Six Ways to Cut Down on Watering Time

Six Ways to Cut Down on Watering Time

As summer nears, many gardeners face the challenge of proper watering due to restrictions imposed by many municipalities.  If you’re one of these gardeners, don’t fret.  Cutting down on watering time doesn’t mean allowing your plants to wilt and dry up.  It really is just a matter of creating a watering schedule that will not only work but also save you money.  Here are some ways you can use:

Water sparingly.
When using a water can or hose, aim the water to the roots and not the leaves.  Plants absorb water through their root system and many gardeners waste too much time and a lot of water allowing the moisture to fall someplace else.

Catch excess water.
If you have hanging plants or pots placed in elevated areas, it might be a good idea to place other plants directly underneath.  Each time you water the plants above, those below can catch the excess water and use it instead, cutting down your watering time by at least half.

Choose plants to water.
Not every plant in your garden requires watering everyday.  Cacti and other succulents, for example, can survive well with infrequent waterings.  There is also no need for deep-watering well-established plants.  In fact, plants with established roots will do well with just one inch of water.  Infrequent watering will also encourage deeper rooting, producing plants that are healthier and stronger.

Avoid shallow watering.
Despite appearances, shallow watering actually wastes more water than deep watering.  A light sprinkle of water, for example, will only last for a few hours, requiring you to water the plant all over again. 

Another problem is that if the atmosphere is too hot, the water will evaporate before it has the time to reach the roots so you’ll have to water more frequently than you should.  It’s not only ineffective, it is also wasteful.  Go for deep waterings once or twice a week instead.

Schedule watering.
The best watering times for plants are early mornings, just before the sun reaches its peak and late afternoons when the sun isn’t too hot.  The reason is simple: if you water during the hottest time of the day, water evaporates faster.  That means you might have to water again late in the afternoon on the same day.

Use watering devices effectively.
Other than the sprinkler, there are also other watering devices that will help you cut down on watering time and save money.  Soaker hoses, for example, ‘weep’ moisture during a specified length of time and are very effective with flowerbeds and vegetable plots.  Root feeders, which are buried several inches below the ground surface, are great for shrubs and trees.

Article by Small Business Marketing

Five Critical Areas that you Need to Consider

Five Critical Areas that you Need to Consider.

Almost everyone in the neighborhood has had at least one improvement project in their home, especially if you live in the suburbs. Now, home improvement is a really good investment and it can even add a lot of value to your home. In doing this, you need to ensure that all your projects are going to be successful. Here are five areas that you should consider before starting a project.

Cost

You can look for free quotations if you want to check the cost. Most companies can give you detailed cost and pricing on all items. Just provide the vital information and they can give you everything that you need, including the design if you don’t have one.

Hire a contractor or directly oversee the project

After you have evaluated the cost of your project, look for a good contractor who will manage the project. All you have to do is give them general instructions and they will do all the rest. However, you can also manage your own project and just hire people directly. Like for example, if you want to add additional rooms to your home, you can hire a plumber, a carpenter and an electrician separately.

Areas

There are at least five major areas that you want to focus on when you remodel your home. Make sure that your plumbing and electrical systems are all working properly. Don’t forget to check your walls and ceilings for damages. Lastly, check your heating and cooling system. You can also consider the over-all energy saving equipment in your home. Using solar panels to save on electricity is a good way to start.

Be sure that all your projects jive

The problem that you may be facing when you renovate your home piece by piece is that it might not have a general theme. Before doing any small project at your home, always make sure that they will fit in with your whole house and whole improvement plan.

Do it yourself reminders

Most people like doing things themselves when it comes to home improvement. If you only need to lay down cement for a patio, doing it yourself is easy. However, if your project involves plumbing, electricity and any other areas that require professional help, it best that you consult or hire a professional for the job.

These are major tips that you should never forget before starting your home improvement project. Be sure to get the best materials that you can find. Whether you want to sell your house in the future or not, taking care of it is a pleasure in itself.

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Do-it-Yourself: Home Improvement Projects

Home improvement projects can be heavy on the pockets. As much as we want to give the projects to expert contractors who can deliver excellent results, sometimes, it’s just more practical to have a little exercise and do these projects without the help of contractors. People dig into their savings or resort to different loans just to finance these projects and this in turn makes them lose their financial momentum.

This article tries to give some do-it-yourself home improvement projects so as to give the readers some ideas on how to cut back on expenses and generates savings from the project.

