Home

A beautiful wooden deck, properly maintained, can add greatly to the aesthetic and resale values of a home.

Just look around, decks are almost everywhere. Not just houses but both municipal and commercial facilities use wooden decks and walkways extensively. Because of this pressure washing decks can be a great profit center for your business or even the whole business.

The great news is that decks need maintenance. As beautiful as a wooden deck can be it can be a real eyesore if not properly maintained.

Why Decks Need Maintenance

When a wood deck absorbs water the natural resins and color can be washed out over time.

The combination of wood and water creates a food source for mildew, fungus and mold promoting their growth. Wood and water combined with dirt and even air pollutiom will also contribute to the proliferation of mildew, fungus and molds. One thing to remember is that a wet deck with a thick coating of mildrew is very slick and slippery. This creates one heck of a “slip and fall” liability problem. Keep this in mind when speaking to the decision makers of commercial and municipal facilities.

Learning Curve

If you’re not familiar with push reel mowers or if you haven’t used one since “back in the day”, there are a few points you should be aware of before using a push reel mower:

• Don’t expect to cut tall weeds or dandelions. You notice how your gas-powered mowers get a little “overwhelmed” when cutting weeds or very tall grass? Those issues are a bit worse with reel mowers because they become harder to push and they are limited in the height of what they can cut. When cutting with a power mower, you can tilt the mower in order to access hard-to-cut areas. That’s not so with a reel mower, you can only cut grass below the cutting height bar.
• Don’t cut wet grass. The wheels need traction in order to move the blades and if the wheels are slipping, especially if you’re cutting taller grass or weeds, the mowing becomes that much more difficult.

So, in order to get the best use from your push reel mower, make sure you do the following:

• Keep your grass cut often enough so that it’s manageable and easier to cut using the reel mower.

Push Reel Mowers are making a “comeback” of sorts, though, in reality they’ve never really left; they’ve just gotten better. There are a number of reasons why purchasing a reel mower would make sense such as: better for the environment; more exercise; lighter; and, better for the grass, to name a few. However, a push reel mower is not for everyone nor for every lawn situation.

There is a growing recognition, that the expanding suburban landscape is having a negative environmental impact. Suburban development often includes vast energy dependant monocultures (perfect, grass lawns). They consume a significant amount of natural resources, (water to keep them green and gasoline to keep them trimmed), and they reduce the amount of habitat available for native wildlife. Over use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides can leach into water supplies and be harmful to children and pets. Trends toward ecological landscaping and organic lawn care are lessening the detrimental effects of these designs. Many landscape designers are recommending native plant species, and even golf course managers are moving toward organic methods.

In practical terms our goal should be to move away from designs that depend on an extensive use of energy, without asking people to give up their lawns entirely. There are a number of options:

* Buffer zones and open space requirements in subdivisions allow for wildlife corridors and bird habitats.

* Leaving a portion of each lot in a natural state will invite birds and beneficial insects into the yard, while reducing the amount of grass to water and mow.

It’s not difficult to create a garden that will attract hummingbirds, but if you’d like to build a habitat in which they will happily nest and live throughout the northern summer, you need to provide them with more than a sugar-water feeder and a plant or two. An active hummingbird garden doesn’t need to be large, but it will have all of the following key ingredients to attract and keep the attention of “nature’s fairies”.

Choose plants that attract Hummingbirds Flowers are, of course, the key ingredient in attracting hummingbirds to your garden. The tiny birds feed on nectar that is produced by flowers, and they seem particularly attracted to plants with trumpet or tubular bright red and orange flowers. Favorites include rhododendrons, azaleas and rose of Sharon bushes. For northern gardens that attract the ruby-throated hummingbird, choose plants that flower at different times during the blooming season to provide food for them throughout the spring, summer and fall.

Spring Bloomers - Azaleas, rhododendrons and rose of Sharon bushes make a great ‘background’ for hummingbird gardens. They bloom early in the spring and continue blooming through the early summer. Pink and bright red varieties are favored, but hummingbirds love all Rose of Sharon varieties.

When spring comes and the ground is thawed, it is time to start planting your rose garden. Roses have been a cherished aphrodisiac since biblical times. They have been around for over 3000 years, yet they still hold a particular mystery and fascination, not to mention the fact that they just look and smell good!

One of the most important rules of growing roses is to plant the rose bush in an area that receives around 4 to 6 hours of sunlight every day.

