be cut out. Where there are two branches that are crossing, one of them should be eliminated. Once you get the inside of the plant cleaned up, you can start shaping the outside.

Shaping the outside is actually quite easy. Just picture how you want the plant to look, and picture imaginary lines of the finished outline of the plant. Cut off anything that is outside of these imaginary lines. It is also important to cut the tips of branches that have not yet reached these imaginary lines in order to force the plant to fill out.

For the most part plants have two kinds of growth: Terminal branches and lateral branches. Each branch has one terminal bud at the very end, and many lateral branches along the sides. The terminal buds grow in an outward direction away from the plant. Left uncut they just keep growing in the same direction, and the plant grows tall and very thin. That's why the trees in the woods are so thin and not very attractive.

When you cut a branch on a plant, the plant sets new buds just below where you cut. When you remove the terminal bud the plant will set multiple buds; this is how you make a plant nice and full. Don't be afraid to trim your plants, they will be much nicer because of it. The more you trim them, the fuller they become.

Lots of people have a real problem with this. They just can't bring themselves to prune. Especially when it comes to plants like Japanese Red Maples. It kills them to even think about pruning a plant like this. Just do it! You'll have a beautiful plant because of it.

Look at the plant objectively. If you see a branch that looks like it's growing too far in the wrong direction, cut it. If you make a mistake it will grow back. Not pruning is the only mistake you can make. I hope this helps and doesn't get you in trouble with your significant other. Many a family feud has started over pruning.

Transplanting Tips

by: Michael McGroarty

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TRANSPLANTING TIPS
Early spring is a great time for transplanting trees and shrubs, but you must do so before they wake up. Transplanting a plant is a very traumatic experience for the plant if it is awake. It’s like doing surgery on a person while they are awake. Dormancy starts in the fall as soon as you experience a good hard freeze, and the plants remain dormant until the weather warms up in the spring. This is when you should transplant, while the plants are dormant.

You can transplant in the spring up until the plants leaf out. When the buds are green and swollen you are usually safe to still transplant, but once the leaf develops, you should wait until fall. When transplanting you can dig the shrubs out bare root, just make sure they are out of the ground for as short a time as possible, and keep the roots damp while out of the ground.

Make sure there are no air pockets around the roots when you replant them. When possible, it is always better to dig a ball of earth with the plants when you transplant them. The rule of thumb is 12” of root ball for every 1” of stem caliper. If the diameter of the stem of a tree is 2”, then you should dig a root ball 24” in diameter.

Don’t be afraid of cutting a few roots when you transplant. Just try not to cut them any shorter than the above guidelines allow. Cutting the roots will actually help to reinvigorate the plant. It’s a process simply known as root pruning. When the roots are severed, the plant then develops lateral roots to make up for what is lost. These lateral roots are more fibrous in nature, and have more ability to pick up water and nutrients.

Some nurseries drive tractors over the plants in the field with a device that undercuts the roots of the plant just to force the plant to develop more fibrous roots. This makes transplanting the plant the following year much more successful, and makes for a stronger and healthier plant.

The old timers root pruned by hand by forcing a spade in the ground around their plants. If you have a plant in your landscape that is doing poorly, a little root pruning while the plant is dormant could bring it around. It’s worth the effort.

Training Beautiful Flowering Shrubs into Unique Ornamental Trees

by: Michael McGroarty

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There is nothing more beautiful than a flowering shrub in full bloom, except maybe a flowering shrub in full bloom that has been trained to grow as a single stem tree. Imagine having a fragrant Viburnum Tree next to your patio or outside your bedroom window, waking up to such a wonderful aroma.

Go to this website to see how I grow Weeping Pussy Willow from cuttings, then train them into single stem trees:
http://www.freeplants.com/weeping-pussy-willow.htm

Don’t confuse what I am about to explain here with the common technique of grafting flowering shrubs on to the tall stem of some sort of rootstock. Grafting is very effective, but not so easy to do. This is much easier. Not only that, when you train the shrub to grow into a single stem tree, you can end up with some very interesting plants.

