Tuesday, December 28, 2010

An overview of Troy Bilt Go walking Behind Push Lawn Mowers




Troy Bilt is a business with nearly 60 many expertise and experience from the manufacturing of garden attention equipment and it has become the most trusted brands throughout lawn care business right now. Troy Bilt has 8 unique models of walk behind mowers that you can purchase, two of them are made are with push drive technology and the rest with self propelled serps.

Self propelled and push mowers are both stroll behind mowers. One requires an individual pushing and the other the first is driven by the continuous motor. Press drive lawn mowers are typically a bit cheaper way too.

TB110 TriAction
Built having a 190cc Briggs and Stratton force drive engine, this 21" steel mulching outdoor patio lawn mower is perfect for the households with small lawn areas. Backed using a ReadyStart Choke System plus a TriAction 3-in-1 cutting methods - side discharge, mulching, and also rear bag - the TB110 will give you a clean even cut in a mere one pass. For users' ease and comfort, Troy Bilt has included features maybe a 6-position dual lever patio height adjustment, a 3-position levels adjust handle, and a new 1. 86 bushel your lawn catcher bag. Competitively priced in comparison with other brands, it is a very dependable and easy to work with machine backed with a 2 year warranty.

TB130 TriAction
The TB130 walk lurking behind lawn mower consists also of any push drive system like the TB110. Even so this model is built with a 160cc Honda serp. There is an Automatic Return Choke starting system so this means no priming is require prior to use. Take pleasure in the same 21" wide cutting deck along with Troy Bilt unique TriAction reducing technology. Being a thrust drive mower, manueverability can be key essential feature which is why there is a strong 11" rear high wheels.

Leanard have been writing articles for nearly 2 years. Come visit his blogs more often for tips and advice that helps people with the interest for landscaping melbourne and great passion and knowledge for landscape design melbourne and all the different options & providers available in the market today. Find out for more info also here acmaintenance.com.au

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Vertical Gardening With Vegetables



VERTICAL GARDENING has its challenges and so to, does growing vegetables. If you have a basic understanding of the principles of vertical gardening and the few requirements that vegetables have to really thrive, you are more likely to have a positive experience with your vertical produce garden.

ROOT SPACE is KEY

Vertical gardens typically have more restricted root space than those in the ground so find a system that has plenty of root space for your vegetables and you'll be off to a great start. If you have ever grown vegetables in pots, you will know how important it is to keep the soil (potting media) temperatures and moisture levels as even as possible. Plants that become heat or water stressed quickly lose vigour; leafy vegetables often 'bolt' to seed in these conditions, resulting in very poor production.

TRIPLE YOUR EXISTING GROWING SPACE

So... a great solution for space restricted gardeners is to ditch the pots and use a soil based, vertical garden system. Growing a substantial produce garden using pots takes up a lot of floor space. Vertical garden systems actually CREATE gardening space, you can triple the square metreage of your area by going vertical and reap an abundant harvest!

NO POTS - NO TRAYS!

The soil volumes in the steel vertical systems are huge compared to pots and many other vertical gardening systems. In this vertical gardening system, plant roots can travel around in over half a cubic metre of soil media volume. This large volume of soil helps tremendously with maintaining even temperatures and moisture levels - saving you time and water when compared to other vertical gardening systems and other planters.

LOOKING GOOD

Your vegetables will thrive in this vertical garden system but importantly, they also look sensational. Your vertical garden will become a feature in any space - a living wall of green that beautifies and also feeds the whole family! Aesthetics are so important in restricted areas but everyone deserves fresh salad on hand!

FEEDING TIPS

Due to the large body of soil media in the open tiered, steel vertical gardening system, plants are able to draw from a large supply of nutrients. Regular feeding with traditional liquid fertilisers from a watering can and some slow release fertiliser a few times a year is all that is required.

