Thanks to Todd Green for posting this video to YouTube. Here is his description of this lawn care and maintenance video…

For lawn maintenance, edge grass with a blade, mow the lawn in different directions, trim grass evenly and use a blower to remove grass clippings. Learn about safety equipment, such as earplugs and glasses, when mowing a lawn with this free video from a professional landscaper on lawn care tips. Expert: Bill Elzey Contact: www.showplacelawns.com Bio: Bill Elzey is the owner and manager of Showplace Lawns in Austin, Texas. Filmmaker: Todd Green
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Lawn tools for this grass... when snow melts!

I know… it’s still winter in your neck of the woods! But maybe this guest article will get your gardening “juices” warmed up.

Take inventory of your gardening equipment, and see if you have most of these lawn tools . If not, check out the garden catalogs stacking up next to your chair. Or, go online and do a bit of research. You just might be able to “reward” yourself with a new… whatever. The point is, you’ll be ready for Spring lawn care… as soon as the snow melts!

Discover Helpful Lawn Tools Information

There are several types of lawn tools that could ease gardening and yard work. And when gardening work is easier we find ourselves out enjoying our lawn or garden much more often. Now we will talk about some lawn and garden tools that can make some jobs much easier.

A weed planter can make pulling weeds much easier. You may not mind squatting down to pull weeds, but if you are deciding not to pull a weed for some great weed pulling session, may be you would get advantage of using a weed planter. These nifty objects allow you to simply remove weeds without having to bend down or wrestle with weeds. If you have back problems a good weed puller is more like a must have.

Everything is kept crisp and neat with lawn tools like lawn edgers. Beside keeping borders even and kempt, edgers can delay the time you have before trimming excess growth in the garden. While keeping walkways safely clear of excess grass growth, edgers control grass growth of hardier strains like St. Augustine for the main lawn.

Aerators are a great way to easily aerate lawn and garden beds. Some aerators are simple straight forward aerators that are best suited for aerating lawns without breaking up the turf. These can also cut down on the development of thatch. I recommend something like the Garden Claw for gardens and flower beds. These little things are amazing for their power and simplicity. On one occasion I used one to do the entire first plowing session of a forty by forty foot double dug garden plot. It cut right through the thick grass as it crumbled the earth. Lawn tools like Garden Claws are also great for weeding around garden plants.

If you don’t have all the time you need to do everything manually, planters and waterers are important tools to have. Planters can help shave off time if you have a busy planting schedule at different times of the year. You might want to install a timed sprinkler system for watering. Think of using t-tape and a daily timer if you have many garden or flower beds. This is inexpensive, conserves water and gives you free time!

So as you can see having a nice lawn is a bit of work of course but I could say it is worth the effort. This is why it is also important to have the proper lawn tools.

This well known author is an Internet expert and surely enjoys to share his information with people like you. Read more now about Lawn Care and concerning Lawn Tools solution at his web site www.lawnandlawncare.com

See, now you have a reason for keeping all those gardening catalogs, and spending time surfing the net for lawn and garden stuff! You just say that you’ve been researching the latest lawn tools…

Susan’s Lawn Gardens is pleased to feature this article from today’s guest author, TED GUARNERO. He is an expert on seaside landscaping, so we feel very comfortable recommending his work to our visitors.

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary: How Does a Seaside Garden Grow?!!

by Ted Guarnero

Living near the sea or in a coastal region may exemplify your dream lifestyle, but it’s no doubt that the harsh and particular conditions of the sea-side landscape make it hard for things to grow. But, plant growth is certainly not impossible – you’ll just want to know what grows best in the land of salt and sea before you embark on your landscaping plans. You’ll also want to pay particular attention to layout, and hardscape elements that can really help pull your landscape design together.

You’ll first need to determine what type or types of soil’s you’re dealing with. If it’s predominately sand than you’ll have to accept that you’ll be limited to what you can plant and grow – unless you’re industrious enough to want to lay yards, and yards of top soil. Remember that even though certain plants will grow in sandy soils you’ll have to be on top of watering like never before.

In sandier soils some plants to investigate include: bearberry, yucca, memorial rose, trumpet vine, fragrant sumac, beach plum, rose rugosa, Austrian pine and tamarisk. One recommendation might be to do an image search of these plants on the internet – you can then start to get a visual picture of what you like. Begin by building a folder that you can use as a resource when you’re ready to purchase and plant.

