You probably have neither the time nor inclination to maintain a lawn that looks like a putting green, but having said that, if you’ve got turf then you want it to look healthy. Your Turf is a plant just like any other perennial in your garden, and so it needs a bit of care and attention to be able to grow and thrive and show itself off to your neighbours!

Lawn Care means regular cutting throughout the season, and regular accurate application of a good Liquid Lawn Fertilizer. Commence cutting in late spring when you can see new growth. Set the cut between 1.5 – 2,5cm high. Mow once or twice a week depending on the rate of growth. As growth slows during autumn, cut less often and rarely in winter, and never when it’s frosty.

There are a number of Lawn Care products on the market for “Feeding” or “Weeding”. Most are in pellet form and if you don’t apply it evenly you can see varying colour and growth. You need to apply these pellet fertilizers just before it rains as there’s a risk that you’re grass may ‘burn’ as the pellets [spin]remaining|resting[/spin on the leaves scorch the foliage if the sun is strong.

To overcome this risk you can use a Quality Grass Fertilizer. You should begin feeding your lawn at 4 to 6 week intervals commencing in March through to October. Use Superspray type Lawn Sprayers to apply the Liquid Lawn Fertilizer to your lawn. Connected to your hose pipe, this sprayer dilutes the concentrated Liquid Lawn Fertilizer as you spray. It’s much easier to get a more even feed with less effort, it’s not as time consuming and there’s no risk of scorching either. It’s better if you feed either early morning or late evening to minimise evaporation.

When it comes to weeding you’ll find that regular mowing along with regular accurate application of a Quality Liquid Lawn Fertilizer will discourage or even get rid of most of the moss algae and weeds that start to take over when your lawn is undernourished.

When you look at your lawn the most obvious weeds are the bigger broad leaved ones like Dandelion, plantains and so on. Mowing & Feeding your turf will eventually get rid of these, but if you can’t wait; you can just dig these out with a long blade knife but you’re then left with a small bare patch that if not grassed will become home to another weed.

Here’s a good trick for you! Next time you’re in the Garden Centre, look out for the pot carrying trays which the plants are standing in. Garden Centres usually throw these trays away and so can be “free” for the asking. Look for one with the circles about 8cm across. Fill these with seed compost and plant grass seed in each circle. In no time you’ll have a small disc of turf ideal for making an instant repair after removing the offending weed. The turfs can last as long as you want them to; just keep mowing with scissors.

Pond Waterfall Kits Can Enhance Your Outdoor Environment

Water landscaping, including waterfalls and ponds, has become extremely popular. Everywhere you look, people are creating water gardens right in their backyard. More and more gardeners are deciding to add to their landscape with a calming outdoor water feature. Backyard waterfalls and ponds can offer the stress-relieving benefits of a weekend at the cottage combined with the convenience of staying right in your own back yard.

Early in the planning process, a lot of homeowners determine that a waterfall will be a vital part of their backyard pond. The trickle of falling water is so enjoyable, and it can be just the right thing to soothe your nerves following a stressful day. The issue is, how do you go about installing a waterfall in your own backyard?

With the help of pond waterfall kits it’s really quite easy to create water gardens and pond waterfalls in your own yard. The hardest part picking the variety of features that will make your water feature your own creation. You can find a variety of sizes, shapes and materials, and you can also customize the kit to your preference. Once it’s installed, you can include wind chimes, colored rocks, statuary, and even plants and fish.

You’ll want to decide if you want to have fish or plants in your pond, or whether the waterfall is all that you really want. If you are hoping to keep fish, your pond’s filtration system will need to be safe for them. The dimensions of your pond and location of the waterfall may also be dependent on whether it will be contain fish. No matter whatyou decide, there are pond waterfall kits suitable for any situation.

The placement of the waterfall in the yard is important, since it will need a slope to work properly. You can use an existing slope in your yard or create one artificially. This is something be attempted by an amateur, so if you decide that you need to build a slope to get your waterfall to work and you’re not totally sure in your landscaping skills, it’s best to get help from a professional landscaper.

After choosing the placement for your water feature, choose one of the many available pond waterfall kits that has the features you want. There are plenty of water gardens pond kits that you can choose fromto add to your magical creation. If you feel confident with installing it yourself, it can be a satisfying weekend project. If not, you can hire a landscaper to install it for you. After adding water, fish, plants, and ornamentation, it’s time to sit down in a comfortable chair, open up a favorite book, and enjoy the peace and beauty of your own backyard paradise.

In Organic gardens , just as in any garden, it’s truly heartbreaking to find your newly planted brassicas have been eaten in the night by slugs and its easy to reach for the slug pellets, but you could do more to diminish the slug population in your garden yourself. After all, slug pellets aren’t the best things for you to eat, and just when the slugs are most active (in wet weather) the pellets are least effective. Slug pellets can also kill some of the most beneficial insects and beetles. Birds and animals eating the dead slugs littered on the surface may also be harmed if you don’t remove them quickly.

The Garden Slug which is a burrower and surface feeder will eat roots and sever plants at the base of the stem while the Keel slug lives underground and attacks roots and potatoes. The huge long slugs that you see do very little damage to your vegetables as they live on rotting vegetation and fungi etc.

If you don’t want to use slug pellets but prefer to practice some kind of Organic Garden Snail & Slug Control then there’s a number of things you can do to diminish the slug populations in your patch.

Thorough cultivation of the soil in spring exposes the slugs and their eggs to traditional predators, but if you practice a no dig method of cultivation, then keep the weeds down, as they are also a food source for slugs.

Beer and milk traps are successful but you have to set the jar into the soil keeping the rim about 1.5cm above ground level to stop helpful beetles etc from crawling in. You must put the traps about one metre apart in a grid layout.

Slug collecting at night is highly helpful in severely cutting down the population in your garden. On a warm humid night you leave the house with a torch and a cane with a lengthy darning needle embedded in one end. Stab the slugs wherever you spot them and shove them into a tin of salt. Sounds disgusting, I know, but very much worth the effort. You may get the most slugs this way.

You can boost the number of beneficial insects that hunt on slugs by placing small wooden boards or roof slates between rows as shelter for predatory beetles and insects. Slugs will also be attracted, and these you can simply remove along with their eggs.

If all this looks a little bit too ‘hands on’ then I recommend you think about a commercial kind of Organic Garden Snail & Slug Control in the form of microscopic worms known as Nematoda.

A natural predator of the slug, these nematodes (or to give them their proper plural, nematoda) are naturally present in their millions in any well balanced garden soil. Nematoda infest the slug by laying their eggs inside its body, so killing the slug during the Nematodes’ reproductive cycle. The Nematoda, when applied to the growing area, swell the natural population of Nematoda in your soil, giving increased natural Organic Garden Snail & Slug Control.

You apply the Nematoda by watering can or by Superspray type garden feeder attached to a hosepipe for larger areas. Once you stop applications the numbers of Nematoda will fall to its original numbers.

You should enjoy up to 6 weeks long lasting control from one application, and Nematoda are harmless for children pets and wildlife. They’re harmless for use on food crops and aren’t adversely affected by rain.

Organic Garden Snail & Slug Control in the Organic gardening vegetable patch is all about keeping the slug count at an absolute minimum and so maximising your return on your vegetable yield.