Image by mccready via Flickr

Creating a walkway to the backyard, the front door or even just to the garage is a great opportunity to put an exclamation point to your beautiful landscaped yard and highlight your home at the same time. Using pre-cut pavers offers you the most choice in color and material as well as shape and cost. Pavers come in concrete, brick and stone and in more colors and styles then you will believe, so plan on spending a good deal of time matching the perfect material to your landscaping.

Adding definition to your yard will help the flower gardens ans shrubs pop, and set your yard into many different and interesting areas for people to view and spend time in. I’ve seen some yards where the owner has cut pavers into small sizes and edged their entire yard with a minimal boarder, it really shines.

It’s a good idea to choose the color, shape and material from actual samples to ensure you know what the finished project will really look like. We have an outdoor showcase garden at our Goffstown office that you can wander around in which will help you see examples already installed, stop on over and check it out.

Mulch As Frame

If you are familiar with the colors of the flowers in your yard you might think about framing them in a colorful mulch that will make them pop even more. You might be surprised at how much brighter the blossoms appear when surrounded with a contrasting shade of mulch.

The Ruth Bancroft Gardens

Reading the Mercury News I came across a nice story about how Ruth Bancroft created her gardens in California, it also has a nice slideshow accompanying it. Check it out, Ruth Bancroft Garden getting a face-lift

Related posts:

1. Your Landscaping Questions Answered
2. Mulch Creates Beauty While Adding Nutrients

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It was a busy week this week, what with homeowners chomping at the bit because spring is finally here and we can see the ground. Everyone want to get into their gardens, start raking winter’s debris from under bushes and get to the work of finishing last years unfinished landscaping projects.

Tom Watson recently published a short Q&A about organic compost over at the Seattle Times that I think you might find informative. The Q&A is entitled “Compost’s organic enhancement a natural for gardens It’s a long title for a short piece, check it out and while your at it check out the article here on our site about home composting. it’s a three part piece we hope you’ll like.

Many people recycle their glass, plastic and paper but what do we do with the food waste if we are not already into creating our own compost? There is a slowing growing trend of treating food scraps just like other waste to be recycled. In Rhode Island I recently read about the Mobile Organic Resource Procurement Hub or MORPH as it is called. It’s a light weight mobile compost bin. Click on the link just above for more information on how businesses and home owners are saving space in landfills and creating compost at the same time.

Related posts:

1. Home Composting – The Fun Way To Organic Gardening (part 2)
2. Home Composting – The Fun Way To Organic Gardening

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Mulch has that unique ability to stabilize not only the visual aspects of your landscaped area but it also stabilizes and nurtures the soil that it covers as it discomposes. It’s easy to forget the benifits you and your soil derive when you practice a well thought out mulching plan for your yard.

We all see the beauty of surrounding trees, shrubs, flower beds, walkways, driveways, vegetable patches, fountains, statues and buildings with generous layers of mulch. The thought and work we put in during the spring weekends leading to summer will open up our landscaped yard to neighborhood praise and smiles from people passing by.

Underneath the mulch the environmental benefits are taking place. Those layers of mulch are helping to control soil erosion and retain moisture, Mulch also helps the soil breathe by slowing the rate of compaction and helping to retain the soil itself. Weeds under mulch will grow at a significantly reduced rate and mulch provides rich nutrients for the soil all the while helping to create a more stable home for the worms, insects and microbes so important to a healthy soil and environment.

Walkways and Driveways

Spring brings out all those nasty cracks and heaves in our driveways and walkways we had forgotten about all winter. It may be a good time to start thinking of using Permeable Pavers to do both the driveway and the walkways. Permeable Pavers allow for the rain and moisture to easily travel into the ground and not build up pockets underneath or on top of the surfaces.

Ann Lovejoy writes a nice piece about pavers and planting entitled Sustainable garden path and driveway paving that you might finding both helpful and enjoyable as you make your spring construction decisions. And Don’t forget to drop over to our office to check out our extensive line of pavers for all your landscaping needs.

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With spring  just around the corner (in spite of yesterday’s little snow storm) it is a great time to refresh your best mulch practices before you grab a rake and head out to care for your gardens and landscaped areas.

I’m have no idea where the term Mulch Volcano came from but it does a good job of describing the scenario that can develop quickly if you apply mulch too thickly around the trunks of trees and shrubs. Landscapers, arborists and gardeners have seen over the last few years a huge increase in the number of people who pile mulch too deeply and snugly around trees and shrubs and they warn homeowners that this practice can lead to the rot and disease of the trees if left untended. It does not kill the trees immediately but over a few years it may cause irreparable damage.

A Mulch volcano traps moisture around the trees bark increasing the likelihood of rot, the temperature can rise to 140 degrees on hot days and mold starts to develop. What may look good to the homeowner becomes a dark moist area endangering the trees and shrubs.

As you all know we are big proponents of mulching and done correctly it lowers maintenance costs, it also reduces the chance of damage from lawn and weed trimmers straying too close to trees and shrubs. Mulch gives gardens and landscaped areas an even and well-cared for look.

