4 Useful Hand Tools Help You Take Care of The Garden (down)

3. Loosing Soil / Scarification



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)

How to Prune Garden Shrubs?

Garden shrubs can be generally divided into view of three types as flower viewing shrub, fruit viewing shrub and branches viewing shrub, and different shrubs should taken different . pruning methods.

Shrubs grow for viewing flowers, commonly there are jasminum nudiflorum, forsythia, xanthina, Bauhinia, cloves and so on, and their flower buds are formed on the branches in the first year, so the prune job should be carried out after flowering in May and June.

Summer pruning should be carried out mainly with purpose of thinning branches and trimming shapes, cutting out crossed branches, leggy branches, dense branches, insect pest branches and dead branches, to facilitate ventilation and light transmission, so that make nutrient more concentrated; Remained flower branches may be shorten thus to help them grow more rapidly, which is also benefit for its flowering in the coming year.

For summer flowering shrubs such as roses, hibiscus, Chinese wolfberry, crape myrtle, etc., which are generally blossomed out on new shoots grow in the spring of that year, so the pruning job should be carried out after defoliation in the winter. Cut off too dense branches, dead branches and pest branches etc.

When thinning branches the stubs can not be left too long, generally should cut begin from the branching point, cutting with an inclination angle of 45 °, the incision should be kept smooth. Weak branches should be cut heavily while heavy branches should be cut lightly, 4-6 buds may be remained on each branch, the rest be cut off partly.

When pruning shrubs growing both for viewing flowers and viewing fruits, keep branches 5cm-20cm left, the rest part be cut off, thus to facilitate it grow more new branches in the next year.

* Original post: The Garden of Eden for Gardeners (Garden Tools World)