1) Painting

Giving a house a new color will definitely give it a new and fresher ambience. If a family is tired and bored with the current colors of their house, they can do the painting themselves. Painting the house together is a great way to bond and have fun while improving the home at the same time.

Many people who attempt to paint their houses have problems which are related to the improper selection of painting materials. You must remember that cheap paint is not the way to go when painting the house. If you resort to using these paints, you will regret it some time in the near future.

2) Kitchen

There can be a lot of ways to improve your kitchen, which can be argued as one of the most important places in the house. Installing ceramic tiles on the countertop or the floor is one of them. There are a lot of resource materials that are out there, especially on the Internet that gives a step-by-step guide on how to install these ceramic tiles. But the most important thing that you have to consider is the kind of look that you want with your kitchen. The selection of the colors and the sizes of the tiles is very important.

3. Installing wallpapers

Giving a home’s walls a new look is definitely a great way to do home improvement. There are numerous materials and a handful of designs that you can choose from. Wallpapers can easily be obtained from home improvement shops and stores. The different designs include hand prints which are imported, there are heavy textured wall papers, there are designs which are embossed.

There you go, some basic ideas on how to go about improving your home without the help of contractors. It takes a lot of practice, time and dedication to get your home improved, but if done properly, the process and the output will give great satisfaction.

How to do Home Improvement Projects the Cheap Way

Most of the time, home improvement projects are costly. In some cases, people resort to tapping their savings to be able to get some home improvements done. This can be very hurtful to ones pockets. In some cases, people resort to getting home improvement loans which can sometimes drag your budget off track and getting you more buried in debt than ever.

However, you should not be in desperation, there are different ways of doing home improvements without spending too much money. Money is a resource that’s very important and should be spent in more important things like the education of your children and emergency situations like sicknesses.

Here are some tips on how homeowners can do home improvement programs the cheap way:

1. Know what you want

Many people hire contractors to do home improvement jobs for them precisely because they do not know what they would want to do with their homes. Consulting these professionals can really hurt your pockets only to find out later that you don’t want what they have done to your house.

You can use different home improvement magazines, watch some television shows regarding home improvements or even look around in other people’s homes to be able to get some ideas regarding what you would want to do with your house. These ideas can be put on paper in drawings or in short descriptions.

2. Feasibility

There are many ways of improving your home. YOU should think about the feasibility of home improvement projects before undertaking them.

3. Rearranging

Changing the arrangements in your house can be considered as  home improvement projects. Putting your furniture in good and new positions can be a good way to change the overall ambience of the house.

4. Change the color scheme

Colors have big roles in terms of giving the home a good ambience. If you are getting bored with the overall ambience of your house, you can do some repainting jobs yourself. YOU can also involve the other members of the family and this will make the job easier and more fun.

5. Be green

Putting in plants into the overall scheme of home improvement is a good way to give the house a fresher look. Plants add warmth and freshness to every home. If you are clumsy when it comes to plants, you can use synthetic plants as well.

These are just some tips on how to achieve a better home with lesser budget. However, a cheaper way doesn’t equate to a less effective way. The more important thing is that you enjoy your house and feel comfortable with it.

Tips in Landscaping your Garden

Landscaping is usually a fairly big task, consuming much time and energy. But before you hire that professional, here are some tips that could save both time and money.

1. Spend some time thinking about exactly how you want the final design to be. You need to take account of the style and function of your landscape. Do you want to include an area for entertaining? A barbeque? Is there to be an area for children to play, a fishpond or a swimming pool? An idea of the plants you want to be there will also help. Focus on the area where you spend most of your time. That’s a good place to start.

2. Think twice before hiring a pro. An independent designer might cost you hundreds of dollars when you may be able to access free plans on the internet or at a nursery. But if you have an awkward block such as very steep ground, a pro might give you the expertise to save costly mistakes.

3. The style of your home must be taken into account. If you have a rural cottage, formal gardens surrounding it will look out of place. Think also about your lifestyle. Do you want to spend hours caring for many beds of annuals or pruning beds of roses? If so, go ahead and plant them, but if you’d rather spend your free time at the beach, then go for an easy-care garden and landscape.