When you do begin planting, try not to plant everything at once. Experiment, and try some species to see how they adjust and grow. You’ll start to get a good idea of what has potential to thrive in your soil and in your environment. In all cases, you’ll always want to work with the elements and not against them. This is key to making your seaside landscaping a success. You really can’t fight with the ocean… so “go with the flow” is a good rule for a seaside “green thumb”.

Another good tip is to explore your neighborhood and to make a list of what you like and what grows well. Talk to your neighbors and discover their seaside gardening trials and tribulations. Consult books and ask specialists before you purchase your plants.

Generally plants that have a silvery gray color like Russian Sage and lambs ear are able to better tolerate sea spray and wind.

If you have an area further away from the elements of sand, sea, and wind, you can move into some more colorful choices like hydrangeas, Montauk daisies, and butterfly bush. These plants are still quite hardy and can tolerate some exposure, but they shouldn’t be planted right on the shoreline.

Here are some other suggestions for hardy seaside plants to discover and explore in your landscaping plans:

Ceanothus: This evergreen sports attractive blue flowers and does best in rather dry soil.

Cypress: Very suitable as a wind-break or privacy screen.

Pines: Good evergreens for screening or wind-break options. Can be cultivated or left to grow willy nilly.

Mugho Pines: These are well adapted to salt water areas and they offer a unique texture to your garden.

Arbutus Unedo: The broad evergreen leaves of this tree make for an attractive textural element. The tree will also flower and be followed by a decorative fruit reminiscent of strawberries- hence its common name, “strawberry tree”.

Azalea Mollis: This is a deciduous azalea that requires some protection from direct salt spray. It blooms brilliant flowers in white, pinks, and in many different shades of red. This is a lovely spring time color addition to any seaside garden.

English Lavender: This is one of the hardiest and most widely planted species. It has fragrant light to dark purple blooms and comes in many varieties.

Rockrose: This is a shrub that boasts showy spring to summer flowers in white or lavender.

Once you’ve chosen some plants and an area to landscape, you can begin to think about adding hardscape elements. Meandering stone or crushed sea shell pathways, well placed river rocks, sandstone, or granite, an arbor built of drift wood, a glass ball- these sorts of additions will tie in your landscaping and help to create height, dimension and texture. Think about placing a bench somewhere to take advantage of a beautiful view. You might even add some silver bells and cockle shells… This is where you can let your inner artist explore.

Take your time, have patience, educate yourself on all the seaside garden possibilities and you’ll be sure to create a lovely haven by the sea.

Illustrated Properties is a Jupiter FL real estate company with professional, effective services to help you succeed in the local market. Visit TedSoldIt.com for information on neighborhoods and home listings, and to get in touch with an expert Jupiter FL Real Estate agent.

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Susan’s Lawn Gardens is pleased to feature this article from today’s guest author, TOM B GEE. He is an expert on garden sheds, so we feel very comfortable recommending his work to our visitors.

Cheap Garden Sheds – What Are Your Requirements?
By Tom B Gee

When you think of a garden shed, you most likely visualize a wooden box-shaped construction situated at the end of somebody’s backyard, filled with all sorts of household paraphernalia and gardening tools. For some, their shed offers a place to do some DIY that is not appropriate for indoors; for others, their shed provides a silence location for them just to sit down and think. Although, these are the most conventional uses and designs, there are lots of other variations of the traditional shed that can be purchased and sheds can be made from a variety of materials and come in a whole range of distinct shapes and sizes. Additionally, sheds come in several price ranges and you don’t have to break the bank to find something appropriate to your needs. Some can be small open-sided with tin-roofs and others can be big wood-framed sheds with shingled roofs.

The most regular materials that are used are of course wood but did you know that you can obtain metal, plastic and even vinyl-sided sheds at cheap prices as well? Again, it all depends on your funds and what you are going to use it for. The usual shed is frequently a single-story structure with one door and either one or two windows. If you don’t happen to have space for a shed in your backyard or you have no garden at all, you can rent space in an allotment and have your shed there.

Most people use their shed for storage which is of course very handy. You can also utilize your garden shed as a small workshop/workplace or even use it as a children’s games hideaway. You can put up shelves, possibly a bench and a table for comfort. You can be truly inventive when it comes to decorating and adding accessories to your shed and it’s achievable to do all this at a relatively low cost. Small traditional garden sheds typically open from either the front or the sides and have at least one small window and such sheds can be purchased fairly cheaply.

