Gardens - Garden Tips 7

By Ted Wosko and Sandra Wosko

Hi Everyone

Yet again another great week although you can really tell the temperature is dipping over night now, as we have to clear our windscreens and it is just about time for the old sweatshirt to go on over the polo I am wearing.

Rusty our dog made me laugh the other morning. It was probably the coldest day we have had recently, and usually when it is time for me to go to work rusty comes outside with me so I can throw his ball for him a couple of times before I leave. This morning when I opened the door and the cold wind hit him he just stood there and looked up at me as to say 'if you think I am going out there today you have another thing coming', that is certainly the character we love about him. When I picked his ball up the temptation was just too much and out he shot like a speeding bullet.

Work wise we are just about on top of things now with the entire amount of grass cutting we have been doing. We have just completed a grass- seeding job for a landfill site – only 11 acres, just a bit larger than normal size garden. Basically it is the same process as we do for new lawns in a home garden but we are using much larger mechanical machinery.

If you are preparing your lawn at home you would first loosen up the ground with a rotovator and you would end up with fine tilth - meaning fine small granules of topsoil without large lumps. You must also remove large and small stones from the surface, rake over to get the surface as level as possible. A good tip here is to get a piece of board about 4 foot long, place on the surface and pull back towards yourself. This will help you get the ground level by taking out the humps and filling in the holes- easy hey! When you are happy with the result, step back and repeat until you have completed the whole area to be seeded.

You should now have a nice level base to sow the grass seed. Place the seed into a bucket and hold in the middle against your stomach. Now stand at the edge of the new lawn area, using your free hand grab a handful of seed, you then broadcast the seed by moving your hand forwards, outwards and across your body at the same time opening your hand up as you go. This sequence should spread the seed nice and quite evenly across the whole area. Take a step forward and repeat the process until the whole area is completed.

You can then go back and put seed on any parts you have missed or the seed is a bit thin. Next get a grass rake and rake the area over covering the grass seed with the soil. Do not worry about trying to cover all the seed, as it will still grow. You can then get your board and re-level the area in the same manner as before, if you have a garden roller you can use it to give it a light roll- but it is not essential. Now give the lawn a good sprinkling of water and leave alone.

After about two to three weeks depending on the weather you should start to see some growth. Once it starts it will soon thicken up to leave the whole area in your garden looking like a new green carpet. Allow the grass to grow to about 2 to 3 inches long before cutting. Reduce the length of the lawn slowly, take at least three cuts over a period of three weeks to take it down to no shorter that 1 inch in height. Till next time just enjoy your gardens.

Ted & Sandra

This article was composed by Ted and Sandra Wosko of A-Z Landscapes & Contract Services Ltd. We run a very successful uk based landscaping family company. We have some blue chip companies as our clients and been retained by them for several years. We have been acknowledged for helping companies achive their environmental compliance standards.
http://www.topgardensuk.com
http://www.theaudiobookdownload.com
http://www.learnturnandearn.com

Article Source:ezinearticles.com

Gardens - Garden Tips 7

By Ted Wosko and Sandra Wosko

Hi Everyone

Yet again another great week although you can really tell the temperature is dipping over night now, as we have to clear our windscreens and it is just about time for the old sweatshirt to go on over the polo I am wearing.

Rusty our dog made me laugh the other morning. It was probably the coldest day we have had recently, and usually when it is time for me to go to work rusty comes outside with me so I can throw his ball for him a couple of times before I leave. This morning when I opened the door and the cold wind hit him he just stood there and looked up at me as to say 'if you think I am going out there today you have another thing coming', that is certainly the character we love about him. When I picked his ball up the temptation was just too much and out he shot like a speeding bullet.

Work wise we are just about on top of things now with the entire amount of grass cutting we have been doing. We have just completed a grass- seeding job for a landfill site – only 11 acres, just a bit larger than normal size garden. Basically it is the same process as we do for new lawns in a home garden but we are using much larger mechanical machinery.

If you are preparing your lawn at home you would first loosen up the ground with a rotovator and you would end up with fine tilth - meaning fine small granules of topsoil without large lumps. You must also remove large and small stones from the surface, rake over to get the surface as level as possible. A good tip here is to get a piece of board about 4 foot long, place on the surface and pull back towards yourself. This will help you get the ground level by taking out the humps and filling in the holes- easy hey! When you are happy with the result, step back and repeat until you have completed the whole area to be seeded.

You should now have a nice level base to sow the grass seed. Place the seed into a bucket and hold in the middle against your stomach. Now stand at the edge of the new lawn area, using your free hand grab a handful of seed, you then broadcast the seed by moving your hand forwards, outwards and across your body at the same time opening your hand up as you go. This sequence should spread the seed nice and quite evenly across the whole area. Take a step forward and repeat the process until the whole area is completed.