Training a flowering shrub to grow into a single stem tree is actually pretty simple. The younger the shrub you start with, the easier it is to train. I have a friend who grows thousands of Tree Hydrangeas a year, and this is how he trains them. The variety that he grows for this purpose is P.G. Hydrangea. (hydrangea paniculata grandiflora) This is the one with the huge white snowball blooms.

He starts with rooted cuttings and lines them out in the field about 30" apart. The first year he allows them to grow untouched as multi-stem shrubs. Being a fast growing shrub, they typically produce 3 to 4 branches that grow to a height of about 3 to 4’ that first season. The following spring he goes into the field, examines each plant and selects the one stem that is the straightest, and is likely to grow straight up from the roots if tied to a stake.

He then clips all of the other branches as close to the main stem as possible. Then he pounds a stake in the ground as close to the main stem as possible, and clips the tip off the single stem that is left. This forces the plant to set lateral buds just below where he clipped the top off, rather than continue growing straight up. These lateral buds will grow into branches that will form the head of the tree. He then ties the stem to the stake.

As it begins to grow, any buds that appear below that top group of buds are picked off to keep the single stem tree form. That’s all there is to it. You can use almost anything as a stake, and just tie the stem to the stake with a piece of cloth. I also anchor plants to stakes with a single wrap of duct tape. I find that if I only wrap the tape once, the sun will dry the glue and the tape will fall off by itself in about 12 months. 1/2" electrical tubing (conduit) also makes a good stake, and is just a couple of bucks for a 10 foot piece.

You can do the same thing with an older established shrub if you can find one branch that can be tied to a vertical stake. The stem is likely to be crooked and not too smooth because of the wounds from where the branches were removed, but that doesn’t mean that you can not create an interesting plant. Some of the shrubs that make beautiful and unique ornamental trees are many varieties of Viburnums, Burning Bush, Winged Burning Bush, Red and Yellow Twig Dogwoods, Weigelia, Mockorange, Rose of Sharon, and Flowering Almond.

I’m sure there are many more. My favorite shrub to train into a single stem tree is Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick. In shrub form this plant is extremely interesting with its twisted and contorted branches. The new growth is reminiscent of a pig’s tail. Using the same technique as described above I select a single stem, tie it to a stake, and train it to grow as a single stem tree. The effect is totally unique.

Call your local garden stores and ask them if they have a Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick plant. Give it a try, I’m sure you’ll have fun as well as create some very interesting plants for your landscape.

Tips on Growing Lettuce

by: Marilyn Pokorney

Tips on Caring for and Feeding Garden Trees

by: Hege Crowton

When trees grow naturally in the forest, the leaves fall around them, decay and form a good soil. The leaves also preserve moisture in the soil.

On a lawn, however, the tree must compete with the grass for moisture and nutrients, and the leaves are raked up to prevent grass disorders, so that the successful gardener finds it wise to supply nutrients every two or three years.

Feeding should be done when the ground is workable, in the spring or in the fall.A difficult but worthwhile method of feeding is to strip the sod from an area all around the tree extending at least 2 to 3 feet beyond the outer branches, since the root system extends this far.

Apply stable or barnyard manure to this area, spreading it 3 inches thick and digging it in. Then firm the soil, rake it level and return the sod.

An easier method is to drill holes over the same area, 12 to 18 inches deep and spaced about 15 inches apart. Fill each hole with a commercial fertilizer (made up of bone meal, tankage, peat moss or humus) plus chemicals, in a formula containing 10% nitrogen, 6% phosphoric acid and 4% potash.

Because of the transpiration of a tree, especially in the hot days of summer, lawn and specimen trees must be watered at least every 10 days in summer to avoid trouble. Since the roots are deep, light watering won't do. The hose or sprinkler should be used for at least an hour.

If the soil is hard packed, loosen it with a fork. For a large tree, drive or bore a number of 1 1/2 inch holes 3 to 5 inches deep and 3 feet apart, below the outer branches. Use a canvas hose or cover the hose with a gunny sack and let the water run.