Stop by our office with your mulch questions and to look around at our extensive selection of mulches. And for a great little article about Yoshino cherry trees and the coming of spring check out the piece from the Charlotte Observer.

Related posts:

1. A Few Mulch & Landscaping Thoughts
2. Mulch Ground Cover

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Mulch is without a doubt beneficial to your landscaping ecosystem, it retains ground moisture and adds much needed nutrients to the soil, but it can also lead to some unintended things like root rot if you are not careful when you spread the mulch around. I came across a quick article For The Tree’s Sake: Much Ado About Mulching that encapsulates the subject really well, check it out when you get a second.

News from Minnesota, a group of students from the University of Minnesota get on buses and travel to 5 different cities, sounds like they are following a concert tour right? We all could be excused if we thought it was a caravan during spring break but what they are really doing is community service and as the article Students on Spring Break Trade Surf  for Turf lets us know is that this spring they helped rehab the nature areas of a summer camp. Now this is something every community should explore, using volunteer students to help maintain parks, public gardens and nature areas especially during these tight budget times.

I’ve heard of people who spend all their spare time making homemade beer or restoring furniture but Mulching? An article on the Southeast Missourian entitled The Call of Mulch caught my eye and I dropped everything to explore it. The author Brad Hollerbach shares with us his need to mulch and mulch some more, it’s an enjoyable article that will make you smile and a few of you I’m sure share his need to mulch.

Related posts:

1. Your Landscaping Questions Answered
2. Mulch Ground Cover

If you have spent anytime on our website either looking for products or reading the blog you know I write quite a lot about mulch and I do this because I love mulch. Mulch is not just a great way to add beauty and health to any landscaping project it also is a great way to recycle those things left over after a storm or clenaing up after a long winter.

Recently the good people in Australia had a huge cyclone name Yasi hit their beautiful continent. The Cyclone create much damage and our thoughts go out to all those whose lives where disrupted by this huge storm. Yesterday I came across an article about what was being done with all the debris the storm caused. It seems “Cassowary Coast Regional Council has collected 160,000 cubic meters of green waste.” this is a huge amount of waste being turned into mulch. Read more here Yasi and Mulch

Related posts:

1. Mulch Ground Cover

In New England landscaping takes place for only a few short months but the conversation and planning of layouts and design go on year round. Looking at the the trends for 4 words over the last seven years shows a growing interest in mulch and compost while interest in pavers seems to be waning and loam stays at the bottom of the pile with little or no interest growth.

The top 5 countries searching for mulch are listed below.

1. United States
2. Australia
3. Canada
4. United Kingdom
5. Germany

The top 10 US. Metro areas search for these keywords.

1. Columbus, OH
2. Raleigh NC
3. Indianapolis, IN
4. Cincinnati, OH
5. Cleveland, OH
6. Philadelphia, PA
7. Reston, VA
8. Atlanta, GA
9. Washington, DC
10. St Louis, MO

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Make Home Composting A Family Activity
Going back to grass roots of family living can include home composting. In addition to the scientific process that children and adults will learn, there is also the joy of the family unity involved in taking on home composting. Make construction of a composting enclosure a family project. Follow up by drawing up a list of regular items that can be added to the home composting pile. Allow children to take part in researching the kinds of compostables that will achieve the best results. Since all of the ingredients are organic, there’s no worry of toxicity or hazard to kids health.

The Family Plan For Action For Home Composting
The most important decision to be made before the family can begin a home composting project is to decide where it will be located. A composting bin needs the advantages of all of nature’s elements to do its best work. In addition, the location should be appear to be as much a part of the home landscape as a garden shed. Keep this consideration in mind so that the composting bin doesn’t appear to be an alien entity in the middle of a beautifully tended lawn or garden. Give your composting bin the respect it deserves. After all, it’s providing a higher quality environment and saving you money. Home composting, as a regular process, has the potential to rebuild troublesome lawns and flowers that regularly suffer from lack of nutrients. These are important points to share when beginning a family plan of action for home composting. Children learn to view nature in its intended form and adults provide their family with an opportunity to raise environmental awareness.

The End Result Of The Toils Of Composting
Transferring the first crop of finely degraded composting materials into the lawn or garden is the highlight of the entire composting process. Some composters love composting so much that they often have several composting bins. This depends on the amount of compostables that will be available. For the average family of four, one composting bin is usually sufficient. This also will depend on the size of the composting enclosure. Generally, most composting enclosures are about the size of a standard industrial trash barrel. Use home compost in spring when turning over a new lawn. Or, compost can be added to the garden in weeks before the first seeds are planted. Save your Styrofoam egg cartons and fill with composted soil to start seedlings in late winter or early spring. House plants also love a little refresher of composted soil. Remove the house plants from their pots. Next, blend the potting soil with composted soil and then simply re-pot. Watch the house plants go wild with delight.

Make A Gift Of Your Home Compost
If you’ve got a friend who is an avid gardener and you can never seem to find the right gift, maybe a ten pound bag of your home compost might be appreciated. Purchase a plain burlap bag, add your own personal logo on a medium-sized swatch of country gingham fabric and add a large bow to make a truly unusual gift that will likely never be forgotten.