It is preferable not to plant too many trees or other plants around the rose bush because most of these are likely to either mix with the rose or stifle it’s growth. If you are replacing an old rose bush, approximately 1 1/2 cubic feet of old soil should be removed, and fresh soil added to replace it. When positioning your rose in the garden or landscape, consider the growth habit of the rose.

For example, place climbers and ramblers along fences, trellises, or next to arches or pergolas. This location offers them free range of growth, and optimal potential for the showiest blooms.

For best health, it is important to keep your environment as chemical free as possible. With better weather coming up, consider this:

Many people do not realize that using pesticides and weed killers on lawns can cause health problems for your children and animals, as they often are on the lawn daily in the summer.

Some pesticide studies have raised concerns about the connection between pesticide exposure and childhood brain cancer and leukemia. Also impaired development of the reproductive system and neurological and developmental problems.

Both children and pet’s body composition is smaller for the amount of chemical they are exposed to, so the health threat is bigger for them. Of course, it is not good for you as an adult, either.

For a safe alternative to weed killers, try vinegar. Yes, the vinegar you have sitting in your kitchen cupboard.

You can use straight household vinegar and put it in a spray bottle, and spray that on the weeds you find in your yard and garden. You could also add a little dish soap to the vinegar, which will help the mixture to stick to the weeds.

Building your own water works system is quite simple and can be fun, if you know how to follow instructions. This particular type of system is best suited for water loving plants such as lettuce.

Only a few items are required to get you up and running in no time. The things you will need to build a water works hydroponics system are listed below.

Required items
1. External pump
2. Air line/tubing
3. Air stones
4. Water proof bin, bucket, fish tank to use as a reservoir
5. StyroFoam
6. Mesh Pots
7. Growing medium - Rockwool, Grow rocks, et
8. Hydroponics nutrients - (Grow formula, Bloom formula, Supplements, Ph)

Required tools
1. Black spray paint, paint - * Only required if reservoir is transparent
2. Sharp object - Knife, box cutter, scissors (This is not a task for minors - Get help from an adult)

Getting started
1. Find a container to use as a reservoir such as a fish tank or a bin/bucket of some sort. The reservoir should be painted black if it is not light proof. Allowing light to enter the reservoir will promote the growth of algae. It is a good idea to use a reservoir that is the same dimensions (length x width) from top to bottom (Example: Top: 36″x20″ Bottom: 36″x20″).

What is xeriscaping? You may have heard of xeriscaping as a way of landscaping in the Southwestern United States. You may picture xeriscaping as a lot of gray gravel and cactus in a hot desert yard. People call that “zero-scaping,” and that is not what xeriscaping is. Xeriscaping is a method of gardening and landscaping that will reduce your water use and maintenance requirements by as much as 60 percent. Xeriscaping can be done anywhere by any gardener, and in any yard, with the result being a beautiful, even lush, landscape.

The word “xeriscape” was coined in the early 1980’s by the Denver Water Board when creating their water conservation program. Denver Water trademarked the word in 1983. It comes from combining xeros (Greek for “dry”) with landscaping. Thus, it is a water-conservative approach to landscaping. Plants whose growing requirements are appropriate to the local climate are emphasized, and care is taken to avoid wasting water to evaporation and run-off.

There are seven established xeriscaping principles. Applying these principles will help you achieve a beautiful landscape that will save you water and work in the long run.

Principle One - Planning and Designing

Purchased corn, whether on the cob or in a can can’t compare for taste! Sweet corn is easy to grow in the flower and fruit gardening guides home garden with just a little know how and a few corn facts.

Corn needs warm soil temperatures (50° - 65° Fahrenheit) to germinate. Warm temperatures cause sugars in corn to turn into starches and results in loss of sweetness and creamy texture. Sugars also begin converting to starches immediately after harvest.

Sweet corn is divided into three types according to its sweetness: (SU) normal sugary or standard sweet corn, (SE) sugary enhanced, and (Sh2) super sweet.

Standard Sweet Corn (SU)

Normal sugary is the traditional variety of sweet corn. Less sweet than the other types, it will tolerate low temperatures at planting time.

Sugary Enhanced (SE)

(SE) corn is the preferred choice of many of today’s flower and fruit gardening guides home gardeners. Sugary enhanced is sweeter than standard corn and retains sweetness longer than either of the other types. While not as sweet as super sweet, it has a creamier texture and tolerates lower soil temperatures.

Super Sweet