Tips on Watering Your Garden Effectively

If you have read my previous articles on soil, compost, plant nutrients and mulching, then you will realise that you are now beginning to understand how to garden successfully. I would now like to talk about watering your garden effectively. A lot of people think they are watering their garden properly, when actually they aren't and their plants are stressed. Watering is not difficult, but there are a few issues to be aware of. Often after we have watered, we notice the water is running down the drive and that it has not soaked into the soil. This also happens with pot plants, that we think we have watered them properly when in reality the watering is running freely out of the bottom of the pot and the root ball is still dry. We also need to be aware that after it has rained, that the water may only have penetrated the top few centimetres of the topsoil and it is still bone dry underneath.

Watering is one of the most important jobs you can do in the garden and it can be very relaxing. Just zoning out, not thinking too much and interacting with nature while you are hand watering can be fantastic. But it isn't as easy as you think. Most people over water their gardens and often plants can survive with less water. In Melbourne (Australia), everyone thought camellias couldn't withstand dry soil, but with our 11 year drought they proved us gardeners wrong and showed they are very tough plants. Plants can become addicted to water, but you can wean them off it, by slowly reducing the amount you give them. For example if you water every day, trying watering every second day, then every third day, then once a week, then once every two weeks. Of course it does depend on the species of plants you have. Azaleas in hot climates will suffer if they are only watered once every two weeks.

Plant Choice

When choosing plants it is important to understand their requirements and these are some questions you should ask yourself:

Do they need sun or shade?
Are they a drought tolerant or swamp plant?
Do they like sandy or clay soil?
Do they come from a hot climate (desert) or a cold climate (mountains)?
Are they a surface rooted plant?
Will they rot if they receive too much water?
Will they die if they receive too little water?
There is an old gardening adage that is it is better to water deeply for 20 minutes three times a week, than sprinkle water over the garden every day for a few minutes. Longer, deeper watering forces the roots to go down after it. Thus the added benefit of this is that soil is cooler in hot weather, giving plants the ability to withstand extremely high summer temperatures. Plants such as azaleas and silver birches are more likely to suffer because they are naturally surfaced rooted. The best way to help these plants is to mulch around the drip line (edge of the canopy).

That is why it is so important to continually improve your soil structure. If you constantly incorporate animal manure or compost you will find that your soils water holding capacity increases dramatically. For established garden beds, the best way to incorporate the organic matter is to put it on top of the soil and let the worms work it down for you, as digging deeply could damage the roots. With new garden beds, the best method is to dig it in to a spades depth.

Watering Systems

I am not a big fan of watering systems, mainly because they don't water evenly and effectively. I understand people who have a big garden haven't got the time to hand water the whole garden, but there are many pitfalls with them. They miss plants, break, get blocked and once repaired are never as efficient as when they were new.

Many people, think that just because they have installed the latest and greatest watering system, that they never have to bother watering again. Well, that is not true. Watering systems need to be checked at least twice a year that they are working properly and you need to check the water is going where you want it too. Pipes have a habit of moving and breaking. Another problem with sprinkler systems is that they just don't have the pressure to pump out enough water for it to soak in more than a few centimetres. If you dig down, you find the soil is bone dry. Sprinklers also miss parts of the garden creating dry spots. It is a good idea to run the watering system and observe what is happening, to see where the water is actually going. Every spring, you need to take the end stopper out of the pipe and run the system to try and flush out dirt, spiders and any other blockages.

In countries where water is precious, drippers are often the preferred watering system. The idea behind drippers is they deliver the water straight to the roots and none is wasted by evaporation. This is true, but often the plants roots congregated around the drippers hole. This often makes plants especially trees unstable in windy conditions because all the roots are in one place (or one side of the trunk). One way to overcome this uneven distrubition of plants roots is to make sure that the drippers holes are regularly and evenly placed. If you have dripper heads on lines, then you can move them around the base of the plant and this prevents a build up of roots in one place. Watering systems are there to supplement the natural rain fall and not to be relied upon to always provide moisture to your garden.

