Composting is Nature's Way of Recycling

Composting is a very important part of organic gardening and boidynamic gardening. It adds organic matter to the soil for earthworms and other living organisms to survive along with adding fertility to the soil.Having a soil with good structure and thriving with earthworms and other living organisms will greatly benefit your garden. A good healthy soil with organic matter not only adds the nutrients needed for plants to survive, it also defends against plant disease and unwanted insects.

Composting is an excellent way to add nutrients back into the soil to feed plant life and benefit the environment. It improves the soil structure, helps control moisture and can help protect plants from certain diseases.It also makes the soil more fertile and helps plants develop a healthier root system.

Composting is the decaying process by millions of organisms that feed off organic material such as household and yard waste by turning it into excellent organic fertilizer and organic amendments for your garden soil. It is the duplication of natures natural system that breaks down organic materials on the ground in the forest and fields. Plants grow, die off and fall to the ground and decay. This process is natures way of adding nutrition back into the soil to feed new plants and is an environmentally friendly way to reduce household trash and to turn it into a nutritious additive for your garden soil. More than half of your household waste can be composted.

There are different systems and methods that can be used to make compost. Composting systems vary in size You can build home made bins or buy a commercially made composting system depending on how much room you have and how much composting you plan on doing or you can trench compost. There is also the basic way of just making a pile and letting it decompose naturally. Whichever way you choose you will end up with the same ending product A nutrient rich humus material called compost. Full of nutrients that will benefit your garden.

Composting is an excellent way to recycle the organic waste from your household and yard.

http://www.organicheirloomgardening.com
A Environment Friendly And Healthy Way Of Gardening

How to Use Foliage As a Background in a Garden Like the Experts

The texture and shape of leaves are also important aspects to take into account when creating a picture.

The texture can be velvety, rough or smooth. A velvety texture gives the plant interest, and the tiny hairs that give the feeling of velvet can add a grayish white bloom to the leaves. Rough leaves may often be dull, whereas smooth leaves are frequently shiny and bright.

The shape is very important. Some plants have long, spiky leaves, while others can be almost round, with or without lobes or serrations, with lots of variations in between these two extremes. A mixture of shapes makes a border more interesting, especially when contrasting shapes are used.

On the other hand, using plants with leaves of the same shape can make the border more calming and tranquil, though there is inevitably an inherent danger of also making it more boring.

While an eye catching garden can be created entirely out of interesting foliage, it is more common to use a combination of foliage and flowers to create your composition. Most borders consist of a mixture of plants grown specifically for their foliage and other foliage plants that provide an especially effective backdrop for the flowers.

Green will act as the perfect background to most colors, but works particularly well with its complementary color, red. Silver works well with softer colors, although a bright red or magenta will stand out beautifully against it. Purple is a difficult color as a background, as it can become very leaden is used in excess, but it works well with contrasting orange and flame colors.

The curious, little grown annual, Medicago echinus, has a distinctive color pattern that makes it perfect for borders. The texture, shape and color of grasses well repay their use in the garden. The play of light on plants is very important in a well designed garden.

Pulmonarias are grown as flowering plants for spring, but if they are cut back after flowering, the new foliage will remain fresh throughout the summer. Prickly foliage may make a plant difficult to weed around, but it does provide a contrast to the surrounding leaves.

To learn more about the different types of plant nursery supplies for your garden whether indoor or outdoor, make sure to visit http://www.plantnurserysupplies.com Make sure to get your free catalog on gardening while you are there.

Save Some Coin! - A Guide to DIY Lawn Care

A great looking lawn and its care is possible for anyone, not just for professionals.

With an awareness of the issues that deal with proper lawn care
and health, you can easily take care of your lawn yourself and
save a lot of money that you would pay someone else to do the
same job.

For those who have the time necessary to work on their lawns,
ding it yourself lawn care is not difficult. The following tips
will help you to properly take care of your own lawn and keep it
healthy and beautiful.

DIY Lawn Tips

Regular mowing is one of the most important lawn maintenance
steps. As a natural source of nutrients (in the form of
slow-release nitrogen) for the grass, it is important to leave
the grass clippings on the lawn after mowing.

Another necessary step in DIY lawn care is watering. Each time
you water, you need to apply at least 2.5cm of water. You must
make sure to apply the water across the lawn evenly, and you can
make sure you are using the correct amount by placing a container
on the lawn while watering. When the water level in the
container reaches 2.5cm or slightly more, you can stop. Over
watering can be just as harmful as under watering. Make sure you
stop applying water before over watering occurs, so you can avoid
poor growing conditions and potential disease on your lawn.

Fertilizing is the next crucial step in DIY lawn care. Compost
will add organic matter to your lawn and is a great natural
fertilizer. Besides the organic matter, other major and
secondary nutrients supplement your lawn when composting.
Overall, the results of composting help to ensure a healthy,
growing lawn.