When planting new trees or small trees, if you put a few pieces of drain tile in the hole and put the hose in these, you can insure the water reaching the subsoil. Cover the drain-tile holes with stones to avoid evaporation.

Certain trees will not live long if a fill of soil is laid over their roots, or if a terrace of blacktop, stone, brick or concrete paving blocks is laid over their feeding roots. Large, valuable trees should be protected with drain tile so that they will get water and air. The bark should be protected from dirt from a fill directly against it. You can buy metal tree wells, 3 to 7 feet across and 1 to 3 feet high, or build a masonry wall.

The wall can be capped with a circle of bricks or a low wall to make an extra seat on the terrace. If you have some surface other than sod or earth around the tree, see that it does not extend as far as the tree's outer feeding roots, and leave a circle of natural soil around the trunk. This can be planted.

Care for your trees as injuries occur rather than wait to call in a tree surgeon and allow a weakened spot to remain untreated. Remove all dead, decayed, diseased or injured bark.

Do this by removing the entire limb, or, on a large limb or trunk, dig out the decayed matter, sterilizing and waterproofing the cut surfaces with creosote and liquid tar.

White lead or paint is not as good to use as it will not seal when used on damp surfaces. Fill deep wounds with concrete. Use pruning hooks carefully, avoiding bruises.

The Meanings Behind the Colors of Roses

by: Colin J Smith

Roses are a sign of love and friendship and by giving someone a rose you are telling them how truly special they are. There are a number of colors of roses available and each one represents a different meaning to the receiver. If you are looking to purchase roses for that special someone, but aren’t quite sure which color would best suit your relationship, keep reading to find out what each color represents.

Red – Red roses are a sign of love, beauty, courage and respect. This color represents romantic, sincere and passionate love. If you want to show your loved one that they are the love of your life, red roses are the ones to choose. Giving a single red rose to someone is a simple way to say “I love you”.

White – White roses are a sign of purity, innocence, silence and youthfulness. They are given to individuals who are shy about love and are used to tell the person how special they are. White roses can also be used in weddings as an indication of new love which is just beginning.

Pink – Pink roses are a sign of appreciation and are often given as a thank you. Pink flowers also represent happiness and admiration and are given to someone you love whether it be a significant other or a best friend.

Yellow – Yellow roses are a sign of friendship, happiness, joy and promise. Yellow roses are often given to show happiness for loved ones who are returning from a long trip or leave of absence.

Orange – Orange roses signify desire and enthusiasm. They can be given at a graduation or a commencement to celebrate the ending and beginning of two different phases in life.

Lavender/Purple – Lavender or purple roses are a sign of love at first sight. If you just meet someone and have fallen head over heals for them, show them how you feel by giving them lavender roses.

Regardless of the color of roses, they represent love and friendship among many other wonderful things. Roses can be planted in your garden or kept in vases throughout your home. If you are growing roses in your garden follow this gardening tip to ensure you receive the best results possible:

Pruning Your Roses – Using pruning shears, trim your roses around the edges and remove any dead leaves from the plant. Cut out any dead wood, twigs or stems which are cross-growing over one another. Pruning should be done twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall) to ensure your roses are kept in top condition.

Where you decide to plant your roses and the kind you choose will affect the overall appearance of your garden. Roses are quite possibly the most popular flower to show love and happiness and anyone who receives a rose for any reason should consider themselves a very lucky person.

The Importance of Garden Decor

by: Denny Soinski

The Quest for Significance

People are looking for ways to add significance, peace of mind, a quality experience, and to escape from the “rat-race” in their lives. Stated differently, people want to add depth and meaning to their lives. One way to accomplish this, it is asserted, is to make or purchase decor for your garden.

Make Your Garden Unique

Garden decor, along with things related to gardens, provides a return to nature, a sense of spirituality, and a return to the earth as people journey on their quest for significance and ultimate meaning. Moreover, through the use of decorations, gardeners reveal their quirks and shortcomings, their wit, their creativity, and their desire to make their gardens unique.