Natural Rainfall

There is nothing that excites a gardener more (especially if you are living with drought) than rain. Everything perks up again and the world seem fresh and clean. We gardeners all tend to think that the rain has given the ground a good soaking and we won't have to water for a while. Well I hate to disappoint you, but often the rain hasn't actually penetrated into the soil and it is still dry. After rain, I recommend you go out into the garden and scratch around under the mulch and plants and observe how damp your soil is. You may get a nasty surprise, that it isn't as wet as you hoped. Also be aware of dry places such as under house eaves, under shrubs and large trees. They may need to be watered.

Too Little or Too Much Water

Insufficient water or too much water can cause plants to become stressed and attractive to insects such as aphids, scale, mealy bug, thrip, mites and white fly. Controlling these pests is going to hit your hip pocket because you may need to buy chemical sprays. If however, you observe that the soil is too dry and ameliorate the problem by increasing the amount of water, then you won't need to buy expensive chemicals. Another problem of insufficient water is that fruit trees often drop their flowers or their maturing fruit. This is a survivable mechanism and it is important at flowering and fruit set to make sure the plant is getting enough moisture. Too much water can also be a problem as it takes up the pore space that is normally fill with oxygen. All plant roots need oxygen and if it is not there, then they will die. In flood, the water takes the space of the oxygen and thus the plant drowns. So drainage is very important.

Pot Plants

And lastly, watering pots can also be tricky as the potting mixes wears out and the pots become root bound. Often you will see water running straight out the bottom of the pot and the potting mix is still bone dry. This is a sign it is time to repot your plant into either the same size pot (with some root removal) or into the next size. Good quality potting mix contains water holding granules, but you can also add your own. I suggest that you hydrate them first, as if you put them in dry, it is very easy to put too much and your plant will suffer and not establish a good root system. It is very easy, just get an old cup, put in 1/2 a teaspoon, add water and leave them for about 10 minutes. When you come back, you will notice they have swelled up and then you can accurately measure the amount you want. If it is a really big pot and impossible to move, one trick is to block the drainage holes with bluetak or something that can be removed later, flood the pot with water and leave it for about 24 hours or until the air bubbles have stopped. This will re-wet the root ball. Then remove the bluetak and allow the excess water to drain away.

Now don't despair and decide gardening and watering is too difficult, as all you can do is your best. But it is handy to be aware of the problems, so when they pop up you can work out a solution or visit your local nursery and get some advice. If you follow the simple rules of adding compost, animal manures and mulching, then you are a long way there to making sure you water and conserve water properly.

Lanz 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

Phosphorus Toxicity in Proteaceae Garden Plants

This is the story about a mistake I made in my new garden that for me at the time, was about as devastating as it could get. The remarkable thing about it though was as time went on I was nearly glad that I'd made that mistake.

When we shifted into our new house in Melbourne at the end of 2005 I was pretty excited as what I had to start with was a clean slate which meant careful planning and the opportunity to fill my new garden with all the types of plants that I really loved. For me Australian native plants were one of my passions as well as proteas from South Africa. Basically, any member of the proteaceae family are the plants that I love the most.

The plan with the backyard was to excavate an area in the middle with the intention of having a sunken lawn with raised garden beds about 3m wide in between the lawn and the fence. The idea had always appealed to me as I like to add a little bit of interest in the way things are landscaped.

Firstly the excavations from the lawn area were removed and then piled around the fence area for the raised garden beds. This would be ideal as most proteaceae plants like good drainage and friable soil so the raised beds would be ideal. The only problem was, the excavations were hard dry brown clay. This was about as unsuitable as you could get for these types of plants.

Now the easy way out of this would have been to get the clay carted away and then get lots and lots of garden soil or even sandy loam in to replace it with. Not only would this be very expensive and time consuming but it also meant that I'd be dumping my rubbish somewhere else and replacing it with somebody else's (in this case the environments) good quality soil.

The only option for me was to improve what I already had and turn it into something that the plants would be very happy to grow in. Not only was this very achievable but it would also mean less work for me, money saved and better for the environment. The plan was simple, get some gypsum and lots of good quality compost delivered, hire as large a cultivator and then just cultivate it all in together.

