Simple Methods for Preventing Weeds (home composting)
No commentsBy rwakefield
Weeds in your garden are a real pain. They take over and push out your prized plants, taking water, nutrients and space away from proper garden plants. Some people enjoy weeding and it is good exercise, much cheaper than going to the gym! However, many people see it as a chore and it may not be high on your list of priorities. So, is there anything you can do to actually prevent weeds so that you do not have to spend as much time weeding and spend more time relaxing and enjoying your garden? Yes. Read on.
One of the best ways of preventing weeds from growing in flower beds and borders, is to to use a layer of bark chippings, mulch or gravel. Bark chippings do have a tendency to blow around the garden and gravel can end up on your lawn, causing damage to your lawnmower, so mulch may be the best option.
Before you apply the layer of mulch, you must first prepare your flower beds and that means doing some weeding! Use a hand fork to remove all present weeds, making sure that you remove all roots, weed fragments, suckers, vines and shoots. Dispose of the weeds carefully so that seeds cannot be spread. Once your border is weed free, you can water it liberally and cover the soil in a weed membrane. A membrane is not necessary but it stops gravel and mulch sinking into the soil and also stops any weeds from establishing properly in the mulch. If you have got bulbs in your flower beds, leave out the membrane and simply lay the mulch onto the well-watered soil. Apply the mulch the same day that you have weeded the soil so that no seeds are given the chance to blow on the soil and germinate before you add the mulch. Also make sure that you weed surrounding areas well, plants like bindweed, Japanese knotweed, ground elder and couchgrass can still penetrate mulch.
You can either buy mulch from garden centres and use the black plastic sacking it comes in as a membrane underneath it. Simply lay the plastic on your flower bed and stab holes in it for drainage. You can also use compost from your compost heap, wet newspaper, pieces of carpet or matting, or grass clippings as mulch or you can combine these with mulch from the garden centre to make it go further. To be effective, your layer of mulch needs to be at least 5-10 centimetres deep all over your flower bed. Leave space around the bases of plants so that they can breathe and, when you need to plant new plants, carefully push the mulch to one side, plant the plant and then re-cover. Always check the soil and rootball of new plants, you do not want to introduce new weeds into your garden!
You will need to keep an eye on your flower beds and will need to top up the mulch regularly. Pets like cats can dig into the mulch and cause bare areas as can birds and wildlife. Keep an eye out for weeds and remove them as soon as you see them, they should be easy to deal with as they should not have deep roots.
If you really want to stop weeds from nearby areas, like bindweed, from penetrating your borders from underground, you may want to consider more drastic action. If you have got a piece of thick plastic or even metal, you could bury this to a depth of half a metre to act as an underground barrier and leave 10cm or so sticking out of the ground to prevent any overground vines or shoots from invading. This is quite an effort but prevention is better than spending lots of time weeding!
R.Wakefield is an author and publisher who works for Japanese Knotweed Solutions Limited, (http://www.jksl.com), who are the premier UK specialists in the eradication of japanese knotweed. This dangerous plant is considered to be one of the most difficult to eliminate weeds in the wild, and is responsible for substantive damage and devastation to home gardens, walls and our natural countryside.
Fantastic Winter Gardening
By Louanne Baelde
Winter gardening can be so much fun and extremely beneficial as well! Allocate a special space in your garden just for winter gardening.
If you are going to plant a crop following one that you had planted earlier, it’s a good idea to feed the soil before hand. You want to give it the best shot that you can at being successful. Try mixing compost, leaf mulch or manure that is aged to your soil to keep it fertile.
Cool weather vegetables only take about one week to germinate therefore transplants can be started outdoors. It’s best not to transfer them any later than the first week of September. This will allow the plants to develop good roots before the winter time and many upcoming frosts. You can also add compost or organic fertilizer in the hole whenever you go to plant. This will help a lot. Also, good drainage is extremely important.
Many winter plants just naturally reseed themselves year after year. This makes your job much easier and your crops more substantial!