Transform Your Life

Gardens and their ornaments are symbols of enchantment, mystery, meaning, and of ultimate being. Another way of looking at this is to see that gardens and garden accents provide the power to transform one’s mood and one’s life. To be sure, garden accessories can become symbolic reminders of life’s blessings as they encourage people to enrich their surroundings by transcending the mundane.

The Gardening Imagination

Garden ornaments help people take an active stance in their lives by enabling them to create a niche in the world that is in concert with their values and their dreams. Indeed, it is this “gardening imagination” that provides people with the opportunity to select meaningful objects that speak to their senses, to their experiences, and to their lives.

An Invitation to Add Garden Decor to your Life

Websites that sell garden decor can be viewed as invitations to experiment and let your imaginations run free so that you can, with concerted effort or with amusement, choose the ornaments that you like—decorations that are in harmony with your highest aspirations and most dignified pursuits. With this in mind, look at the various products that are sold and select garden accessories that help elicit childhood fantasies. Examine the different garden accents and choose those that speak to your inner self.

Let Your Personality Shine Through

Garden decor helps calm the spirit, soothe the soul, and delight the senses. By letting your individuality shine through as you select your decorative accents, you will transform your garden into one of the most meaningful experiences in your life. The challenge is to capture moments of wonder, joy, and inspiration and experience the lasting pleasures of beauty and the splendors of nature by decorating your garden in a way that is congruent with your noblest thoughts, feelings, and aspirations.

Your Garden Sanctuary

Strive to decorate your garden with ornaments that magically call you to return to your garden sanctuary. Look at different garden products and decide on decorations that motivate you to tap into your playfulness or into your artistic bent as you contemplate how you will decorate your garden. In a word, you can add richness, depth, and a sense of discovery to your garden with different garden ornaments.

Summary

In conclusion, garden decor is significant because it is an invitation for people to open themselves to the magic, to the wonder, to the meaning, and to the pleasure that gardens and garden related accessories can bring to their lives.

The history of the gnome.

by: Jan Money

Greeted by a garden gnome people often grimace in horror and mutter some displeasure while thinking how anyone could anyone have one of those in their back garden. But we’re also told ( from people in the know) that there are approaching four million of them in southern Germany and if you know where to look there’s quite a few in the US aswell.

Well it doesn’t surprise me about the Germans, since the first gnomes graced us with their appearance about 160 years ago. The first logged appearance was in the UK about 1840 in Lamport Hall. According to local myths gnomes are very lucky. It is documented in the 1870’s that manufacture began on a large scale. Apparantly they are meant to help around the house and garden, and in more isolated areas were meant to guard over produce and livestock.

Eventually, the European gnome creators became experts and masters of their work. During it’s most popular period a gnome factory in Griebel, Germany produced over 300 different characters.
In 1989, after the collapse of the iron curtain, savvy businessmen entered the market in the Czech Republic and started to produce cheap imitations of the original characters. At first they were stopped from entering Germany by a law customs officers confiscate those gnomes who were infringing copyright laws.
Unfortunately, it is all now all quite slack on the German border. The grandson of the founder, Reinhard Griebel, now has just one workshop and the gnome museum.

The first gnomes were always characterised as gardeners carrying out daily country tasks, but this grew to fishermen, sportsmen, musicians and many more. Then they started to model ones from people still living out of clay or stoneware.

In North Devon, in the southwest of England, there is a gnome reserve. There are over one thousand pixies and gnomes in the four acre reserve. Gnome fishing equipment and hats are given out so the gnomes feel at ease.

They are others that have a very different opinion about them. FreeTheGnomes.com provides Garden Gnome Liberation information and urges people to take action. They proclaim that “ Thousands of gnomes are enslaved across America. For too long we have let are neighbours usurp the rights of these gentle woodland creatures. Join the boycott. Organise a picket demonstration. Write to congress. Free a gnome. We’ll show you how.”

Some groups have even crossed to the wrong side of the law. In April 2000 the Garden Gnome Liberation Front in a nighttime raid on a Paris convention stole 20 gnomes.