It was all very simple but the success of the whole project was to hinge on just one small factor.......... getting the right compost. Now because the majority of the plants that were to go in my garden were proteaceae I knew that the compost had to be free of any phosphorus. This was important because as most gardeners know fertilizers with phosphorus will kill most plants from this family.

When I went to the garden centre and inquired about the phosphorus I was told that they couldn't guarantee the compost didn't have phosphorus and they suggested that I use Eucy mulch. This consisted of shredded leaves and branches from Eucalyptus trees. This to me didn't seem like a good option at all as the mulch was far from being compost and was not suitable to bury under the ground as it was still going through the composting process. Neither of these options was suitable so I decided try another garden centre. The next one I went to also had compost. I asked about the phosphorus and despite the sales person being unsure he did assure me that it was suitable for natives and there shouldn't be any problems.

I suppose I should have been sceptical at this response but the compost was very good quality and it was also the right price. At the end of the day I thought it was worth the risk as there weren't really many other options. So based on all of that the project went ahead and by September of 2006 my garden beds were ready to be planted out with all my favourite plants.

The summer that followed was very dry and I kept my garden alive by hand watering and some of the plants actually started to grow. But by the time autumn started to roll around some of these also started to die. All of a sudden I started to get a bad feeling about what was happening. Most of the plants that were dying were proteaceae plants and the ones that were doing ok were mostly not. I was starting to accept that my worst fear was now starting to become a reality. There was some phosphorus in the compost. This was the worst outcome possible for me. This garden I was building was to be a place for me to show case the types of plants that I loved the most and to top it all off some of the plants that had perished were actually very rare and rarely seen in gardens and plant nurseries.

Anyway as time went on more and more plants slowly started to pass away and I replaced them with non proteaceae plants. But as time went on I also discovered something else. Not all of the proteaceae plants were actually dying. Some were actually doing ok. All of a sudden my mood went from despair and perseverance to realising there was an opportunity here to actually learn something.

All of a sudden I could start to document which proteaceae plants aren't affected by phosphorus, which one's will barely tolerant it and which ones were killed by it. What the experts had been saying for years was not 100% correct. Some proteaceae plants aren't affected by phosphorus.

The other amazing thing that came out of this discovery was that it steered me it the direction of another Australian native plant that I had long over looked. This particular plant is rarely found in many nurseries and gardens. It is very, very drought hardy, it's forms are wide and varied and when in flower it can put on a display that would rival almost any flowering plant from anywhere in the world. It is called the Eremophila and since most of my proteaceae plants have died I've added about 20 different varieties of this plant to my garden and they're all doing extremely well. It's my intention to write an article about these plants very soon as even here in its native country of Australia it is still very much underutilized and deserves the respect of a separate article.

Anyway getting back to the problem of the phosphorus, a solution came my way in April last year. I was visiting a native plant stall at the Melbourne International Garden Show. While talking to the sales person his about his grevilleas, I mentioned that I would like to purchase some of his stock. The only problem was that my garden soil was contaminated with phosphorus and I'd grown tired of experimenting with which one's would live and which ones would die. To my surprise he offered me a solution. He mentioned that all you had to do was add a high nitrogen fertilizer to the soil and this would counteract the high percentage of phosphorus. What a piece of gold! This was definitely something that you can't find in book. It sounded so feasible and so easy to do that it was well and truly worth trialling.

I then went to the garden store on the way home and purchased some liquid fertilizer that had the highest differential in the ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus that I could find (it's unusual to ever find a fertilizer without any phosphorus at all). I still had some grevilleas in the garden that were still alive but only just.

They'd hardly grown at all since they were planted and about 50% of their leaves were either partially or completely blacken by the phosphorus. These would be the subjects of my experiment. I then drenched them with the liquid fertilizer solution and continued to do so every second month over winter until in spring they actually started to recover and put on new green growth. It was amazing, what I had been told appeared to be working and as of today about a year later those plants are all doing very well and showing no affects whatever of the phosphorus. That high nitrogen fertilizer actually worked. The next step will be retry some of the types of plants that died and see if I can get them to grow with the use of that fertilizer, but that's for further down the track.