Jordan have been writing articles for nearly 2 years. Come visit his blogs more often for tips and advice that helps people with the interest for landscaping melbourne and great passion and knowledge for landscape design melbourne and all the different options & providers available in the market today. Find out for more info also here acmaintenance.com.au

Monday, December 13, 2010

Vertical Gardening at Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show



Vertical Gardens were a highlight at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show (MIFGS), 2009. What a difference to visit MIFGS this year and see the very genuine interest from designers, as well as the visitors to the show, in vertical gardening. There is nothing new about 'walls' being built to house gardens at the show but this year, many of them were vertical gardens, dripping with living foliage. In the recent history of MIFGS as it's known, we have seen a great emphasis on low water plantings and water harvesting/saving products and this year was no exception, there were plenty of drought busting natives and a plethora of succulents as expected but what we also saw this year was a very real trend towards keeping our outdoor living places lush and fantastically green rather than minimalist and Spartan, with loads of emphasis on vertical gardening and green walls. Some of these green walls hugged around windows and doors, other vertical gardens were grown in combination with solar panel 'walls', others housed edible plants.

There was also a research project of the Melbourne University Burnley Campus which was a living, green roof, smothered with low growing plants proving that we space starved gardeners will contemplate growing things on just about any surface! Imagine how much cooler the shed, or house for that matter, would be on a 45 degree day if covered with sod or living plants! No doubt the research will also show improved water quality in storm run off as well as improved thermal properties.

Why garden vertically? So, is vertical gardening about gobbling up our greenhouse emissions, keeping our living spaces cooler or about creating our own green sanctuaries in the concrete jungle? Well, probably more than a touch of all those things. There is no doubt that plants can play a very real role in reducing our green house emissions and of course, take in pollutants from the air while realizing life-giving oxygen.

There is a also a real benefit in the thermal properties of soil media and plants; it's true that you can keep your home cooler by 'insulating' it with a soil-filled living wall or vertical garden, in fact studies show that an entire city's ambient temperature could be reduced by covering a percentage of its walls and roofs with greenery as the heat-sink of elements such as masonry, roofs and bitumen are essentially reduced and replaced with cooling foliage. Reducing the emissions caused by heating and cooling, as well as the associated costs is pretty appealing to commercial ventures, governments and home-owners alike.

Then there's that whole feel-good factor, green makes us feel better. People heal faster in hospitals with a garden aspect from their window, we know that productivity is increased in building where greenery is present and these is also a role for plants to play in the reduction of certain airborne chemicals from our atmosphere from the microbial activity in the soil media that the plants grow in. Plants are beautiful and make us feel good about being in a space and in these days of space-starved dwellings and high density living is it any wonder we want to garden vertically to maximize the ground we have? When you consider all these benefits and the fact that you can even eat the produce that comes from these vertical gardens or green walls its no wonder people are getting pretty excited about the vertical garden concept.

So which 'vertical' garden is for you? There are a couple of systems around so you need to assess your situation. Some vertical garden systems are simply a frame that supports lots of small pots, obviously these would dry out quickly and need regular attention. Some vertical gardens or green 'walls' are narrow and lightweight, working on a self-contained hydroponic type system making them like a 'set and forget' living picture of small clumping and ground covering plants to hang on the wall.

Then there's Garsy 'Mobiwall', a vertical garden system featured in the Oasis Horticulture site at MIFGS [http://www.melbflowershow.com.au/index.php?section=1] this year, dripping with flowers, fruits, herbs and salad greens. The Garsy vertical garden system is a modular, tiered frame that works on a more traditional method of actual gardening where a huge variety of ornamental and edible plants are able to be grown in a large mass of soil media and then changed around at the whim of the gardener. This soil media or potting mix in the Garsy vertical garden system can simply be planted into - just like planting into a pot of potting mixture without all the issues of plants drying out so rapidly and becoming root bound!

For safety and stability, once planted, these vertical Garsy garden units are not light or easily lifted by hand - a crane or forklift does the job. A lightweight soil can be selected for this type of vertical garden to reduce the weight and an additive such as 'hydrocell', while reducing weight, also helps retain moisture and keep plants in good health. Whatever you choose, have great fun gardening vertically! Gardening in spaces other than the actual ground is the way of the future!