By the way, if you’re thinking of selling your home, a study made in 2003 concluded that a gnome in your front garden would lower the price of your house by about £400.

The Beauty of Hybrid Tea Roses

by: Kenrick Austin

Hybrid tea roses and the original tea rose are the world’s favourite roses and are available in many gorgeous colors.

Hybrid tea roses are among the most beautiful flowers in the world. They are the florist's rose.

The blossoms are fantastic and each flower can have as many as 60 or more petals. You can not find a more beautiful cut flower.

The fragrance also makes the hybrid tea rose an excellent choice to give as a bouquet or to grow in your garden.

Hybrid tea roses are different from other roses because they produce their flowers usually one bloom to a long stem rather than in clusters. Most hybrid tea roses produce flowers during the entire growing season and the plants grow 3 to 6 feet tall.

Caring for hybrid tea roses is no more difficult than other roses although you do need to give them special care in colder climates. They are no more or no less pest or disease resistant than other kinds of roses.

‘La France’ was the first hybrid tea rose grown in 1867 by a French nurseryman, Jean-Baptiste Guillot. He cross-bred two old garden roses and developed an entirely new kind of rose.

Hybrid tea roses should be planted 18 to 36 inches apart or they can be planted with other flowers in large pots.

There are hundreds of choices when looking for hybrid tea roses. Choices can be made by color, names or fragrance. There are hybrid tea roses named after famous people including presidents and their wives.

The very first tea rose was a cross between a China rose and Rosa gigantea. These plants are more bushy than the hybrid tea rose but the well-shaped flower buds remind us of today’s modern hybrid tea roses. Tea roses come in shades of white, pink and yellow.
Start thinking about adding a tea rose or hybrid tea rose to your garden this year.

The Basics of Garden Fences

by: Hege Crowton

Fences are either open, to use as a trellis for roses or other plants, or they are closed to serve as a wind, sun or privacy screen.

The materials will depend largely upon the use to which the fence is to be put. The most popular, and probably the most attractive, fences are built of wood in various forms, but newer fences of asbestos-cement and corrugated sheet metal are colourful and stand up against rot better.

Because they are heavier, they are usually erected in a zigzag design, the better to stand up against prevailing winds.

The major problem in prolonging the life of a fence stems from rot at the ground line, for here it is susceptible to alternating wet and dry conditions.

Among the best woods for withstanding rot are California redwood and Southern cypress, white cedar and red cedar, chestnut, locust and arbor vitae. While painting the wood with preservatives often lengthens the life of your fence, this will do no good unless the preservatives penetrate.

That's why a post that has been machine-creosoted will resist rot, while a hand-creosoted post will not. However, if you use a good preservative on a clean, dry, unpainted wood, and give the wood two or three coats, you can do a good job.

Among the commercial wood preservatives you will find those of pentachlorophenol, copper napthenate (which has a green colour) and zinc napthenate, a clear solution.

In addition to the point where the post hits the ground, any place where two pieces are nailed together on a wooden fence is subject to rot. Therefore, it is wise to treat the wood where the members are joined before you put up the fence. This will preserve it much better than painting afterward.

Set your fence posts deep enough in the ground to resist the prevailing winds, at least 2 feet and even deeper. Set heavy posts in concrete. Tamp firmly in place so the fence will not wiggle. Hardware used should be galvanized.

Among the most popular types of fences are the traditional picket, the post-and-rail fence and the hurdle fence, but with increased stress on privacy screening, the louvered and lattice types are ever more popular.

The post-and-rail fence is made of posts spaced at 10 foot intervals with large slots cut in them. The 11-foot-long rails are tapered to flat ends, which are inserted in the posts. The hurdle fence has split rails built into a braced frame and nailed together, with the end pieces of each panel becoming the posts.

The picket fence, traditionally white, has posts spaced from 8 to 12 feet apart, rails 3x4 inches, and pickets 2 to 3 inches wide, pointed at the top.