Florise 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

Skin Care Routine For Landscape Gardeners

Landscape gardener's are often faced with an on-going problem. One of the most important tools of their trade, namely their hands, can suffer from dermatitis. This condition will make the skin sore, brittle and unsightly. Thankfully, it is a condition that can usually be easily treated with the correct skin care routine.

Dermatitis, often used to cover a wide range of skin problems, is commonly regarded as referring to skin inflammation, rashes and soreness outbreaks. As a generic condition, it does not have a single cause. Rather, it can result from contact with allergens, be due to an inappropriate hygiene routine, stem from an inadequate diet, or even be linked to a person's hereditary makeup.

The foundation of any good garden is the soil. The landscape gardener will build upon this foundation and adorn with plants, low-level walls, paving areas and an assortment of other decorative features.

Unfortunately, the main component, soil, is not conducive to healthy skin. With everyday tasks such as lifting heavy goods around the plot and working with flowers, vegetation and seedlings, it is not surprising that dirt and grime can become ingrained - this is particularly prone in the vicinity of the hands and fingernails.

Ingrained grime not only looks unattractive, but it can lead to dry skin. With the passage of time, this can lead to inflamed, sore and cracked skin ' often referred to by the catch-all term "chapped hands”.

In such cases, the normal inclination is to wash the skin with a strong soap or, even worse, use a brush to scrub the skin clean. This may remove every last trace of dirt, but it will also likely remove the surface lipids that are vital for maintaining your skin's correct moisture levels.

Moisturise and protect. This is excellent advice not only for plants but the landscaper gardener as well.

Just as plants need nurturing and protection so does a landscape gardener's skin.

First, choose a mild soap or cleansing lotion, free from chemical additives. Use cool, not hot, water. Dry by blotting the skin with a soft, cotton rich towel rather than by rubbing.

Adopting this hygiene routine will allow you to clean without further damaging the skin.

Next, select a moisturising product. This will help maintain supple and healthy hands. In addition, barrier cream protection will help minimise contact with irritants and allergens. Ideally, using a product that encompasses both will provide an effective skin care routine for all those who regularly work in and around the garden.

The cream chosen should not contain any fragrance as these ingredients can sometimes produce an adverse reaction. This will rule out many cosmetic moisturising creams. You should also be aware that, any cream that leaves the skin feeling oily or greasy is also likely leaving a layer on the hands that can act as a harbour for further dirt contamination. A good barrier cream will also allow the skin to breathe naturally and be resistant to removal by normal hand washing.

Finally, reduce skin friction on the hands by wearing freshly cleaned gloves for any heavy duty work. However, whilst gloves offer excellent short-term protection, avoid wearing them for prolonged periods as they can trap perspiration and themselves become a cause of friction.

If you adopt these few simple rules, soon your hands will be up to even the grandest of landscape designs - and the arduous tasks that are involved in making them a reality.

Ernest 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

Pave Your Driveway Using Bricks

The secret to paving a driveway using bricks is in the preparation. To install a paved driveway correctly so that it will stand the test of time, firstly you need to excavate the area to the correct depth, then you need to concrete the sub base to give it the strength it needs to withstand the weight from cars, and thirdly the pavers need to be laid on a strong mortar mix so that they set rock hard into position.

Excavating your driveway is best achieved with the assistance of Skid Steer Loader or Bobcat especially if its a large area. You will also need to think about what you are going to do with the excavations that you remove from you driveway. You may wish to pay for a skip bin to be delivered or your Bobcat/Skid Steer Loader operator may be happy to load up his/her truck and drive to the nearest waste station.

Once this is done we need to form up or box up the sides of our driveway in preparation for concrete. This can be done with lengths of timber and some pegs to hold it into position. Next we place sheets of reinforcing steel mesh in the area were going to concrete, cutting it to fit if necessary. We then need to workout how much concrete we need, by multiplying the length of the driveway by the width of the driveway by the depth (100mm) of the driveway together. This will tell us how many cubic metres to order. We then need to pour our driveway, levelling the concrete off and allowing it to cure for no less than 24 hours.