Berna have been writing articles for nearly 2 years. Come visit his blogs more often for tips and advice that helps people with the interest for landscaping melbourne and great passion and knowledge for landscape design melbourne and all the different options & providers available in the market today. Find out for more info also here acmaintenance.com.au

Monday, December 6, 2010

How to Make Your Garden Plants More Drought Tolerant



The debate about climate change has been raging for quite a few years now. Not only about what may or may not be causing it but also as to whether it actually exists. I suppose as a gardener one of the things that you do tend to observe on a regular basis is the weather and in particular rainfall.

Now without getting too deeply into this debate the one thing that I've noticed over the last ten years where I live in Melbourne, Australia is that we are now getting less and less rain. In fact it's now at the stage where our water storage's are at an all time low.

So having said that there has never been more reason to plant drought tolerant plants in your garden. I've been growing them for over ten years but I also realize that not all gardeners are into drought tolerant plants. So whether you are or aren't here are some tips so that your plants can survive on less water.

1. Apply mulch around your plants. This would have to be the obvious one as all the gardening "gurus" are always going on about mulch. The important thing here though, is to use a mulch that is not porous. Porous mulches like bark chips and compost might be great if you live in an area where you might get 20 or 30mm of rain in one downpour but if you live in a area like myself where it is quite common to get just 5mm at a time you'll find that this small amount of rain will get absorbed by the mulch and it won't get anywhere near the soil. Now I realize that lots of gardeners like the idea of having organic matter rotting into the soil, as it conditions the soil and is very beneficial. I cannot argue with this but there is an alternative. I use a natural soil conditioner made from seaweed extract. There are lots on the market and this gives my plants everything they need. I used 20mm Tuscan stones that look great and the water just runs straight off them and into the soil below. So if you're using an organic mulch, next time you get a light rain go and check the soil below and I'll bet that it's dry. Your plants are getting robbed.

2. This next one is pretty common knowledge amongst gardeners as well. When watering, water more but less frequently. By this I mean water around where the roots are plus give the area around where you want them to grow a good water as well. This encourages the roots to grow to find more water. The amount that you water of course is dependent on the type of soil that you have. If you have a sandy or well draining soil it's best to give the plant a really good soaking. If the soil is heavy, clayey or not very well draining, it's better not to give them too much water as you have to remember that most plants don't like their roots to be too wet. The thing to remember with badly draining soils is to mound your garden beds so excess water drains away or to just plant plants that tolerate lots of water around the roots.

3. Don't fertilise your garden plants or if you have to fertilize, place it away from the plant so the roots search for the fertilizer. This is especially true if they're the drought tolerant variety. Most drought tolerant plants have evolved growing in very poor soils and have roots that are adapted to search for the nutrients the plant needs to survive. So it only makes common sense that the more the roots search, the more substantial the root system and as a result the more drought tolerant the plant.

4. Don't plant your plants too close together. I have a small garden and as a consequence I plant fairly close together as I like to cram as many plants in as possible. Because of this though the roots do have to compete a lot more for moisture under the ground and I have noticed that as some of the plants have grown into each other the rate of growth has decreased. So if you've got the space, have a think about how big your plants will eventually grow and plant accordingly.

5. I cultivated my soil before planting so as to break up the soil and make it more friable. This allows the roots to grow quicker and the plants to become established quicker.

6. Group plants with similar water needs together. I've got some plants that aren't very drought tolerant. If you've got a plant that needs a little bit of water to survive don't plant it amongst drought tolerant plants, for obvious reasons.

7. As I said before I use a seaweed extract, plant tonic. Not only does it condition the soil but it also gets absorbed into the plants cells and not only helps with drought tolerance but also frost tolerance. The other thing I use is a plant starter. This assists with root development which obviously increases drought tolerance as well.

Whether you have a drought tolerant garden or one that relies on some extra water, saving water can only be a good thing. These are just a few things that you can do to make your plants even more drought tolerant.

Kobie have been writing articles for nearly 2 years. Come visit his blogs more often for tips and advice that helps people with the interest for landscaping melbourne and great passion and knowledge for landscape design melbourne and all the different options & providers available in the market today. Find out for more info also here http://www.acmaintenance.com.au