My daughter has just moved into a house that was unoccupied for 12 months. The lawn was really a meadow with what looked like several years of neglect. I used my petrol rotary mower ‘Champion 375′ on the highest cutting setting. The varied height ability was very useful. After raking some dead straw from the grass it was cut again at a lower setting.

When I have left it for a week to settle then it will be cut on progressively lower settings. Fortunately I can also use a mower with a heavy cylinder to level out some of the little bumps. Shortly a weed and feed application either granules or liquid will probably be applied. I am not rushing this as I want to get the lawn into better shape without chemicals.

The problems then start encouraging my daughter to take over the maintenance. How will my daughter cut her new lawn without the tools? Well I recommend a lawn mower from the cheap end of the range. Amazon sell a Flymo Lite Electric Hover Lawnmower at £56.99. The lawn isn’t too large and a short extension flex will cope.

This hover mower is made from lightweight polypropylene and features plastic blades with a 28cm cutting width. This 1000w electric lawnmower has a hover action that makes it easy to manoeuvre when cutting and also has 2 cutting heights. There is a fold down handle for easy storage and is quite light.

A goat may be a cheaper alternative way to keep the lawn mowed but somehow I don’t think that would go down too well.

Commercial compost is a range of products sold in plastic wrapping in garden centres, DIY shops and sundry retailers. This is not to be confused with your own garden compost made from decomposed plant matter.
The contents of these types of commercial compost vary and can affect the growing result considerably. All have a base which has no or negligible nutritional value plus additives that make it useful for a specific purpose.

Typical Compost Constituents – Base

Peat base of small fibers of bog peat is excellent for many purposes but now seen as none ecofriendly due to the over extraction of peat and lack of replenishment of the resource which isn’t sustainable.
Coir as a peat substitute for the base. Coir is made from the hairs & fibers of coconuts and such compost are widely available. There are special organic compost products approved by the vegan society .
Wood pulp based composts and partially composted bark are other bases the industry is trying to develop into retail products but mixes and formulas keep changing
Steralised loam based composts, generically called John Innes after the guy who first formulated them, tend to be heavier.
Composted green waste is becoming popular if you can find a reliable supplier who uses undiseased raw materials

Typical Commercial Compost Constituents – Additives

Most composts are mixes of some of the base ingredients and possibly sand or vermiculite to open up the compost and improve drainage
Fertilisers are added that are appropriate to the end use. seed compost needs less fertiliser than a container planting compost where a plant has to live for at least a season
A wetting agent is often added as peat is very difficult to get wet and you need an even moisture in a pot or seed tray.
Water retaining gels may be added for hanging basket compost.

Typical Compost for Special Uses

Rooting and cutting compost is usually just a mix of sand loam and peat
Seed compost has crushed limestone and phosphates added to help drainage an promote root growth
John Innes No1, 2 & 3 has varying quantities of fertilisers; hoof and horn, superphosphate and potassium sulphate . No 1 Potting Compost is for pricking out young plants, No 2 Potting Compost is for potting on and No 3 Potting Compost is for established plants and shrubs.
Ericacious compost is for acid loving plants like Rhododendrons and lime hating plants like Mahonia and has flowers of sulphur added to the peat based mix.
Cactus compost, Bonsia compost, Orchid compost, Citrus plant compost even African Violet compost are all available from a range of suppliers. One brand with a range available in many outlets is Westland http://www.gardenhealth.com/latest-news.php
Bulb compost used to be called bulb fibre and has no fertiliser . It is used for bulbs like Hyacinths that have already got a store of energy to produce a flower.

Tips On Compost

As it is an organic product the quality can be variable but there will be a brand you like so try some out – currently I am using Arthur Bowers and B&Q own label.
Mix in a bit of grit, sand, vermiculite or water preserving gel depending on how you plan to use the compost
Try keep it uniformly moist.
Add a drop of liquid soap to the water to restrict the growth of moss on seed compost used for slow germinating seeds.
Grow bags contain compost and are a cheaper way of buying compost than small bags.
Compost deteriorates with age so buy fresh compost from a commercial supplier with a fast turnover.

Link to Garden Compost from Amazon

Some plants suffer if they can’t take up the right mix of chemicals from your soil. Some soils do not have enough of the right chemicals to sustain certain plants. These situations call for the judicious use of plant health chemicals that either free up the plants ability to draw sustenance from the soil or add the chemical to the soil to improve the plants health.

Many useful plant heath additives are available as ‘mix them your self’chemicals like those sold under the brand Chempak.