Don’t worry about whether your winter plants can withstand the cold. Remember that this is why they are called winter plants! They naturally pump sugar into their cells that works similar to that of an antifreeze. This is the reason why many winter vegetable plants like kale, leeks and brussel sprouts, do even better and taste much sweeter after frosts. Kale, peas, spinach, beets … are all vegetables that do fantastic in rainy, cooler temperatures.
Garlic can be planted in October in a sunny area. It’s actually thrilling to pull a sweet carrot out of the garden in January or to cut fresh brussel sprouts from the snowy ground in February. Even pretty pansies can often survive in winter.
It is best to provide more space between your plants for winter gardening, than you would normally in the summer time. This provides for better air circulation and then you will have less dampness; less fungus and diseases with your plants. Watch for snails and slugs with your winter gardening. These often prefer dark, damp conditions.
Windbreaks and walls can lengthen the season for your crops.
Don’t forget to brighten up your yards with beautiful colored berries. With the right planning, berry bushes can be enjoyed with their bright red, yellow and pale blue colors and add beauty to the drab winter months. Birds will also love your new winter additions.
The biggest advantage of all with planting winter vegetables is that there is no need for weeding or watering and most of all, no insects!
Louanne welcomes you to visit EZ-Gardening-Tips.com http://www.EZ-Gardening-Tips.com for a large data base of extremely helpful gardening articles, gardening videos and gardening resources.
Your Source For Composting Instructions And Information
The Many Advantages Of Artificial Flowers
By Alex Stacey
The earliest makers of artificial flowers were the Chinese. The Italians followed suit in the twelfth century. However, it was the French who mastered this art, giving their Italian counterparts stiff competition.
Artificial flowers can be made of materials like fabric, paper, clay, and even soap. The common fabrics used for this purpose include silk, rayon, cotton, muslin, and crepe.
The point to be kept in mind while making flowers from paper is that paper is not exactly the most durable substance. Hence, there needs to be a way to strengthen it. Sometimes it is treated to any sort of glue. Simply by applying a coat of it stiffens the paper up. One thing to make sure of while doing this is to not overdo the glue content. Otherwise the crispness will give way to brittleness instead! Another option would be to use hard paper. The petals and leaves need to be cut into the required shapes and sizes. Motifs for both fabric and paper flowers can be hand-painted or placed in moulds.
Artificial flowers made of clay can be made very creative. But when using clay, if it is not treated to heat (burning of clay) then even after it dries, the object remains brittle. Hence, it easily breaks. Once the clay models have been burnt red in a furnace, one can paint on it. An important tip while coloring a clay flower is to mix glass powder into the color. This way, after letting the paint dry, if it is placed in the furnace once again, the heat melts the glass powder of the paint, giving it a glazed, porcelain look.
Flowers made of soap bars are very interesting to make. The process resembles stone carvings done with hammer and chisel. They are mostly handmade and consume a lot of time. Soap bars that are free of oil can be ground into powder and mixed with water to make a paste, which can be placed in moulds shaped like flowers to get the desired shape.
Both these methods allow further painting on the models.
The most popular forms of artificial flowers include rose, calla lilies, carnations and orchids.
There are many advantages of artificial flowers over their real counterparts.
Real flowers have a limited life. The artificial ones survive forever. They are unaffected by weather changes. The stems of the latter do not need to be cut into size before putting them in a vase. In fact there is no need to place them in a vase altogether.
Good imitations of real flowers look as real as can be. Hence, the difference is only felt tangibly.
Artificial flowers don’t necessarily need to be copies of real ones. The design and shape depends on the artist’s imagination. This increases the range of choice of the customer.
Many people are allergic to the pollen carried by some of the real flowers. Any proximity to them results in serious sneezing fits, sometimes even leading to asphyxiation. There is no such problem with artificial flowers.
Choose from a fantastic range of artificial flowers, plants and trees all at low prices and next day delivery at: http://www.artificialflorist.co.uk.
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