The pickets should be 2 inches off the ground at the bottom and extend well above the top rail. The spindle fence is a kind of picket fence with round spindles that pass through holes in the rails.

There are many possible variations of board fences used for screening. A broad rail may be alternated with a narrow rail, or the boards may be applied vertically, like palings, with, perhaps, a staggering of the boards on either side of the rail. Boards may be slanted in a louver effect to give privacy while admitting air and sunlight.

A basket-weave fence can be constructed of thin, flexible boards and provides total screening and a handsome background for planting. It is somewhat difficult to build yourself, however.

The 3 Types Of Roses

by: Ron King

There are several rose classification schemes used throughout the world. But the most popular system is that proposed by The American Rose Society (in cooperation with the World Federation of Roses). While the other systems are still in use, the majority of internationally established societies have adopted this one.

According to the American Rose Society, there are 3 main groupings of roses: the Species, Old Garden Roses, and Modern Roses.

Species Roses

This is the ancestor of every rose and are commonly referred to as "wild roses." They are easy to identify. Usually they have 5 petals, bloom once a season, and are often thorny shrubs or climbers.

Several popular Species Roses are: Cherokee Roses, Dog Roses, Gallic Roses, French Roses, and Redleaf Roses.

Species Roses flourish in temperate climates, and can be found throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

Old Garden Roses

Unlike Species Roses, which existed millions of years before humans walked the earth, Old Garden Roses are a class identified as of 1867.

Most Old Garden Roses bloom once a season, usually at the start of summer. They grow in several shrub and vine sizes. Although colors can vary, this class are usually white or pastel in color. These "antique roses" are generally preferred for lawns and home gardening because they are easy to grow.

Some Old Garden Roses are: China, Tea, Moss, Damask, Bourbon, Hybrid Perpetual and Noisette roses. Many antique roses have a strong, sweet scent, which makes them very popular.

Modern Roses

Old Garden Roses are the predecessors of Modern Roses. Any rose identified after 1867, is considered a Modern Rose. Very popular, This group is the result of crossbreeding the hybrid tea with the polyanthus (a variety of primrose).

The colors of Modern Roses are varied, rich and vibrant. Most roses in this class will flower repeatedly with the proper care. Perhaps that is why horticulturists find this class so attractive.

The most popular roses found in the class of Modern Roses are: the hybrid tea, floribunda, and grandiflora. Although Modern Roses are adored by florists and gardeners, they do require a little extra care, and do not adapt well to colder environments.

Further Classification

After a rose has been classified into 1 of the 3 main groupings, it can be further classified by color, scent, ancestry, date of introduction, growth habit, blooming characteristics and size. It is not always possible for horticulturists to classify every rose, especially the hybrid roses which can seem to be a grouping all their own.

But after a point, it is time to quit classifying and start growing. I think we have reached that point.

Teach Cats To Use Scratching Posts

by: Marilyn Pokorney

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Cats love and need to scratch. When they live in a house or apartment they will scratch whatever is available which usually turns out to be their owners best piece of furniture.

Here are some tips to help teach your cat to use a scratching post instead of your favorite couch.

Cats don't understand physical punishment. Punishment only breaks the trust that your cat has with you.

It feels good to cats to scratch. Scratching serves as exercise to keep your cats muscles in shape.

Don't try to show your cat how to scratch the post. The cat knows how to scratch and will do so when they want to.

A good scratching post should be tall enough for your Kitty to fully stretch the body, usually around 3 feet tall and should be very stable. If it falls over, even once, the cat won't go back to it. A resting place on top is even more attractive.

Cats like rough surfaces that they can shred to pieces. Choose material as close as possible to the item that the cat is now scratching on. The reverse side of rugs provides a good texture for clawing.

Cat's mark their territory by scratching. The paws also have scent glands that leave their own special scent on their territory, so a scratching post should be in an area that's used by the family.

Encourage the cat to use the post by feeding and playing by the post. Rub dried catnip leaves or powder onto it. Attach toys to it, such as a catnip mouse, which causes the cat to grab the post attempting to catch the toy.