To lay pavers you first need to set up your screed rails. Screed rails are pieces of 30mm square tubing, usually made out of aluminium. Place these on the concrete, about 2 metres apart and parallel to each other. These will act like our concrete boxing, it will hold the sides of our mortar bed. Next we need to mix up some mortar, usually in a cement mixer, using a ratio of 4 washed sand to 1 cement and water to suit. You want your mortar mix to be nice and creamy (not to wet not to dry) there will be some trial and error involved in achieving the desired mix. Tip the mix into a wheel barrow and spread it out between our screed rails. Then using a third screed rail long enough in length to reach between our two existing rails, we pull any excess mortar back towards us, levelling the mortar to the height of the two parallel screed rails.

Once this is achieved you just need to move the rails along and repeat the process. You may need to use a paving float/trowel to fill in any tight corners or indents created by the rails themselves.

An important rule to remember is to always lay your paving square to the house, otherwise it tends to catch your eye and look unprofessional.

Firstly make sure your mortar is still quite wet, then wet the bottom of the paver with a sponge and lay the paver on the mortar bed. The pavers may need a tap into position with a rubber mallet. You may wish to use several string lines when your laying, otherwise the pattern can run out of square.

You will then need to mark any cuts you have, with a pencil and cut them using a brick saw. You can hire a Brick saw on a daily basis from any local hire shop.

Lastly sweep fine washed sand into the joints filling up any small gaps that may have occurred.

The three important things to remember when paving your driveway are getting the excavation levels right, concreting the sub base, and always lay the bricks/pavers on a mortar base. If you keep these three things in mind and make sure the are done properly then everything else will flow on from there.

Annalie 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

The Amazing Flowers Of Camellia Japonica And Camellia Sasanqua

Japanese Camellia, Camellia japonica. American gardeners in the South know and love the Camellia japonica, a landscape shrub, bush, or tree that can grow 20 feet tall. The Camellia japonica became an important garden landscape plant in the World War II war years in the 1940's when Dr. Tom Brightwell collected a large Camellia cultivar planting at the University of Georgia Experimental Station at Tifton, Georgia, that is still actively maintained as a Camellia arboretum for gardeners to tour publicly and to compare varieties, color of flower blooms, flower size, and flower density studies. Several hundred Camellia shrubs, bushes, and trees are planted and growing at the Tifton, Georgia location. Camellia japonica was the favorite flowering plant of Dr. Tom Brightwell, although he planted Camellia Sasanqua trees and bushes also in the garden. Dr. Brightwell not only planted Camellia seed, but he selected the outstanding cultivars and grafted or budded those Camellia varieties named by him onto Camellia seedling rootstock.

Several other well known Camellia gardens are located in the United States; The Burden Center at Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Bellingrath Gardens at Theodore, Alabama; The City Park at New Orleans, Louisiana; Clemson, South Carolina Botanical Gardens; Atlanta, Georgia, Botanical Garden; Harry P. Leu Gardens, Orlando, Florida; The United States National Arboretum, Washington D.C.; Thomas H. Perkins III Camellia Garden, Brookhaven, Mississippi; Huntington Camellia Garden, California; Massee Lane Camellia Garden, Fort Valley, Georgia; and the Vale Camellia Garden, Waltham, Massachusetts.

The Massee Lane Camellia garden was donated as the headquarters for the American Camellia Society organized in 1945. The Camellia japonica shrubs, bushes, and trees are planted under the shade of pine trees and flowering Southern Magnolia trees as shading that is required for the best Camellia plant growth. The 9 acre Camellia tree garden is bordered by brick walkways, where over 1000 Camellia shrubs and trees can be viewed and enjoyed by the public during the fall, winter, and spring.

Dr. Tom Brightwell of the Tifton, Georgia Camellia garden exchanged Camellia plants with the land donor of Massee Camellia gardens, Mr. David C. Strother. Dr. Brightwell also researched the Camellia and exchanged Camellia cultivars with William Hertrich of Huntington Camellia Gardens in Los Angeles, California and with numerous Camellia researchers at Massee Lane Gardens, 100 Massee Lane, Fort Valley, Georgia, the headquarters of the American Camellia Society.

