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Tips to Ensure Your Lawn is Always Green
As many people say that green lawns give a magnificent look to your homes, almost every one wants to have blossoming lawn, the whole year. Maintaining lawns is not an easy job, but requires a special ability to do the job perfectly. It feels great to sip a coffee, watch your children play and feel the accent of the green grass. So to make this daydream a reality, you need to follow some important tips so that you can also feel the lush of a green lawn.
Ways to make you green
Usually it is observed that in the winters, the grass of the lawn stops growing, which may give rise to bare spots. These spots are really problematic at the time of heavy frost, but you can still maintain your lawn green by over seeding it by rye seeds. The rye grass continues to stay green in winters as well. However, in summers this grass finishes completely and dries off, leading the normal grass seeds to grow up. This way, in winters as well as in summers, you can obtain a green lawn.
To keep your lawn healthy, you should make use of fertilizers in required amount and water the plants at regular intervals. If you do not water the plants appropriately, they will go dry and if you over water them, fungus will start emerging at the bottom of the plants. Talking of fertilizers, you should always use a high quality fertilizer in every three months. Regularly applying a required amount of fertilizer will help your lawn to keep flourishing all the time. You can also use weed and feed to give nutrition to the soil of your lawn and also to relieve of the unwanted weeds. Moreover while applying fertilizers all the given instructions should be read thoroughly and proper care should be provided to the lawns.
Using Broom Rake
When you are ready to start seeding, it is recommendable to rake before the seeding process with a double duty rake. This will allow seeds to have extra spacing and they can respire properly. Not only this, raking a lawn shall also help the seeds to grow properly.
Sprinkling Seeds
Before sprinkling the seeds you should always rake your lawn with a heavy duty broom rake. After completing the process of raking you can sprinkle the seeds, but the seeds that you re using should be of a high quality. This ensures a better growth of the seeds and a thick green grass. After sprinkling the seeds you should spray some water on the seeds that will help them to nurture.
Choosing seeds for the lawn
Usually, there are different types of grass that can be grown according to the season. You can select from a wide range like for cold seasons you can opt for seeds including bent grass, rye grass and blue grass to name a few and for summer seasons you can choose buffalo grass, centipede grass, Bahia grass, Zoysia grass and lot more. It all depends on the favorable weather conditions that will initiate the grass to grow faster. Generally, the shady areas make it difficult for the grass to grow up, especially in winters, so you can opt for rye grass to have lush in the lawn all over the winter as well.
Online Tips
There are a plenty of websites presented on the internet, which will endow you with the data on keeping up the lawns emerald green all the year. Moreover, you can also get a thorough acquaintance on the related matters like from where can I find seeds, the best seeds of the season that should be sown, choosing fertilizers and lot more. So feel free to surf the internet and make your lawns green for the whole year.
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More infomation at WikipediaThe Geranium
Under this title, we propose to treat of the plants usually known, in common parlance, as Geraniums, including both those horticulturally and botanically known as such, and Pelargoniums. Between these there are many minute and fanciful distinctions, which are only interesting to botanists, and need not concern the amateur. The true geraniums are herbaceous. For window gardening, their treatment must
be the same.
For the pelargoniums, we are chiefly indebted to the Cape of Good Hope; the geranium is found, in some of its varieties, in Asia, Europe, and America; two of the family, our “wild geraniums,” being familiar to us all as among the wild flowers of spring.
The scarlet, or horseshoe geranium, so called from the color of its flowers, and the dark marking of its leaves, is a very common and popular window plant. The rose, oak, and nutmeg geraniums are commonly grown for their fragrant leaves, and for their hardiness, as they can endure more hard usage than most plants.
The general fault in geranium culture is, crowding. The plants need light and air on all sides, withough the presence of large water features (http://www.garden-fountains.com/Detail.bok?no=123). Unless this is afforded they soon become one-sided, long-drawn, and straggling, with but few leaves, and these in a tuft at the end. The blossoms are small and few, and the whole plant presents a picture of vegetation under difficulties.
The fine varieties of pelargonium, called “Fancies” by florists, it is useless to attempt to grow to any perfection in the house. They need constant care; and the rules for growing them as specimens, laid down by English florists, are sufficiently confusing and contradictory to involve the amateur in a maze of difficulty.
Light, air, and cleanliness are the three primary rules for growing geraniums. Be careful of including garden fountains (http://www.garden-fountains.com/Detail.bok?no=2918) among geraniums or they may not get enough light or become too wet. The horseshoe and high-scented varieties are not troubled by insects. The pelargoniums (large-flowered geraniums), require constant attention to keep them free from the green fly, which increases upon them with wonderful rapidity.