In warmer regions you can acquire sheds with a protected overhang and an outside sitting area. If you live in a colder climate then you can attach electrical points for use with heaters. If it’s just a location to escape then why not have your Television and laptop or add carpets and even curtains! The simplest variety and the least pricey of all sheds can be purchased in a “kit form” meaning you have to self-assemble. These cheap sheds can be bought from most DIY stores, garden centres and from a whole host of dependable shed companies on the web. These kinds of do it yourself kits are more often than not timber sheds but this is not always the case. The size and style of the shed you choose will depend upon the purpose that you are going to be using it for. You will want to consider about whether it is to be used to gather home garden tools and equipment such as lawn mowers, lawn tractors and sizeable gardening items or just to store products that are not appropriate for indoors, such as gasoline, pesticides or herbicides.

If you own a small garden and want a cheap small shed, then there are a few types of small sheds obtainable at very inexpensive prices; These consist of corner sheds, which fit into a corner 3′ tall x 3′ wide x 2′ deep, vertical sheds (5′ tall x 3′ wide x 4′ deep), horizontal sheds (3′ tall x 5′ wide x 4′ deep) and tool sheds. If you intend to use your shed for tool storage, then you may need to think about adding some shelves and hooks to boost your storage space. Some other shed styles that you might like to think about include Gambrel-style roofed sheds, similar to the Dutch-style barn! And these have a high pitched roofline which increases the storage space in the ‘loft’. Another type of small cheap shed is the saltbox-style shed. No matter what type you pick and for whatever purpose, I’m sure you will have countless happy years of enjoyment with your new garden shed.

For more information about garden furniture and outdoor storage please visit our
cheap garden sheds website.

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Susan’s Lawn Gardens is pleased to feature this article from today’s guest author, JOSH GRAY. He is an expert gardener, so we feel very comfortable recommending his work to our visitors.

Summer Lawn Care Tips
By Josh Gray

Summer is just around the corner, and your lawn could probably use a little maintenance before the summer season of backyard BBQs and swimming in the pool. So what are you doing now to get your lawn ready? Lawn care is often feared as a difficult and time intensive process, but with a few guidelines and tips, you can easily have a healthy green lawn in time for the first backyard party of the season.

First of all, if you can spare a minute of your time, don’t hire a lawn care “specialist” or professional landscaper. Buying your own lawn care products is cheap and easy, with hundreds of vendors offering products online and in Do-It-Yourself stores. A wide variety of products such as weed controllers to fertilizers can be found online, and usually can be found at reasonable prices, especially when you do a little online coupon searching.

Starting off on the right foot is important to reviving your lawn after winter. Fertilizer is the key to ensuring strong healthy growth of the grass in your yard. Fertilizing the grass does more than just make it green. Of course it will make it grow too, but lot’s of things happen when you fertilize. Fertilizer makes the seed germinate faster, and get started out of the ground. After the grass has a good start fertilizer will make the grass get thicker and send off beneficial chemicals like Rhizomes, Stolons, and Tillers all making the grass thicker and healthier.

What most people want to know about fertilizing is – how much and when? Typically, you want to fertilize 4 times each season, spread 60 days apart. Start in early spring approximately 30 days before the growing season begins in your area, continuing through the growing season until fall. Spring fertilizing gets the grass off to a fast start giving you that rich green color everyone wants. A word of warning though, don’t use too much fertilizer, follow the listed guidelines on the bag.

Mowing is the most misunderstood part of lawn care, and the most often incorrectly performed part of lawn care. Far too many people will set their mowers too low or “scalp” the lawn. How many times have you spent time mowing your grass in hopes of a beautiful result only to end up with brown spots? Cutting too much off the top leads to thinned out grass, and shallow root systems.

Now once you have achieved the perfect lawn, you must do regular maintenance to prevent it from going back to being a pasture. Spend a little time and money and keep it watered and you will keep the lush grass you spent your hard earned money and time on. The ideal way to water your lawn is with an Automatic Underground Sprinkler System. This way the watering is done every day that it needs it, you don’t have to drag hoses, you don’t waste water from over watering, and you get all of the lawn watered, not just where you happen to set the sprinkler. If you implement this type of sprinkler system, make sure to water shrubbery and annuals separate from the lawn. If you applied the same amount of water on your landscape as gets put on the lawn you would surely kill some plants from over watering.

