Global Gardening

We are fortunate here in most parts of Australia, excluding the Australian Alps, to miss out on severe wintry weather. As a result, most people’s lawns and gardens don’t need too much of a spruce up once spring knocks on the door.

However, with enough rainfall and cold weather, lawn care should still be at the forefront of your mind. There is work to be done to ensure your gardens and grass will be in tip-top shape for the impending summery conditions ahead. But, do you know what that “work” is? Read on to learn the few things you need to do, or get someone else to do this spring.

1. Test Your Soil

Spring offers the opportunity for homeowners to get on top of their lawn care, and soil testing is an excellent place to start. You can buy an affordable pH testing kit, or hire someone to test it, then know what your lawn needs to keep it at its best.

If your soil results come in with a pH level of 6.5, then you’re in luck – that’s the best you can hope to get. If, however, it’s higher, then you might need sulphate of ammonia to bring it back a little. If it’s too low, then lime and dolomite lime in an equal ratio, plus magnesium and calcium, could prove beneficial.

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Grow your plants in the style in which they should be accustomed to with these stunning self assembly steel etched, 100% recycled paperboard and biodegradable bamboo planters.

Created by Another Studio For Design, in collaboration with Scotland-based Finch & Fouracre, the Plantini Growing Kit Houses stand 9.5cm (3.74inch) high. The planters come complete with instructions, a removable canopy for watering, and glass panes to allow the sunlight to pass through, plus a rice hull planting pot and viola seeds.

Best of all, the Plantini Growing Kit Houses arrive flat-packed and only has four simple components to assembly. They are suitable for flowers, herbs or some easy to grow veggies.

Visit: http://www.another-studio.com/

Via Trendhunter

When the holiday season approaches, there are many things to organise. You have to put your pets into care, divert your mail or get someone to collect it, and make your house as secure as possible. With all that to think about, you’ll be unlikely to consider your garden pots until the last minute. In reality, they should be up there in terms of importance with your pets!

Many plants require frequent, ongoing care. If you’re away for a week or two at a time, there’s every chance you can come home to garden pots with no signs of life. To avoid this from happening – or to at least reduce the risk – read on.

Soil

The first thing to consider is the soil. Before you leave, add potting mix to your garden pot that contains moisture-retaining polymers. Otherwise, add those polymers to the soil already in your garden pots. These polymers will give your plants additional water when they need it.

Weather Conditions

If you want to give your plants the best chance of survival, change their living setup. Move your garden pots out of direct sunlight and keep the house cool. It may also help if you put your garden pots close to each other so they can share shade and moisture.

Shelter

If you know you’ve got some sensitive plants that may not make it, then do everything in your power to keep them alive. Put them inside makeshift shelters you can make from plastic rubbish bags. Put them over each plant with holes in them for oxygen, and use stakes in the soil to stop the bags from touching your plants.

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Designing a new garden and outdoor living space can be an extremely rewarding process.

While a lot of people employ experts to design and craft their perfect backyard for them, a lot more take the plunge and do it themselves.

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Experience landscape architects like Landscape Design Perth are in high demand throughout the world due to the incredible work that they do transforming mediocre or run down yards and gardens into something special. While most people end up very happy with their landscapers work, there is always the potential to run into problems.

It is therefore essential that you ask potential landscapers a few questions before you commit to using them to design your yard. Our top five questions to ask your landscaper include:

1. What sort of service do they offer?

This is a very important thing to consider, as not all landscapers work in the same way. While a lot are tradesmen who are able to complete the entire project for you from start to finish, some landscapers are ‘design only’. It is crucial that you are aware of this before you contract a landscaper, to make sure that they are going to be able to do the things that you want them to.

2. What sort of experience to they have?

If you want the best garden possible, then this is a very important thing to consider. Usually, the best landscape designers are going to be those who have a lot of experience. It is important to note that there are different types of landscaping, so make sure that you choose someone with experience doing the things that you want them to do.

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In Australia, wildlife can pose a big problem when it comes to keeping your yard clean and tidy, especially if you live in a rural or semi-rural area. Wild animals can damage plants, dig up garden beds, and can even break fences and other objects. Fortunately for you, decent landscape designers can help you craft the perfect animal resistant garden – to a point! After all, sometimes it is nice to see some of our wildlife enjoying our garden as well.

If you can’t afford to or don’t want to use a landscape designer, then the following tips and tricks will help you build your yard to eliminate destructive wildlife:

Build good fences:

In many cases, simple fences are all that you need to keep most Australian wildlife out. Things like kangaroos and other large herbivores that can damage and destroy gardens can be safely kept out by well designed fences.

If you do decide to go down this road, then you should consider using a fence which compliments your garden design. Rather than installing a simple colorbond or picket fence, go for something more inspiring and more creative – it will be worth it!

