07/29/2010

"Your garden is hardier than you think and there are plenty of gardening tasks for August that will keep your flower and vegetable gardens going longer, as well as opportunities to get a head start on next year's garden plans," says Marie Iannotti. As incredible as it may sound, your August yard to-do list, depending on where you live, may include ordering spring bulbs!

I have to admit that I find Marie's August yard to-do list a bit inconvenient. August is the last hurrah for summer in my region, meaning I want to spend as much time at the beach as possible. Soon enough, autumn will be here and I'll be raking leaves!

August To-Do List for the Yard originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 07:48:53.

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07/27/2010

One factor in maintaining lawn health is the height at which you cut grass, as Steve Jones points out. But how you go about watering grass is also important: "To keep the lawn green requires about 1 inch of rain or irrigation per week," writes the Plant Man. Sprinklers used on home lawns "usually deliver from one-quarter to one-third inch per hour." Therefore, watering grass for 4 hours in the course of the week may be necessary in some cases. Read more tips on watering grass and summertime lawn care in this article.

Watering Grass originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 07:26:54.

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07/25/2010

While watching sporting events played on grass, have you ever noticed how the lawns sometimes appear to be decorated with evenly spaced sets of stripes? It's an appealing look, and many homeowners are curious about the procedure behind striping lawns. Some stripes sure would jazz up your own grass, wouldn't they?

Kelly Burke remarks that striping lawns "is nothing more than pushing the grass down in one direction and then the other, as you mow." But what pushes the grass down as you mow? Rollers. "The bold striping on a golf course or ball field is usually achieved with a finely tuned reel mower with rollers in the front and back of the mower," says About.com's Lawn Care Guide. While such reel mowers may be out of your price range, Kelly says that rollers are available for more typical lawn mowers via striping kits. Read Kelly's full article on striping lawns for more information.

Striping Lawns originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 06:50:34.

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07/23/2010

I'm not very good about keeping up with things that require periodic maintenance. That's one of the reasons why I don't have a big lawn in my yard. I'm as likely as not to forget about fertilizing a lawn. Sure, I could always go the compost route, but that has its own drawbacks for the lazy (you have to make that black gold, unless you're willing to shell out big bucks to purchase sufficient amounts at the store).

Mowing the lawn on a regular basis isn't my cup of tea, either. If the weather's fine when the weekend rolls in, I may want to hit the bike trail or strap the kayak to the car and go paddling. I'm not about to let the fact that the lawn needs mowing stop me.

So what landscape maintenance tasks do not bother me? Well, I don't mind pruning shrubs. Many need a trimming just once per year, after they've finished blooming. I can handle that. Pruning is actually kind of interesting, too: I like having to make the decision as to exactly which sequence of cuts will result in giving the shrub its optimal shape.

In sum, I don't mind performing a little landscape maintenance in my yard, but only if the tasks involved don't need to be performed often and/or don't bore me to death. That helps explain why there's something else I don't have in my yard: a swimming pool. And this video on Lisa Hallett Taylor's site on how to test swimming pool water alludes to just how much can go wrong if you fail to perform regular maintenance on a swimming pool.

Those of you who do own swimming pools will want to see this video for instructional purposes. As for me, I'll be doing my swimming at the beach, thank you.

Related resource: Swimming Pool Landscaping

How to Test Swimming Pool Water originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 07:35:01.

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07/21/2010

The "outdoor room" is one of those in-between concepts. Normally, the word, "room" implies an enclosure indoors. Meanwhile, if someone talks about living large in the "great outdoors," the image conjured up is one of raw nature, with its wide open spaces. Outdoor rooms fall somewhere in the middle, providing the comforts of an indoor setting, but with a breath of fresh air.

The mention of "outdoor rooms" naturally begs two questions:

1. Why bother with them?
2. Assuming a compelling reason in answer to question #1, what's at the crux of installing an outdoor room effectively?

The "Why bother?" question will be immediately dismissed by anyone who, like me, enjoys dining outside as often as possible. I've been known to pick one restaurant over another simply because it offered outside dining....

But -- to answer the second question -- an effective outdoor room must be able to shade you from the scalding summer sun and keep you dry on rainy days. If you're not protected from the elements while dining in a spot outside, then you really can't call that spot an "outdoor room." Another expression comes to mind, instead: "roughing it"!

Enter Steve Ostrowski, co-founder of Shade Pergolas. Steve specializes in pergolas fitted with shade canopies. The Q&A in this article is the result of an interview I conducted with Steve. We begin with an introduction to outdoor rooms, in general, before moving on to look specifically at his covered pergolas.

Read article: Outdoor Rooms

The Outdoor Room: It's No Place for Roughing It originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 13:47:08.

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