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Home Maintenance Tips

Planting Flowers

 

Planting annual and perennial flowers is an easy task, but with a few tips, your flowers will get off to a fast, healthy start that will reward you with bigger and better blooms down the road. It's best to plant when it's not especially hot or sunny. An overcast day when rain is forecast is ideal -- your watering will get done for you. Plant most annuals and perennials after or before your season's last frost date. While spring is the most popular time to plant, perennials often do fine if planted in early fall. Northern gardeners also have the luxury of planting throughout much of the summer as long as the day isn't especially hot -- say, over 21 degrees celcius.

 

 

There are five steps to successful flower planting:

Step #1: Success with flowers starts with choosing plants wisely. Look for short, stocky plants with few flowers and healthy, disease-free foliage. Avoid plants that are spindly, discolored, or wilted.

Step #2: Knock the plant from its pot, keeping as much of the rootball as you can. If the plant's roots are heavily entwined, you may want to cut through them with a knife or pull them apart with your hand. This encourages them to spread out into the surrounding soil.

Step #3: Although the flowers are pretty, it's best to pinch them off. Right now, the plant needs to put its energy into developing a good root system, not flowering. Pinching encourages healthier plants with more flowers later on.

Step #4: Prepare the bed with a spade, working in at least one inch of organic matter. (Each year, add compost, sphagnum peat moss, rotted manure, and other organic matter to keep the soil in good condition or to improve it. Or top a bed each year with a two inch layer of compost.) The soil should be loosened to a depth of at least twelve inches for annuals; eighteen inches for perennials. Smooth the soil with a ground rake. When the bed is ready, plant the flowers at the same soil level they were in the container.

Step #5: Mulch the bed with one to three inches of aged wood chips (fresh chips stunt growth), bark, grass clippings, pine needles or any other organic mulch. Gravel or stone tends to create too hot and dry a climate for most annuals and perennials. Mulch suppresses weeds, conserves moisture, and prevents many soil-borne diseases.

 

 

Another Way to Smell the Flowers: The Outdoor Tile Walkway
The purpose of almost all garden paths is simply to get the gardener or admirer around the garden and to give them a pleasant way to take in the plants and flowers. What better way to enjoy a beautiful garden or landscape than to build your own outdoor tile walkway? While they are generally more expensive than other types of garden walkways, their benefits often outweigh their costs.

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Square Wood Lattice Panels – Simple Idea with Many Uses
Square wood lattice panels are so simple in design and yet decorative in appearance. Lattice panels can be used in many ways around the house, yard, or deck. They serve useful purposes from creating privacy to providing a trellis for vines, or can simply be used to enhance the appearance of a wall or outdoor structure. If you are looking for an inexpensive way to enclose a structure or add a decorative touch to the landscape, wood lattice panels are ideal.

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Practical and Attractive Dry Stream Landscaping
Dry stream landscaping can serve many purposes ranging from controlling water flow to simple decoration. It’s not hard to make an interesting and practical meandering design that looks like a stream but is made only out of rock. You can fill in empty areas where plants won’t grow or make sure heavy rainfall is dispersed to a point you select.

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Taking it Easy on Wicker Patio Swings
Wicker patio swings have the same appeal today they have had for decades. On a porch, deck or patio room, they invite people to stop a while and visit. When you rock gently in a wicker patio swing, the world’s cares can seem far away. Modern day wicker is made from several different materials designed to make your wicker swing durable.

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Landscape Edging for Walkways – Keeping the Grass Away
Sometimes it seems like grass will only grow where you don't want it to grow, like on sidewalks and walkways. Landscape edging for walkways serves more than one purpose including keeping the grass from invading landscaped areas and adding to the overall landscaping theme. There are many types of landscape edging styles to choose among.

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Ready For Clean! - How to Start Pressure Washing
Some cleaning jobs take a lot of force – water force. Pressure washing uses a pressure washer that sprays water with high powered force so you can clean even the toughest grime, grease or mold. Learning how to start pressure washing the right way can make the job easier and quicker.

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Clean Air Furnace for Trouble Free Operation
A clean air furnace is important to efficient operation. If a furnace is not properly maintained and checked at least once a year, it can increase utility bills and be unable to keep your house warm the way it’s meant to do. Keeping your furnace clean also keeps your air unit operating safely.

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Avoid Issues- Check Pilot Lights
Gas furnaces have pilot lights and they must be lit and working properly in order for the furnace to operate. When the pilot light goes out two things can happen: Gas can escape without burning and the furnace will blow cold when it should be blowing warm air.

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Keep Your Refrigerator Cool – Clean Coils Regularly
When you are cleaning house, you should also regularly clean refrigerator coils. They are something that’s often “out of sight and out of mind”, but clogged refrigerator coils can seriously impact the efficient operation of your refrigerator. It’s important to clean them at least once a year so they operate without interference from built-up dust and dirt.

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