An Official Publication of Property Services. Volume 1,No.2
With the high cost of BMW's , higher minimum payments on the charge cards, and all the weekend activities where one must make an appearance, you hardly have time to perform the ritual of "yard work". Then again, one must keep up the yard for the sake of appearance. A few realization tips and some seasonal planning might be the ticket you need so you can tell everyone else that you had it done professionally.
You must begin and you must continue to landscape with patience and a total realization that your overall plan will take time for you to achieve what you want.
You must take care of what you have already previously landscaped. The homeowner must realize that living planting are like people with distinct personalities (they like the shade, or the Sun, lots or watering or little watering). Landscape Gardening is based in eighty percent common sense, ten percent science and ten percent plant knowledge. To explain the 8-10-10 method take for instance the most common plant in Virginia. The flowering dogwood. Everyone loves them, everyone wants them, everyone tries to plant one, few get them to live. Getting them to live is not hard if one applies the 80-10-10 method.
 | First before you go buy one, apply the 80 percent common sense. Ask yourself where do dogwoods grow best? |
| Of course, in the woods-but they do not grow in the deep woods, they are on the edge of the woods so they rely on the shade of other trees but they will get enough sun. Are the woods fertile? |
| Yes, have you ever seen anyone rake the woods? So there is plenty of topsoil and compost. |
| Do they grow in wet areas? No, they are not a creek tree like the weeping willow. In fact, when they get too much water the leaves can wilt. So what do we do? |
| Water it. The tree dies. |
Eighty percent common sense relating to its natural growth pattern. Ten percent science knowledge such as that it can wilt when watered too much puts the 80-10-10 method to work.
The objective of this column is to get rid of old methods so it does not seem like work. We will in the coming articles share some of our short cut secrets.
If you enjoyed the first basic lesson on realization gardening, I will give you one more before I pass on the tip of the month and the "to do list" until our next newsletter. Realization Gardening...it takes twenty years to mature a tree to call it shade. Four years to grow a plant to call it a shrub. One year to grow ground covers to call it established and unweedy...ten days to germinate grass to call it a lawn and twenty minutes to plant a rooted annual to call it a flower. So like most people we grow grass and plant a tree only when we sell the house even though a mature tree is worth $2000 to your home. When you look in the Homes Magazine does it say "mature trees" or "well maintained"? The best time to plant a tree is yesterday.
Water, water, water, due to the heat this summer and the very little rain we received, the water table is very low even for mature plants. Water is a root insulator to the cold and trees and plants can freeze and even die. Your best method is a slow trickle from the hose at the base of the tree for the entire time of a Saturday or Sunday football game.
This is your only shot to put in Spring bulbs-use a little fertilizer in the mixed soil you put back in the home, bone meal is only good in dog biscuits.
| Transplant trees & shrubs while they are dormant. |
| Spray your azaleas for lace bugs, this is the worst time for infestation. |
| Post up herbs and place in a sunny window. |
There are so many new gardening things to try now and once established it goes from work to fun. We hope the future gardening articles will help you tackle some of the things you want to accomplish and hope they will be written differently so you allow your own input to your yard. Realization Gardening will give you chances to try things new and to keep your leaves--start a compost pile-however the leaves must be broken up in order to decompose. In the next few years you will see many companies selling compost.