A commonly overlooked process of lawn care is aerating. When you
notice that the ground is hard and compacted, if thatch is
accumulating, or when you see that water is not soaking into the
lawn, it is important to aerate. By aerating, your lawn will
benefit from a smoother flow of water, air, fertilizer, and
important nutrients from the plant roots.

These DIY lawn care tips will get you started in taking care of
your own lawn. They will help you to save money and make sure
that you have control over the beauty and health of your own
lawn.

Watch out as Thomas Fryd talks about lawn care fertilizer burn. Join Tom as he shares his plant and landscape experience at http://www.Plant-Care.com where practical professional advice is always online.

Indoor Winter Display of Bulbs

You can have an attractive arrangement of flowers in your home throughout winter and spring if you plant bulbs in ornamental pots that have been filled with fibre.

The bulbs should be planted into the pots as soon as they are available, usually in August through to early September, in order for them to be successful. The purpose-made fibre should be made damp before it is placed into the bowl. Prior to this, a few pieces of charcoal should be placed into the bowl. The tips of the bulbs should be just visible when they are set into position in the fibre.

Place the bulbs in a cool position to ensure that the roots develop freely. The ideal position is outdoors beneath a 9 inch mound of peat, or covered with sacking and a piece of board to prevent rain getting in.

Should it not be possible to place the bulbs outdoors, they should be placed in a deep box or bath in the coolest possible place and covered as per the outdoors method. Around 4 to 8 weeks later, root development should be considerable and shoots of about 2 inches should be evident. If this is so, the covering must be removed and the bulbs left until the shoots have turned green. "Forcing" can then commence, placing them in a warm room. The shoots will very quickly come into bloom provided the fibre is kept moist.

To ensure that the display is over an extended period of time, choose varieties carefully.

Hyacinths - The "Roman White" variety of hyacinth is the very first of this group to flower. It has blooms that look like white bluebells. Next after this variety are the prepared hyacinths - they have been specially treated to induce flowering at Christmas time.

The regular large-flowered, untreated hyacinths do not normally flower until the spring.

Narcissus

It is easy to obtain blooms from the Narcissus known as "Paper-white" in December and a succession of blooms can be maintained by numerous other kinds usually found in bulb catalogues.

Other varieties of this group force easily and are followed by other single early tulips.

Holiday Treatment of Room Plants

It can be a problem caring for room plants when you are away on holidays unless you can arrange for someone to water them. It is possible to prevent damage to the plants if you are away for a week or so, provided you take the proper precautions.

The best method is to fill a large bath or similar receptacle with damp moss, then place the potted plants deeply into this, with the moss covering the soil by about 1 to 2 inches. A product known as "granulated peat" or damp sacking can be used instead of the moss. The last step in this procedure is to cover the moistening material with polythene tissue or plastic sheeting to prevent the evaporation of moisture. Ensure that the plants have been well watered before they are plunged.

Another alternative front yard landscaping method is to place the plants in a group with a pail of water nearby, placing a piece of wick between the water source and each plant. This will ensure a constant water supply to the soil around the plant while maintaining an artistic presentation of the plants in your garden.

If you have access to a garden, the pots can be placed into the soil up to their rims, ensuring that a shady spot is chosen.

In each of these methods, you must ensure that the soil in the pot is well soaked with water before plunging is done or the plants are connected with the siphon-wicks.

What better time than right now to explore and learn more on the subject of front yard landscaping plan. Visit us at .plant-care.com.

What is Worm Composting?

Finally, a solution has been uncovered to an environmental problem and a lack of nutrients in soil. The technique has been thoroughly tested in laboratories and has been shown to be extremely useful.

Worm compost is a viable answer to many modern issues surrounding gardening. Some may have goosebumps at the notion of so many worms in one area and the idea of worms can cause an everyday person to shiver.

Worms have been reputed to greatly benefit the soil and compost. It is not much of a surprise that their role is so important in the compost process. The process of worm compost may take some time to get used to. So open your mind and think of the upside of composting with worms.

Regardless of whether you choose to locate your worm compost indoors or outdoors, you can have it matters not. The good thing would be that you won't worry too much when using worm compost. They are simple to relocate and do not complain. They are also easy to maintain every day for relatively no charge. You only have to feed them to keep them in top condition.

Worms like damp areas, moisture is one of the easiest parts of composting. If you are able to add the moisture, which you should be able to, you only have to wait and see as the worms start to work in helping you have more fertilized soil.

Worms are available everywhere and are easy to find in some areas you need not look very hard at all. All you have to do is find a jar which may be harder to find than the worms themselves and watch closely as you make your way though the garden since they will be very content to be in an enclosed place rich with food.