Here are the various landscape styles you can choose for your own garden:

a. Formal. This style uses lots of straight lines and perfect geometrical shapes. Orderly arrangement of plants instead of random positioning is employed. Close arrangement and pruning is seen on many landscaped gardens with this style.

b. Informal. This kind of landscaping workds well with cosy cottages. Beds with curved edges instead of straight lines and random placement of plants suit this landscape style.

c. English Garden. This style emphasizes the harmony between the house’s architecture and the garden.

d. Formal/Informal Garden. This style often comes with a brick walkway that exudes formality. This walkway leads to the rear with a circle of plants. The arrangement of plants resembles the English garden style but it has no formal borders.

e. Oriental. It is often the kind of garden found in small backyards. It uses rocks, evergreens and water. A wide variety of plants create several interesting angles with this style.

f. Woodland. This landscaping suits a house that has a wooded backyard and sloping ground.

Butterfly Gardening

What is butterfly gardening?

Simply put butterfly gardening is the art of growing flowers and plants that will attract these colorful and dainty creatures to your garden. Delight your family and visitors with beautiful butterflies, but be sure to create a safe habitat for them. If you own cats rethink your plans, because it would be a shame to attract these lovely insects to their death.

The design your butterfly garden is a matter of personal preference. Typical points to consider are the size of your garden and the types of flowers and plants you want to grow. Pick a style of garden that appeals to you, but ensure it also contains the plants and flowers that appeal to the butterflies you wish to attract.

It is important to find out which plants and flowers will attract the species of butterflies. that live in your area. This information can be found at the local library.

To create the kind of environment that they find attractive, you will also need water of some kind. A birdbath will look attractive and keep the butterflies up off the ground, away from stray cats or mischievous puppies. A shallow dish on a post or hung in a tree will do just as well.

When planting your butterfly garden be careful how you coordinate the colors you choose for your flowerbeds. Although butterflies do not care about your choice of color, you don’t want your garden to be a hodgepodge of unrelated colors and textures. Butterflies are attracted to those flowers that have nectar rather than pollen, like honeysuckle, milkweed, summer lilac, Valerian, daisies, Purple Coneflower, Yellow Sage, day lilies and lavender.

Some people find it helpful to draw and color a layout of their butterfly gardening plan to see what the finished product would look like. Keep in mind that warm colors like red and orange are flashy and showy. These colors have a greater impact against a strong green background. Cool colors such as blue and purple are soothing and toned down and would work better with a white contrast to create the look of freshness and brightness.

Container Gardening Tips for Newbies

Container Gardening Tips for Newbies

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. You can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colourful pots of annuals, or fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you’ll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another. Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

Experiment with creative containers. You might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you’d rather make something really modern with timber or tiles.  If you decide to buy your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don’t want your plants to dry out, so paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.
Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside with water-based paints for good effect.  When purchasing pots, don’t forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting.
Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.

If you have steps leading up to your front door, an attractive pot plant on each one will delight your visitors. Indoors, pots of plants or flowers help to create a cosy and welcoming atmosphere.
Decide ahead of time where you want your pots to be positioned, then buy plants that suit the situation. There is no point buying sun lovers for a shady position, for they will not do well. Some plants also have really large roots, so they are best kept for the open garden.

If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.
Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots of the same type and color, but in different sizes also looks affective.

With a creative mind and some determination, you will soon have a container garden that will be the envy of friends and strangers alike.

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Vegetable Gardening Tips

Vegetable Gardening Tips

With the costs of living rising all the time, it may be possible to save money and increase your family’s health at the same time by growing vegetables in your backyard.

It’s a good idea to choose your favourite vegetables to grow and plan beds for early, middle of the season and late varieties.

Most vegetables require at least 6 hours of sunlight per day, some need 8. Some quick growers like lettuce and radish can be grown between the rows of plants that take longer to mature, like beet or corn, thus making full use of the area available.

Throughout dry periods, vegetable gardens need extra watering. Most vegetables benefit from an inch or more of water each week, especially when they are fruiting.

During the growing season watch for insect pests. If you discover a bug problem early it will be much easier, but be careful to not use pesticides once the vegetable are close to being picked unless it becomes an absolute necessity. Organic gardening is one healthy and environment-friendly option. Once you have reaped your crop, put the vegetable waste into your compost pile so that it can be recycled for next spring.

It is important to protect your vegetable garden from wild animals looking for a tasty treat. Make sure your garden is surrounded by a fence that will keep out dogs, rabbits, and other animals. The harm done by wandering animals during one season can equal the cost of a fence. A fence also can serve as a frame for peas, beans, tomatoes, and other crops that need support.

Protection is needed in order for your vegetable garden to yield a bountiful harvest. Hard work will pay dividends if necessary precautions have been made.

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