If the weather is warm, and the plants at all affected by the fly, they should be smoked once in ten days, and frequently syringed. Surely the beauty of the flowers will compensate for any trouble. To prevent “drawing,” that is, the growing of the plants towards the light, all geraniums should be frequently turned, which will give a well-proportioned plant.
If the plants grow too tall, pinch out the top; all the axillary buds will then break into lateral branches. Again, if the side branches become too close, prune them out fearlessly. The geranium breaks easily, and you need never be afraid of killing the plant, even if you prune it down to a bare stump.
Pelargoniums and geraniums require a strong soil; that is, good sound loam, such as will grow melons. The top of a pasture will answer well. Let it be carted home and laid up in a long ridge, so as to expose as large a surface to the air as possible. Keep it clear of weeds, and let it be turned over every little while. To two parts of this loam, add one part of two-year-old cow dung, well turned over.
Old hot-bed dung will do nearly, but not quite as well. Then add about one part of river sand and bits of charcoal, mixed. Let all these ingredients be kept in separate heaps until wanted for potting, then mix them in the above proportions, and use them moderately dry. This compost shouldbe used to bloom and grow the plants in. For the winter season, use a small quantity of leaf mould instead of dung. Fresh soil is always to be preferred, for old soil is apt to become cloddy and sour.
Sarah Martin is a freelance marketing writer based out of San Diego, CA. She specializes in landscaping, home improvement, and interior decorating. For an amazing selection of large water features such as garden fountains, please visit http://www.garden-fountains.com.
More infomation at WikipediaMore on Geraniums
POTTING
All being ready, put the drainage in a suitable sized pot. Place first a suitable crock, or a large oyster shell over the hole; then lay a few large crocks upon that, and smaller upon those, so that the drainage may occupy about three fourths of an inch.
Place a thin layer of moss upon the drainage, and upon that a sprinkling of soot or charcoal dust; after that a thin layer of the rougher parts of the compost, and finally a layer of soil. Then turn the plant out of the old pot, pick out the old drainage, and loosen part of the old roots, spreading them over the new soil as much as possible.
Then see that the collar of the roots is just below the rim of the pot, and fill in around the ball with the fresh soil, pressing it down gently as it is put in. When the pot is full, give it a smart stroke or two upon the bench to settle the soil; level it neatly, leaving it about half an inch below the rim of the pot. This finishes the potting.
Then give a good watering of tepid water, perhaps with some kind of patio fountain (http://www.garden-fountains.com/Detail.bok?no=1326). For four or five weeks, while new roots are running into the fresh soil, they will not need a large supply of water; but when the roots reach the sides of the pots, and the leaves and shoots are advancing in growth, then water will be required in abundance. They should never be allowed to flag.
After a hot, sunny day, let the plants, in addition to the water at the roots, have a gentle syringing. Exercise discretion, however, on this point. The geranium is a spring and summer blooming plant. It is very difficult to obtain a flower from December to April; therefore, during the winter it should be kept cool, and moderately dry.
About the first of February re-pot the plants, give more heat, sun, and water, and your plants will bloom profusely in May. A wall water feature (http://www.garden-fountains.com/Detail.bok?no=3412) may be helpful in accomplishing this. The varieties grown only for their leaves may have more generous culture during the winter months.
VARIETIES
Ivy-leaved geranium (P. lateripes), is a pretty trailing species, with ivy-shaped leaves and purple flowers in the summer.
There is also a variety with white flowers. It is a pretty window plant, and always does well. It needs
plenty of light, sun, and generous culture.
The varieties of horseshoe geraniums (P. zonale hybrids), are all good window flowers, and will often bloom in winter.
The following are the best old varieties: Scarlet, Dazzle, Tom, Thumb, Defiance, Cerise, Cerise unique,
Pink, Bosa mundi, White, Boule de Neige, Lady Turner, Variegated Leaved, Flower of the Day, Golden Chain, Alma, and Bijou.
These latter varieties need a greenhouse to develop the rich colors of the foliage, yet they do well as bedding plants in the summer. P. graveolens is the common rose geranium.
Sarah Martin is a freelance marketing writer based out of San Diego, CA. She specializes in landscaping, home improvement, and gardening. For a patio fountain or wall water feature, visit http://www.garden-fountains.com for a wide selection.
More infomation at Wikipedia