P Abbey owns and operates http://www.wormcompostingdiy.com

worm composting

Planning Now Can Plant the Seeds For a Terrific Summer Garden

On these cold January mornings the warm pursuits of summer seem very far away. It may not be pool weather yet, but January is the perfect month to start gardening. With a little planning now and a small amount of monthly yard maintenance, this summer can yield an enjoyable array of flowers and vegetables.

If gardening sounds like too much work, take a moment to consider the benefits:

-Flower beds are esthetically pleasing and increase curb appeal.
-A small vegetable garden can produce food to be enjoyed by the whole family and reduce the grocery bill.
-Composting can help reduce the amount of trash going to land fills and provide a fun family project.
-Gardening is a relaxing way to get some fresh air and lower stress.

Start by considering which flowers, fruits and vegetable are family favorites, and then do some research into the level of difficulty and climate viability. There is an abundance of gardening resources available at the local library or the Internet. The website of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension has a wealth of information about gardening in Central Texas.

Prepare soil by composting, which provides an economical and environmentally friendly fertilizer. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 24 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. Composting is not complicated and with a couple of simple steps can easily be incorporated into a weekly routine. Choose a place in the yard away from the house to establish a compost pile. Also keep a bin under the kitchen sink or next to the garbage can for putting in scraps of food (do not include meat or diary products). In a contained area deposit yard trimmings and kitchen scraps, then stir it up about once a week.

In January and February plant broccoli, lettuce, carrots, onions and asparagus in an area near the house that will get sun and be protected from the wind. It is a good idea to add composted soil and continue to fertilize after seeds and bulbs have been planted. Be sure to cover plant beds if temperatures drop below freezing.

Sowing seeds for annual flowers and vegetable can also be done inside in January and February. In small pots with fertilized soil, plant seeds for marigolds, petunias, begonias and impatiens. There is a wide range of tomatoes and peppers to delight any palate. The seedlings should be ready to transplant after the plants have a third true leaf.

The Rose Bowl might be played in January, but February is the month for getting garden roses ready. Container grown roses can be planted this month in well fertilized soil. Prune existing and transplanted rose bushes by removing dead branches and trimming back approximately half of the top growth.

In March and April, green beans, cucumbers, corn, tomatoes and peppers can be planted directly into garden beds. Choose a couple of perennial flowers to be planted that flower at different times than the annuals. Be sure to continue fertilizing soil with compost. Containers can be planted in these spring months as well. Through the end of spring and into the summer, keep beds fertilized monthly and watered weekly.

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The Green Home - And Yard

So surely a garden is always green - it does not need to be made environmentally friendly? Well, yes and no; while we read much information about how to create green housing, less is written about the yards. Some yards are green, but some are not. Many of us still add to the pollution by spraying pesticides on our fruit trees and vegetable patches.

Apart from avoiding this harmful action, there are actually ways to be proactive and to improve the environment, just by using your own back yard. One easy way to be proactive is to start your own compost, and this will mean that you will be improving your own earth by keeping your own bio-degradable scraps. Eventually composting these scraps will produce microorganisms that will enrich your soil with nutrients. There are many informative articles on the Internet which will tell you how to start composting.

Another way to help the environment is by buying fruit trees. Trees emanate oxygen into the atmosphere, and so help to offset carbon emissions. Many buyers have been swayed into a house-sale by the fact that a garden already has fruit trees and an established vegetable patch on it.

Could having your own beehive be a plus when selling a home? It is certainly an environmental plus in today's world. Scientists are alarmed at the lack of bees to pollinate flowers and vegetables; if more home-owners kept a small hive, they would not only have their own honey, but the vegetables and flowers in the local neighborhood would also be pollinated and would therefore produce a harvest.

Bee-hives do not need to very big, and they can be positioned in a spot where they will not bother the neighbors. They should not alarm the public, but if you position the hive so that the flight path into it (of about ten feet) is all on your land, there will be no worries. After the first ten feet, your bees are up and buzzing just like everyone else's. Starter sets for beginner bee keepers and various instructions for setting up are all listed on the Internet.

Of course growing vegetables is another 'green garden' habit and can be indulged in at any time of the year. Winter vegetables are being planted now, and brussel sprouts, broccoli, squash, turnip; lettuce and green onion can be planted now in readiness for the winter. If you are wary of green fly or black fly forming, you can always be organic and spray the plants down with diluted washing up liquid

Other ideas to be green in your garden include switching from a gas lawn mower to an electric one and not watering your lawn, but just letting it fade from lush green into muted amber!

Many sub-divisions have been lobbied to allow (or re-instate) clothes lines back into the back yards where they can dry with that outdoorsy smell. If you are unsure of your rights, an umbrella clothes dryer is usually allowed as it is lower than the fences and therefore not easily seen. Line-drying clothes can save quite a bit on your energy bills, and on your 'scented freshener' bill!

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