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The people of BC have been told repeatedly that the province is a “net importer” of electricity and needs to become “self-sufficient” – claims that are used to justify everything from “run of river” independent power producers (IPPs), to energy megaprojects such as Bute Inlet and the Site C dam. But a US electricity expert told me that California has been “buying a tremendous amount of power from BC over the past decade.”

Peter Meisen, founder and president of the San Diego-based Global Energy Network Institute (GENI), said during a phone interview last year, “BC sells a lot of excess electricity through the Pacific intertie into southern California. It’s the cheapest electricity we have and they’ve been selling it to us constantly over the past decade.”

Spin and Lies

The people of BC are not the only ones being lied to about their electricity needs while their rates skyrocket. Canadians are constantly being told that we must make major investments in our electricity systems and take on massive hydro-generating projects, or (it is implied) see the lights go out. For example, on May 12, 2011, Pierre Guimond, head of the Canadian Electricity Association told the Toronto Star that Canada needs to invest “$15 billion (€11.27 billion) a year over the next 20 years” in order to “upgrade” the system.

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If you have bought some rolled up turf to make a new lawn out of, you will need to lay it as soon as possible after purchase. However, doing so might not be as easy as it sounds. Laying a new lawn requires a bit of hard work and preparation if you want to do it properly, and it is absolutely worth doing this.

There are a number of steps to go through before you even purchase your grass. While most of these are simple, they all require tools and at least a bit of hard work and all set to enjoy outdoors. Use the following steps to guide you when you are getting ready to lay your own brand new lawn:

What Tools Will I Need?

There are a few different tools which will make your life much easier when it comes to laying a new lawn. The most important include:

• A rake, which you can use to level the ground and remove and rocks or other foreign objects before you lay the grass.
• A shovel, which is used to level large lumps of dirt, to remove larger rocks or roots, and to incorporate a soil wetting agent before laying grass.
• Secateurs, to cut the roll on turf to the right size.
• A wetting agent, which you can spread over and incorporate into the soil under the grass.
• A hose, for watering your new turf in.
• Fertiliser, to both lay under the grass and spread on top to encourage it to get started quickly.

Of course, you will need to source some decent rolls of grass before you can lay it, but don’t pick these up until the last minute, otherwise they may dry out and/or die.

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MIT researcher Andreas Mershin wants people in developing countries to have cheap solar cells to charge lamps or cell phones, using natural photosynthesis based on plant protein.

The research is published in the open journal Scientific Reports and builds upon earlier MIT research by Shuguang Zhang. The earlier plant molecule solar cells required expensive lab equipment but the new system can use simpler technology. The efficiency is still only 0.1% (much less than conventional solar cells) but if other researchers can help improve the method then perhaps 1 or 2% efficiency could be the result.

The system uses molecules that plants use for photosynthesis (called photosystem-I or PS-l). Mershin used a simpler way to obtain PS-I molecules and coat an array of tiny zinc oxide nanowires that carry the current and provide a large surface area. He had the idea from looking at how pine trees use their layered branch and leaf structures to absorb as much light as possible.

“You can use anything green, even grass clippings” as the raw material, Mershin says. The research team has proposed using inexpensive membranes to filter and extract the plant protein. “It can be very dirty and it still works, because of the way nature has designed it. Nature works in dirty environments — it’s the result of billions of experiments over billions of years.”

If the PS-I molecule stabilizing chemicals can be given to villagers in remote locations, with some simple instruction, they could extract the protein, roughen up a tin roof and paint it on, generating power during the day for use at night in LED lighting, eliminating dangerous, expensive and unhealthy kerosene lanterns, Mershin adding that “Nighttime illumination is the number one way to get out of poverty,” as it allows people who work all day to read at night and get an education.

Via MIT News & Scientific Reports

Many people would consider the biggest disadvantage of owning a pool to be the amount of cleaning necessary to ensure the water is safe to swim in. If you’ve been put off owning a pool for this reason, consider also getting one of the automatic pool cleaners available on the market today.

Having an automated cleaner can make a big difference to the amount of work required for pool maintenance. In fact, some can be set to come on automatically at a specific time so you don’t even have to worry about switching it on. You can set and forget that pool cleaner and in the morning your pool will be in excellent condition ready for use.

Another disadvantage is the safety factor. While we often hear of drowning in the backyard pool, if you have the right kind of safety fence and gate, the danger is almost eliminated.  No little toddlers can reach up high enough to open the gate. And you can take your children to swimming lessons when they are quite small, to make it even safer.

Cost is another factor and you will understand that it is ongoing, with power, filters and chlorine all contributing to it. But when you consider the many advantages of owning a pool, you may realise that these outweigh the disadvantages.

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