Put a post near where the cat sleeps. Cats like to scratch when they awaken, especially in the morning and the middle of the night. If possible, place a scratching post in every room of the house.

Summer Lawn Care Tips

by: Josh Gray

Summer is just around the corner, and your lawn could probably use a little maintenance before the summer season of backyard BBQs and swimming in the pool. So what are you doing now to get your lawn ready? Lawn care is often feared as a difficult and time intensive process, but with a few guidelines and tips, you can easily have a healthy green lawn in time for the first backyard party of the season.

First of all, if you can spare a minute of your time, don’t hire a lawn care “specialist” or professional landscaper. Buying your own lawn care products is cheap and easy, with hundreds of vendors offering products online and in Do-It-Yourself stores. A wide variety of products such as weed controllers to fertilizers can be found online, and usually can be found at reasonable prices, especially when you do a little online coupon searching.

Starting off on the right foot is important to reviving your lawn after winter. Fertilizer is the key to ensuring strong healthy growth of the grass in your yard. Fertilizing the grass does more than just make it green. Of course it will make it grow too, but lot's of things happen when you fertilize. Fertilizer makes the seed germinate faster, and get started out of the ground. After the grass has a good start fertilizer will make the grass get thicker and send off beneficial chemicals like Rhizomes, Stolons, and Tillers all making the grass thicker and healthier.

What most people want to know about fertilizing is - how much and when? Typically, you want to fertilize 4 times each season, spread 60 days apart. Start in early spring approximately 30 days before the growing season begins in your area, continuing through the growing season until fall. Spring fertilizing gets the grass off to a fast start giving you that rich green color everyone wants. A word of warning though, don't use too much fertilizer, follow the listed guidelines on the bag.

Mowing is the most misunderstood part of lawn care, and the most often incorrectly performed part of lawn care. Far too many people will set their mowers too low or "scalp" the lawn. How many times have you spent time mowing your grass in hopes of a beautiful result only to end up with brown spots? Cutting too much off the top leads to thinned out grass, and shallow root systems.

Now once you have achieved the perfect lawn, you must do regular maintenance to prevent it from going back to being a pasture. Spend a little time and money and keep it watered and you will keep the lush grass you spent your hard earned money and time on. The ideal way to water your lawn is with an Automatic Underground Sprinkler System. This way the watering is done every day that it needs it, you don't have to drag hoses, you don't waste water from over watering, and you get all of the lawn watered, not just where you happen to set the sprinkler. If you implement this type of sprinkler system, make sure to water shrubbery and annuals separate from the lawn. If you applied the same amount of water on your landscape as gets put on the lawn you would surely kill some plants from over watering.

Now that you’re ready to care for your lawn, you’ll need to get your supplies. Lawn care products can be found at many local gardening centers, or through many online merchants. Buying gardening supplies online is growing in popularity, and made even more economical by online coupons and discounts. For coupons on everything from fertilizers to lawn tools and equipment, check out www.CouponChief.com and easily save yourself some big bucks. Spend the extra cash on your first big BBQ of the summer and invite all your neighbors over to drool over your well manicured, lush green lawn.

Succulent Spoon Jade CRASSULA PORTULACEA: Drought Tolerant Plants for Dry Gardens or Blooming Houseplants

by: Laura Zinkan

Succulents are great choices for dry gardens. These plants are easy to grow in hot dry areas and also make great houseplants. Their care is similar to cactus (without the thorns). One of my favorite succulents is named Crassula Portulacea, commonly called Horseshoe or Spoon Jade. Recently they've been called Gollum Fingers or Hobbit Plant because their dark green leaves look like fingers with reddish tips. These plants can take full sun to light shade. They are happy indoors or outdoors.

