There are many benefits of loosing soil for flowers and plants: One is to avoid surface hardening of potted earth; Second is benefits breathing of plants; Third is can removing or blending pollutions on the pot surface.
In general, before loosing soil, you need to take a watering to the plant enough, take a throughout watering, and wait the surface of potted soil turn to dry by 70-80 percent, then do the job of loosing soil.
As for plants with short roots the loosing should be carried rather shallowly, while for long roots and ordinary roots the loosing should be carried more deeper, usually to 3 cm is appropriate. Not enough watering will cause earth hardening easily, at this time you may add some fermented sawdust, coal ash etc. when loosing.
During cold days in winter, it is not good to break ground, it is best to wait until spring comes, otherwise the roots will be damaged in cold weather. When you want to loose the soil of potted flowers, you may use a bamboo or wood slice or a small rake and wait the soil become half-dry after watering, the depth is subject to seeing the root. At the same time you may cut off some roots of the surface, thus to facilitate the germination of new roots.
Flower shovels and rakes can both used for loosing soil, you may choose different size tools subject to different objects(potted plants or ground training plants). For ground training plant with rather bigger size, you may use a hoe or rake, while for small potted plants you may choose a small flower shovel or a small rake.
You may buy some mini garden tool sets from Beijing Laitai Flowers Store and Shanghai Yike Home Gardening Store, you can found some rakes with very small bodies, even mini-pot is also applicable.
4. Clean Up Dead Leaves
Dead leaves fallen on the ground in autumn and winter, will inevitably undermine the overall impression of the garden, you need to remove them timely. The dead leaves you collected together can be made compost, use it as manure for the next year.
In addition, some fallen leaves were caused by pests, it they had not been cleaned up timely, it may cause germs infection on other plants or other parts of the plant, it is necessary to be removed timely.
Tools for cleaning up dead leaves is very simple, a piece of 9 teeth rake is enough.
(Finished)
* Original post: The Garden of Eden for Gardeners (Garden Tools World)