Now that you’re ready to care for your lawn, you’ll need to get your supplies. Lawn care products can be found at many local gardening centers, or through many online merchants. Buying gardening supplies online is growing in popularity, and made even more economical by online coupons and discounts. For coupons on everything from fertilizers to lawn tools and equipment, check out www.CouponChief.com and easily save yourself some big bucks. Spend the extra cash on your first big BBQ of the summer and invite all your neighbors over to drool over your well manicured, lush green lawn.

Josh Gray, President of UC San Diego’s Gardens Club, is a consultant to CouponChief.com. This online coupon website provides free coupons and discount codes to many favorite gardening websites on their home and garden coupons page.

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Susan’s Lawn Gardens is pleased to feature this article from today’s guest author, LINDA J. BRUTON. She is an expert on lawns, so we feel very comfortable recommending her work to our visitors.

Fertilizers – What you Need to Feed Your Lawn
By Linda J Bruton

Just like humans need food, water and shelter to survive, lawns depend on certain elements to live, sixteen to be exact. Most of these elements are already found naturally in the environment, but several others need to be added to your lawn. Adding fertilizer with these three elements, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, does the job.

Before you run out to the store to purchase a complete fertilizer, or, one that contains all three, it is important to understand why your lawn’s livelihood depends on it.

Nitrogen- This is possibly the most important element your lawn needs. It makes the grass grow and gives it its green color. It will also allow for more density, thick shoots, and sturdy growth, thus creating an environment that will naturally fight off pests and bugs.

Potassium- Since you can’t toss bananas in your yard, your best bet for this mineral is to use fertilizer! Potassium enhances your lawn’s ability to resist disease, drought, wear and cold weather.

Phosphorus- This is used to encourage strong grass root growth.

Most fertilizers you will find in your local home and garden stores will contain all three of these elements. However, there are different amounts of each. This is reflected in a three-digit number, such as 30-10-10, which tells the percentage of each in this order: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These blends will serve different purposes. For instance, more potassium in blends are good for winterization. The factors you need to consider are grass type, climate, time of season and soil type. Once you know what your needs are, you will be able to determine the right combination of these elements. An additional way to scan your needs is determine the current levels of these nutrients in your soil. This can be done through a simple pH test.

In addition to variation in percentages of the key elements, there are also different types of fertilizers to consider. There are four major options that will greet you in the fertilizer aisle: Granular (slow and fast-release), Liquid, Synthetic and Organic.

Granular fertilizers are perhaps the most popular, probably due to their ease in use and duration. Since these are dry, they are much easier to spread. Granular fertilizers can come in a slow time-release formula, which provides fertilization over two to six months.

This is an efficient choice for homeowners, as it will not need another application for months to come. Granular is also available in fast-release, and although applied in the same manner, the nutrients are released quicker and work better in cold weather. This method also costs less. However, grass burn can occur and there will be a greater need for watering.

Liquid fertilizers are just as the name says- in liquid form. These are applied by attaching a hose and nozzle to a spray bottle. The contents of the bottle are usually in concentrated form, thus the need to mix with the water. If you can use a hose, this is an easy method, more so than spreading granular around the yard. Also, since this a liquid, nutrients are available immediately to the roots of your vegetation. Herbicides can also be added or applied during this treatment. But, since the results are immediate, applications will have to be repeated more often than granular, and since liquid is more expensive to begin with, it can be more costly.

Synthetic fertilizers are usually manufactured chemically, hence being called synthetic. These engineered fertilizers offer immediate release of nutrients, and make lawns green.They simply penetrate the soil quicker. However, they are not natural, and many argue that lawns should be treated naturally. Applications of synthetic fertilizer needs to be redone more often, as results don’t last as long. They can also burn your lawn if not applied in a proper manner.

Finally, organic fertilizers are made from once living organisms and their bi-products. These are applied to the lawn by spreaders, rakes and even by hand. Since this a totally natural fertilizer, the organics tend to break down slow when releasing nitrogen. They will improve the texture and density of your lawn, especially when added to soil or lakebed sand. There are some drawbacks however, including a foul smell in the case of manures. Also, these soils tend to have more nitrogen than other elements.

In summary, when choosing a fertilizer, you need to consider many things: The current nutrition of your lawn, how much money you want to spend, how much labor you want to invest in application- initial and repeats, as well as personal preference. But with the spurt in technology, choices keep growing as more combinations are being introduced.

For hundreds of other tips for creating your own perfect lawn, be sure to visit: http://www.YourPerfectLawn.com

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