Water wise succulent plants like heat and sun whether you grow them indoors or in the yard. They are just as easy to care for as their cousin, crassula ovata. Both plants can take up to 6 hours of sun a day. If they develop yellow or brown spots on the leaves, it is either stress or sunburn. If they are in a pot, try moving it to an area with less sun. If they're outdoors, try giving them a nice soak and they should perk up. Grown in pots they will remain small and are often used for bonsai. They will grow slowly and can be trimmed into the shape of trees. In the ground they will eventually reach a height of 4 to 5 feet tall. Older plants take on an otherworldly, gnarled look. Visit my website www.theGardenPages.com to see photos.

I love succulents because they are easy to grow and care free. They are great if you don't have time to fuss over a plant. Crassula happily oblige and even produce blooms in later winter. This increases their value as a landscape plant in my book as winter blooming plants are uncommon. They produce flower clusters that look like tiny bouquets of daisies. Bloom color can range from light to dark pink, some have a salmon or coral tint. The plant I started as a small cutting two years ago is blooming for the first time this year. Established plants should bloom reliably each year.

They are called succulent plants because they store their water in their trunks and leaves. This allows them to get by with little water. All that stored water can make them susceptible to rot if they sit in a pool of wet dirt. Let the soil dry out between watering to keep them happy. Crassula are best grown in USDA Zones 9b – 11. Every year, mine are able to take a light frost for a few hours. But I'd give them overhead protection in winter if you are in a cold area.

Xeriscaping with drought tolerant cactus and succulents has become popular out here in the southwest where we sometimes have water rationing and shortages. I’ve got a little corner of the garden which I’d like to look like an underwater grotto. That's a tall order here in Los Angeles we don’t get a lot of rain, so I’m planting it with succulents. I think Neptune would be proud. These succulents add a dramatic touch and look like some sort of sea plant or coral to me. Crassula are and easy and reliable addition to any water wise garden.

Storing Garden Equipment and Tools

by: Hege Crowton

Storage of garden tools in a precise fashion helps keep them in good working order, and saves you time in locating them. A tool house 3x6 feet can take care of a great deal of equipment.

Because tools are usually kept in unlighted places, and often not wiped off after use, rust is the major enemy.

One way to safeguard against rust is to keep vulnerable tools away from air when not in use, storing them in a box of sand saturated with crank-case oil. Avoid having so much oil that it makes the tools greasy and hard to handle, and do not put the working parts of the tools, such as the pivot part of shears, in the sand.

The garden hose is often badly taken care of. Besides using a reel, you can preserve the life of your hose by not letting it kink while water is running through it. Don't leave it in the hot summer sun (especially if it is a plastic hose). Coil it loosely on your reel or rack made on the exposed studding of your garage. An improvised reel can be fashioned from wooden TV cable or wire reels.

Tools should be cleaned immediately after use, while the soil is still moist. Use emery cloth, a wire brush or steel wool. Rub in crank case oil. Keep your wooden handles sanded down and preserve the wood with linseed oil.

Sharpen hoes with an 8-inch mill file, stroking toward the cutting edge, but don't sharpen digging tools too keenly for when they are thin they nick easily. Apply your file to only one side of your sickle, with the bottom edge kept flat.

Power sprayers should be washed with clean water and washing soda after each using, and the nozzle should be examined to get out the grit particles. Clean the sprayer's rubber hose with vinegar and the shower, and the nozzle with kerosene. Oil the leather plunger washer after using to prevent the leather from drying out.

Plan to have your drying yard and service area out of sight yet close enough to the house so that you are not inconvenienced. Screen these areas with shrubbery or fences. The service area should include propagating beds, cold frames, a tool shed or storage locker and your compost pit if you have one.

Hotbeds and cold frames should be located in a spot where they will be protected from north and northwest winds. Be careful not to place your cold frame in a damp place unless you have first drained it thoroughly with drain tile.

Hobby

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

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The history of the gnome.

The Beauty of Hybrid Tea Roses

The Basics of Garden Fences

The 3 Types Of Roses

Teach Cats To Use Scratching Posts

Summer Lawn Care Tips

Succulent Spoon Jade CRASSULA PORTULACEA: Drought Tolerant Plants for Dry Gardens or Blooming Houseplants

Storing Garden Equipment and Tools

Important Site Link

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