If you are looking to buy a tiller / rotovator to help with weeding and maintaining your vegetable garden or allotment, you may have arrived here looking for help and advice about machinery.
Using a machine to carry out the harder work goes against the grain for some gardeners who might believe that double or single digging and weed control using a hoe is the only way, both environmentally and from a soil condition perspective, to prepare or maintain soil.
For the squeamish I suggest looking away now but if you are serious about your lawn and you are having trouble with moles in your lawn then this advice could be really useful.
On my Landscape Juice blog I have written an advisory blog with accompanying pictures showing you how to control moles using a scissor trap.
Bear in mind that I am in France and the look of the trap in the pictures is slightly different than you would buy in the UK but the advice and setting is the same.
Your lawn does not completely become dormant in the winter. You will note that even when the temperature outside is below freezing or just a few degrees above, the top of the leaf blade will become fluffy and produce a new spike fairly soon after the last cut.
It is important not to let the grass get too long because the stress of removing a great deal of growth in one swoop can cause damage with moss and weeds infesting the surface that is vacated by grass that is dying away.
I am feeling chipper - please excuse the pun - because the whole world is getting really serious about sustainability, regeneration and sustainable products and services.
2008 has seen a massive rise in the sale of wood splitters, firewood sales, wood burning stoves and chainsaws because many households are turning to burning wood as opposed to expensive energy sources such as oil and gas.
Gardeners are also extremely concerned with putting something back into the soil and the environment.
Set the height of your tines so that they are approximately 3-15mm above the soil surface (depending on the quality of your lawn). Cut your lawn as normal and leave it until the following day for the grass to recover back into an upright position.
Run your scarifying machine over the surface in two directions at ninety degrees to each other so that you are sure to lift all of the lateral grass up from the surface.
An Englishman's home is his castle and an Englishman's lawn is his life - OK a bit dramatic but a well presented striped lawn is what every man dreams of and aspires to. With this stylish Atco Balmoral workhorse, that quest is easily within your grasp.
Controlling moles in the lawn is not an easy task but that does not mean you should not try.
First of all you cab be flattered that you have moles in the first place. Moles are only present for one thing - worms. Worms are in your lawn because of good organic content and if worms are in your lawn then you will most likely have a nicely aerated root-zone below the grass surface.
I can hear you all mumbling that this is no consolation because the view from the house shows huge mountains of soil.
There is always so much emphasis on how to prepare and maintain the lawn surface but no garden looks good, regardless of the lawn condition, if the edges are looking ropey.
Every so often you will have to cut back and shape the edges so that they look crisp and sharp. A straight edge such as a scaffolding boards is ideal if you have a formal edge to create or a garden line pulled taught over distance will guide you to get the right layout.
Collecting and transporting of leaves, grass mowing's and hedge trimmings is all part of the gardeners work. It is all very well being able to cut the lawn efficiently but wasting time carting the waste to the compost heap can ruin your whole scheduling.
When I first started in domestic garden maintenance there was not the vast array of garden sundry type of accessories that you can buy today.
Moving waste around the garden involved a wheel barrow (even a heavy oak wheel barrow when I started as an apprentice greenkeeper) or a large square of hessian sack cloth.
It may be a little too early to think about a wholesale scarifying session on your lawn but a light grooming is never wasted.
Controlling moles in the lawn is not an easy task but that does not mean you should not try.
There is always so much emphasis on how to prepare and maintain the lawn surface but no garden looks good, regardless of the lawn condition, if the edges are looking ropey.
Raking out lateral grass growth is sometimes all you need to do to keep air and light getting to the soil surface.
Collecting and transporting of leaves, grass mowing's and hedge trimmings is all part of the gardeners work. It is all very well being able to cut the lawn efficiently but wasting time carting the waste to the compost heap can ruin your whole scheduling.
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