You can then go back and put seed on any parts you have missed or the seed is a bit thin. Next get a grass rake and rake the area over covering the grass seed with the soil. Do not worry about trying to cover all the seed, as it will still grow. You can then get your board and re-level the area in the same manner as before, if you have a garden roller you can use it to give it a light roll- but it is not essential. Now give the lawn a good sprinkling of water and leave alone.

After about two to three weeks depending on the weather you should start to see some growth. Once it starts it will soon thicken up to leave the whole area in your garden looking like a new green carpet. Allow the grass to grow to about 2 to 3 inches long before cutting. Reduce the length of the lawn slowly, take at least three cuts over a period of three weeks to take it down to no shorter that 1 inch in height. Till next time just enjoy your gardens.

Ted & Sandra

This article was composed by Ted and Sandra Wosko of A-Z Landscapes & Contract Services Ltd. We run a very successful uk based landscaping family company. We have some blue chip companies as our clients and been retained by them for several years. We have been acknowledged for helping companies achive their environmental compliance standards.
http://www.topgardensuk.com
http://www.theaudiobookdownload.com
http://www.learnturnandearn.com

Article Source:ezinearticles.com

Garden Hoses - 3 Tips To Choosing Your Best Garden Hose

By Terry Edwards

So, you have decided you need to buy a new garden hose? How do you know what to look for in a new hose? Before you make a purchase here are 3 tips to help you find the perfect garden hose for your home.

1. Construction - Obviously, the quality of the hose will determine its life, so look for garden hoses that have brass connectors. Why? Because brass fittings are the best in preventing water leaks and hold up well to everyday use in the yard or garden. It also will never rust or rot out.

Be sure that any water hose you buy has 6 inch kink guards. These guards are what helps prevent your hose from kinking when it's pulled out from the faucet.

2. Long Life - If you are going to spend $25 or more on a new garden hose, then get a good one. A high quality multi-layered rubber hose will give you 7 years of life. Yes, you can go to Wal-Mart and buy a $10 cheap garden hose. But don't expect to use it again next year.

3. Style Of Hose - This is an important area that is often overlooked. How you store your hose has an effect on what style to buy. For example, a coiled hose will work great will a nice hose reel. Just be wary of trying to use any kind of hose reel with a cheap coiled hose. If you have ever seen the tangled rats nest it can make, then you know what I mean.

Finding your best quality garden hose is the only way to go. Whether it is for watering your garden vegetables, plants or shrubs, it will give you years of trouble free use.

By the way, you can find out more tips to choose your best Garden Hose as well as much more information on all types of garden hoses and garden hose accessories at http://www.GardenHosesA-Z.com

Article Source:ezinearticles.com

How to Arrange a Garden

By Esmee McCornall

When it comes to arranging a garden there are only a couple of considerations. One is color and the other is size. There are a number of software programs that allow you to arrange your garden and I have tried one or two of these. They are not to my taste mostly because the time I spend installing and trying to figure out the program I could have been pulling weeds… I prefer getting my hands dirty over sitting in front of a screen any day of the week.

The first thing you need to do is consider color. This is a totally personal thing, but I prefer flowers in shades of the same color so I try to arrange my garden so that the colors are the same or complementary. For instance, I have yellow begonias that bloom more or less all summer. I put yellow and blue pansies in the same garden for ground cover. The pansies are annuals and the begonias have to be dug up and taken inside in the cooler months. So for the perennials, I have white and yellow tulips that come up in a mass in the spring followed quickly by daffodils and then by other yellow flowers that come up in rotation all summer – lilies, potentilla, and daisies.

Arranging this garden is fairly easy. The tall plants are in the center flanked by the lower plants with space for the begonias to be replanted annually. The rim of the bed is filled with pansies.

The choices for colors range from the single color bed (with a splash of white in the case of the one I just described) to a multicolored bed to a bed that comes up in waves of colors. A neighbor has a bed that starts with red tulips then is filled with blue and pink William and Marys (officially known as Pulmonaria and unofficially known as lungwort, Bethlehem sage, Jerusalem sage, Joseph's Mary, and spotted dog).

Once the William and Marys lose their bloom their leaves remain green with nice white spots so they make a nice low greenery look in the garden. Then she has purple irises appear along with bleeding hearts. These are followed by orange tiger lilies. The only thing she plants annually are kale (or ornamental cabbage). She tucks these in under the taller plants and when the bleeding hearts die down and the irises and lilies are ready to be trimmed, there she has her cabbages popping up as if by magic.

The beauty of these kinds of gardens is that they are very low maintenance. You keep weeding them and in the divide any that are getting too overwhelming but you don’t have to do much in terms of digging and planting and yet the color just keeps on coming all summer.

The size of the plants can provide lovely texture to your garden if they are mixed properly. Mix high and low plants so that they can all be seen and mix thin plants with bushy ones so that the graceful stalks of the thin ones can be seen and the bushy ones have room to expand.

Esmee McCornall is a 'Gardoholic' publisher and writer. She recently published a guide called "Tips and Tricks to Create the Garden You Always Wanted". You can download a free copy at http://www.gardensandflowers.net

Article Source: ezinearticles.com