Key Plant Health Chemicals

• Magnesium is a trace element that helps the uptake of nutrients. Useful for improving the colour and vigour of Chrysanthemums and greening up yellow leaves. Try it on your tomatoes to correct magnesium deficiency. Epsom salts are a useful way of improving the magnesium content to soil.
• Sulphur has a couple of garden uses including reducing the soils ph for the health of ericaceous plants. It can also stop some bacterial rots.
• Sequestered Iron or Chelated Iron is used as a tonic for ericaceous plants.
• Calcium is a basic building block and helps prevent many disorders. Lime is often used to add calcium to the veg garden or to prevent other soils becoming sour and too acidic.

Soil Health Chemicals

• The health of plants and the health of soil go hand in hand. It is very hard to have one without the other.
• Chemical assitance for soil health comes in improving the constituents of the soil by fertilisers or correcting deficiencies (as above) and by improving the structure of the soil (below).
• Clay breaker is designed to stop the very fine particles of soil sticking together in wet weather and baking rock hard in the sun. The addition of grit and humus will do a similar job.
• Humus in the form of spent mushroom compost, peat or manure are basic garden chemical additions to improve soil condition.
• Potting base is not added to your soil but to peat to make your own seed or potting compost. It usually contains a wetting agent, chalk and trace elements and the resulting mixture is fine for growing your own seedlings or cuttings.
• Soil improvers like Forti8 or seaweed extract claim to add minerals and trace elements to your soil. They do not do anything for the soil consistency or structure.

Here’s to Good Health

Manufacturers have increased the variety of genus specific fertilisers.
At one time variations on the proportion of NPK was enough with Fish, blood, hoof, horn and bone and Growmore amongst the staples. Rose food, ericaceous plant fertiliser and seaweed extracts were then made available with the allegedly all too necessary ‘trace elements’. Good husbandry will replace most Plant specific fertilisers if you follow the basics.

Orchid feed and cactus food were amongst the next batch of prepacked products. Then Citrus plant special fertiliser became a ‘necessity for the millions who grow Oranges and Lemons (although special packs for winter and summer fertiliser seems another step too far.’

Now the choice is wider still with Fuchsia fertiliser, Clematis food, Onion fertliser, Potato fertiliser all prepacked for the ‘gullible gardener.’

Bonsai food and Palm fertiliser are available from Chempak which is now owned by Thompson & Morgan as are Orchid growth and Orchid bloom food. Baby-bio Orchid feed is identical to baby-bio normal except it is watered down by 50% and packaged in a different colour.

Peonies and a special Peony fertilizer from Thompson & Morgan.

The only specialty feeds I use are African Violet and Tomato fertiliser

Can you use last years garden chemicals for this season? Do your herbicides, composts, fungicides and pesticides have a shelf life and if so for how long? Let’s look at ready made garden chemicals, mix them yourself chemicals and dry goods.

Ready Mixed Garden Chemicals

These chemicals should not loose their potency from one year to the next.
Do not store them in conditions of extreme heat or cold.
The factory based mixing should have been done so there is no chemical reaction between the constituent parts of the mixture.

Mix them Yourself Garden Chemicals

Concentrates that that you have mixed yourself can go off within a day or so, certainly the shelf life is less than a week.
The concentrate will last but the act of mixing with water can cause problems.
Impurities in the water and even air bubbles can start a chemical reaction that renders the solution unviable or not fit for purpose.

Dry Garden Chemicals

As long as powders and granules are kept dry, in suitable packaging and at a reasonable temperature they will have a good shelf life unless indicated strongly on the packaging.
Growmore and granular fertilisers should have a good shelf life.
Mix it your self fertilisers like Chempak have a good shelf life but make sure they are properly dissolved when mixing them.
Composts and soil mixtures have a shelf life of around six months. Fresher the better.
Where a product can get damp or starts damp it will deteriorate.

Other Issues on Garden Chemical Shelf Life

Always read the instructions and dilute to the correct strength.
RHS advice on garden chemicals
Pesticide safety education programme
Beware old chemicals should not be kept after they have been declared unsafe by EEC regulation.
Treat homemade organic chemical mixes with the same care as bought chemicals.
Keep equipment clean and wash out when you are finished.
Pesticides and other chemicals don’t spoil suddenly. They deteriorate over several years and even at 70 to 80 percent they may still be effective.

‘The Garden tools of the proletariat will rise and overthrow the bourgeoisie with their flymo’s and strimmers’ according to the photographer of ‘Garden Tools by tim ellis’ under CC BY-NC 2.0. So not quite Russian gardening tools but the hammer and sickle have there uses in revolutions and gardens.

Uses of a Hammer

• I have a double skinned boundary wall for alpine and rock plants. A rouge buddleia seedling with big roots pushed part of the wall down and my wife needed a hammer to clean up the stone to rebuild the wall.
• I do the easy planting and used a hammer to get a tree post and climber pole deep enough for the intended support.
• Meanwhile my wife was laying rolls of logs between the concrete path and the herbaceous bed. To partially bury the log roll she used the hammer to crush down the stray rubble foundations.
• I use drink to get hammered but that is another story.