Read More: Part One

Related posts:

1. Home Composting – The Fun Way To Organic Gardening (part 2)
2. Home Composting – The Fun Way To Organic Gardening

How To Begin
Keep in mind that composting materials should be organic enough to break down with gentle persuasion and a turn of the spade. You’ll want a good mix of gritty type organic materials like coffee grinds that can blend easily with several kinds of vegetable peels and skins. Avoid getting seeds from vegetables or fruits into the composting mix. These will definitely sprout in the compost pile under the right blend of conditions. Save the ash from the fireplace or outdoor barbecue so long as no other inorganic chemicals have been used such as those that start a fire. Ash has a good silica value as well as nitrogen. Instead of trashing paper from the home paper shredder, add it to the compost mix. Just be sure to include only shredded print that has no color ink dyes or the purity of the composting organic matter will be compromised.

The Turn Of The Spade
If there is one thing a compost pile loves, it’s aeration. This just means using a spade or tined garden fork to turn the pile once every three or four weeks depending on temperatures. A compost pile needs a cover to prevent too much moisture from disintegrating the mix. The simplest way to build a compost enclosure is to purchase 4 pre-formed, unfinished wooden posts about 4 feet in height and several yards of mesh screening. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. Place the posts deep into the ground at least 6 inches. If stormy washouts are a regular problem, consider using quick dry cement at the base of the posts to hold them firmly into the ground.

The cover can be a tarp or something more elaborate. Just be sure it will be a cover that allows for easy access to your home composting pile. One tip is to save that worn clear vinyl shower curtain and cut it to fit the enclosure. Clean vinyl encourages penetration of the sun rays as well as helping to retain moisture.

Let Nature Take Its Course And Tend Your Home Composting Pile
All the fun of the compost pile is watching nature do the work for you. A good blend of sun, air and moisture will always be the most reliable agents that will create the desired result. Don’t forget to add your autumn leaves, twigs and grass clippings to your composting pile. Turn, turn, turn compost after any new additions so that air circulates plentifully throughout the compost pile. Don’t worry if winter is a tad harsh. The compost pile needs the extremes of temperatures if it is going to chemically react in balance with the elements of nature.

The Indestructible Compost Pile
So long as the compost enclosure is sturdily constructed, the forces of nature will keep the contents intact. It takes patience to see the final result of your composting work. There’s no magic wand that will degrade the composting mix in less than the time it takes to blink. Composting is, after all, an organic chemical science. Certain ingredients may hasten the process. This faster breakdown indicates a good balance between gritty types of composting ingredients and those that can degrade quickly. Using leaves and grass clipping as the neutralizing agent for odors is a good idea. By itself, grass clippings may be pretty odorous. In a compost mix, grass clippings add a certain level of chlorophyll. The same is true of ash as a form of sodium carbonate.

Read More: Part Three Composting and you might find Mulch Basics informative.

Related posts:

1. Home Composting – The Fun Way To Organic Gardening
2. Your Landscaping Questions Answered

Unless you have 100 people living under your roof you will never produce enough compost to meet all your gardening and landscaping needs, but that should not be a barrier to jumping into the composting game. Composting offers many rewards beyond just a wheelbarrow full of dark rich nutrient soil.

I’m presenting this Composting Primer in 3 parts over the next week, and I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Home Composting

Most avid gardeners are also avid do-it-your-selfers who love nothing better than a full-circle system of tending their landscape. They love the idea that nothing is ever wasted and that they can reduce gardening costs while creating a safe, organic place of enjoyment. This is where home composting fits in perfectly and why composting is a growing trend. To many old timers who have always composted, this trend may seem strange. To newbies of the gardening world, it can begin as a passing fancy until the home composting way of life proves to be a wonderful new form of encapsulating a deeper kinship with nature.

The Compost Pile In The Garden of Eden
Home composting likely began in the days when regular waste disposal was, as yet, unorganized. Or, when Mrs. Neanderthal told Mr. Neanderthal to take out the garbage that ended up on a pile consisting of bones, veggies and other leftovers on some prehistoric lava mound. Then, letting nature take its course meant the elements would return all of that to a fine, silky black soil, the cycle of ecology notwithstanding.

Today’s Home Composting
Today’s home composting needn’t be just another chore added to all the others, if one develops the right attitude of the recycling life. It may be time for a needed change in attitudes to bring about the home composting process as a valuable ritual. Feel guilty each time another compostable is added to the kitchen garbage can. Assess how much of what is disposed of could be returned from whence it came. This is how to adopt the right home composting attitude.

Next, consider the other trash cans throughout the home. Even newspaper has its value to a home composting regimen. Frequent reminders of the pristine soil and beautiful flowers and trees in the backyard or front yard achieved as a result of careful home composting may be necessary. All the joy of mastering home composting skills and innovative techniques is that handful of lovely black soil that was once compostable garbage. Think dollars too when you think of home composting. Imagine the savings on potting soil and fertilizer you’ll enjoy. Perhaps, nothing may be as rewarding to the senses as knowing how simple, easy and fun home composting can be, not to mention the exercise, fresh air and sunshine as an added benefit.

Read More: Home Composting Part Two

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