The Huntington Botanical Garden in Los Angeles, California boasts a Camellia garden of 1200 different cultivars of Camellia japonica and Camellia sasanqua that covers twelve acres for public viewing of the Camellia blooms during the flowering season. The superintendent, Mr. William Hertich, of the Camellia garden planted thousands of Camellia seed to be used as a rootstock on grafting superior Camellia cultivars. These seedling rootstock resulted in the growth and selection of hundreds of new hybrid Camellia selections, many of which still grow at the garden today. William Hertich devoted many years of his life growing and photographing the Camellia trees and flowers. Mr. Hertich published his work on the Camellia plant in 3 volumes at the Huntington Camellia Gardens.

Other very large Camellia gardens outside the United States are the Peter Fisher Camellia Garden in Hamburg, Germany and the Royal Botanical Camellia Garden in Melbourne, Australia. The Higo Camellia bonsai Camellia plants from Japan can be seen at the Huntington Camellia Gardens along with aromatic, fragrant Camellia cultivars and a large collection of Camellia Sasanqua introductions from Nuccio's Nursery of Altadena, California. A new important book by Ann Richardson, A curator's Introduction to the Camellia Collection, can be purchased from the Huntington Library Press for $14.95 and is filled with valuable information for any lover of the Camellia flower, tree, or plants.

Growing Camellia plants into trees takes many years unless you buy a large flowering size Camellia tree that can be very expensive.. Very few perennial evergreen shrubs display the beautiful form in the landscape and the massing flowering habit of the Camellia. The Camellia japonica has the flower colors of pink, red, white, purple, and peppermint. The Camellia japonica can begin blooming as early as December and continues into March and April on some varieties, depending on weather warm-ups during the winter. Camellia shrubs and trees resent being transplanted in the landscape from one spot to another, and often die unless transplanting takes place during the winter. Even then, the Camellia does not transplant well, and can sit inert in a location showing little growth, if any, and many times will decline in size or die unless a large root-ball is dug. Camellia plants should be purchased from a nursery growing in a container, so that a full root system can be planted and grown. Never buy a Camellia plant bare root!

Camellia shrubs and trees prefer light or heavy shade for growing, and pine trees or flowering magnolia trees are the perfect companion plants for the Camellia shrub. Full sun will burn the leaves of a Camellia shrub except for interior leaves and no one wants a plant looking like that in a landscape garden. The discovery of the plant hormone, gibberellic acid, with its accelerative growth effect on individual flowers of the Camellia became an important method of winning prizes at Camellia flower shows. A normal Camellia flower, teacup size, could be treated with a drop of gibberellic acid at an inferior (lower) bud, and the teacup size flower would continue to grow to the size of a dinner plate. This treatment process has become important in treating other plant products to increase growth size of flowers, fruits, leaves, and in rooting hormone mixtures and seed germination.

A unique characteristic of both the Camellia japonica and Camellia sasanqua is the beautiful and spectacular bloom-drop circle that forms beneath the tree, surrounding the plant after older flowers fall and shatter on the ground. The glow of the fallen petals in the circle increases as the season progresses and many gardener's view the bloom-drop circle as fanciful and beautiful as the fresh flowers remaining on the tree. The Camellia Sasanqua is often and commonly called simply, Sasanqua. The Sasanqua flower colors of red, white, pink, purple, and peppermint are the same colors, but smaller than the Camellia japonica blooms. The Camellia Sasanqua can grow 16 feet tall and blooms earlier (October to March) than Camellia japonica. The leaves are a glowing waxy green and evergreen with a slight curving habit. Single red, white, or pink flowers of Sasanqua are preferred by most buyers, but double flowering Sasanqua is stunning when in full bloom. The Sasanqua provides a perfect specimen landscape plant that will tolerate full sun, and is most often used in Zone 6-9 as a privacy hedge for screening out noisy neighbors.

Jannele 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