Uses for a Sickle

• Apart from cutting off my head it is hard to see what use the sickle will be, although the resulting blood can feed the plants.
• Long grass, old stalks and stems can be tidied up in one fell swoop or sweep of a sharp tool like the one pictured.
• I do have a Japanese weeding sickle that I was given as a present and it does a good weed and rooting out job.
• I have seen some other names for a sickle including a scythette, a grass hook and a hand scythe. A weed slasher is a tool of a different ilk.

To ‘Build a dry wall’ you may need yon hammer

When I say hang up your garden tools I do not mean you should stop gardening, quite the opposite. You will get more gardening completed if you can find the right tool, in the right place, at the right time. Hence my quick selection of ways to hang up your garden tools from a range of photographer-gardeners.

The DIY model has much to commend it. You can tailor to fit your shed, garage or work space. You can vary height and inter tool spacing and use your own design flair.
I like the string through the handle method rather than the nail in the wall style.

Well stored tools should not be damaged as easily as those thrown into a box or drawer at random. It is easier to see which need oiling, cleaning, sharpening or repairing.
Unfortunately it looks like someone has hung up their garden tools and left them to the spiders and their webs.

Old tools need venerating and some have become real collectors pieces. Some of these older spades have had new shafts fitted and I know of some really old tools that have had several new handles and 3 new blades!

Credits
Tools Of The Trade by Barefoot In Florida CC BY 2.0
Garden tools by cathyducky CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Gardening Tools, Chandos Lake, 2009-07-19 by Open Texture CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
tool rack by robotson CC BY-NC 2.0

I have just returned from my local nursery with a stock of new canes. I must now weed out the poor and damaged canes I have left over from previous seasons.

In Praise of Canes

• 2012 is the year I resolve to support my plants better than ever before.
• Why should Sweetpeas be forced to spend energy on climbing when I can help them with a good cane arrangement.
• Why should runner beans get top heavy and risk being blown sideways.
• Well now my plants should be able to perform with the aid on my new cane, string and net supports.

Too my surprise Amazon now supply or arrange to supply canes in volume via the web – it makes transporting the 7-8 foot ones in my car a thing of the past.

There is one further job I must do. I have a clump of bamboo that would benefit from some aggressive thinning out and I hope to get some 3-4 foot canes from this exercise.
The Hazel has already provided this years crop of stems to use as further supports.

I like the idea of mixing bamboo canes with more twiggy stems as shown in the photograph ‘Bean canes’ by jackhynes CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I also like the idea of putting two canes across the twin row of canes for extra support and rigidity

100307 Canes by scaglifr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Still the best canes are my Raspberry canes but I have a sweet tooth.

This year I have found 3 trowels when emptying and spreading my compost heap. I am not claiming that a tool belt or pocketed apron would have prevented me loosing them in the first place but you never know.
Apart for comments about the small size of this apron it gets good reviews from Amazon buyers. They are particularly happy with the price (£8.25) and the functionality.

I have no discernible system and carry my secateurs, string and bits and pieces in numerous pockets of an old gardening jacket. When I get warm the jacket comes off. As I say no system.

There is a wider range of Aprons available from Amazon. There are some Laura Ashley ones for ladies and some more robust ones that the picture above. Have a look at the range.

If I was investing in an apron I would want it to:

carry tools but also a mobile phone and note book and pencil in a dry zippered pocket .
protect me from sharp prickles and cutting leaves and stabs by my own tools.
keep my gardening clothes protected from the worst of the dirt.
keep out of the way of my activity and actions.

Tool Belts and Holsters

I am not sure about tool belts that hang in front of me when I am gardening but there is a range of products available in garden centres, Homebase and B&Q
I like the look of the Felco holster and will put one on my wish list. amazon

Looks like I will have to belt up!

What is Calcified Seaweed

• Calcified seaweed is dried seaweed and lime or other calcium based salts
• Calcified seaweed is an organic substance without any nasty chemicals. There is concern that it is no longer approved by the Soil Association for use in organic growing, due to concerns that the harvesting of this material is not sustainable and has adverse effects on the marine environment.
• Seaweed is rich in minerals, encourages beneficial soil bacteria, helps improve heavy soil structure and neutralises acid soils.

Uses of Calcified Seaweed

• As a soil improver and clay breaker it breaks up the heaviest clay without damaging soil pH.
• As a compost accelerator it speeds up the breakdown of organic garden waste.
• Seaweed adds trace elements and minerals to the soil.
• Calcified seaweed neutralises acid soil
• Adding seaweed is beneficial to bacteria and is used in lawn treatment.

Maxicrop Organic Cal-Sea-Feed Calcified Seaweed 6kg tub from Amazon