Watering your garden is a simple task. Few simpler some might argue. But, like most things, with a couple of simple changes the exercise can be made far more efficient.

Water early.

Nature waters its garden early in the morning. Think dew. There are a number of 'reasons' for this, but here is the elevator lesson.

There is less heat at dawn, so evaporation is lower and plant activity is higher (with stomates open and transpiration not compromised by high heat) so more of the water is used as the gardener intends.

There will be a higher level of UV light before the light decreases again. This reduces the ability of moulds and mildews to take hold in a garden.  Imagine if you took a shower at dawn. The bathroom would be all warm and moist, wouldn't it?
If you shut the bathroom door and left the room still and dark, you would have mildew pretty soon.
But if you could open windows and let lots of light and air in, the problem would be greatly reduced. The same thing happens in your garden. If you water early in the morning, the sun has a chance to get a healthy dose of yeast-killing UV light into the foliage to reduce infection. If you water in the evening, the moisture sits on the plants all night, in the dark, giving infection a greater chance. The short story: water your garden early in the morning.

As always, if you have any questions, shoot me an email (clayton [at] greenowlmowing [dot] com [dot] au

Enjoy your gardens.

Dry summers often mean hours of with the hose or moving sprinklers 'just to keep it all alive'. It can be time consuming, counter productive and with water prices rising it can add up and put pressure on your Christmas holiday budget.
Here are three easy ways to reduce water bills and help give you your evenings back.

1. Shade
Shade is under utilized in many gardens, but it can be a great way to reduce evaporation and the moisture stress in your garden. Trees can be planted to throw shade over susceptible areas. Some varieties grow very quickly and you will see results soon. Others can be bought at an advanced stage and popped straight in to have an instant effect.
Fences can be valuable too. Consider building opaque fences on the western side of your yard, especially if you have sandy soils
Finally your house can be a valuable source of shade, Consider a dense, moisture seeking bed on the eastern side of your house.

2. Watering times
Water in the morning. Plants want it then. The soil is cooler then. The evaporation rate is lower then. Makes sense, doesn't it?

3. Mulch
Point a hairdryer at your skin. It gets hot, doesn't it? Now wrap you skin in damp (not wet) newspaper. You can hold the hairdryer there for a lot longer before it gets dried out and hot, If your skin might be seen as your soil, and your damp newspaper as your mulch you can see the incredible advantages you get. Not to mention the brilliant environment you get for soil microbes. It is easy to do and the kids and pets love it. If you use a really light mulch (like straw or sugar cane), you can give it a quick spray with the hose to help stop it blowing away.


So there you have it. Top tips for reducing water use. Have fun, learn and enjoy!

Hi guys. Everyone is always asking me how to control weeds in their lawns. One client even showed me a bag of chemical that had fertiliser and herbicide in the same pack. She was all set to go until I showed her the active ingredient list. She couldn't believe that she came within minutes of spreading a famously toxic chemical all over the lawn her grandchildren played on.
Most weeds in established lawns arise from a weakening of the lawn species. A healthy lawn will choke out competition, but a weak lawn will allow gaps to open up, encouraging competition in the yard.
A healthy lawn likes to fully recover from each mowing before it is mowed again. If you mow it too soon it will not have recovered, and will be weakened.
The solution is simple. Lift the mower up. Less grass cut means shorter recovery time and that means less opportunity for weeds to get started. Simple, right?
If you want to know more, or just want your weekend back get in touch. Text or call Clayton on 0402253178. Enjoy your garden. It might be the biggest room in your house.

Vegetables are sexy again. Alkaline diets, winter sniffles, The Biggest Loser, Masterchef , there are any number of people telling us how to get our vegetables, how to eat our vegetables, which ones to eat et cetera et cetera blah blah blah.

GYO (Grow Your Own) Vegies is not rocket surgery. Vegies have been growing all by themselves for literally ages. So it really is just a little guidance that you have to offer to get a healthy bounty from your garden.

Vegetables (all plants for that matter) need just four things: Air, sun, water and nutrients. That is it. Finished. So if you go to the nursery or the hardware store and they start trying to load you up with all sorts of lotions and potions and powders and stuff that smells weird my advice to you is to get a second (unbiased) opinion. Remember, they get paid to sell you stuff, not to ask if you need stuff.

Garden beds full of amazing vegies really is easier than you think. It is a simple five step process:

1. Find a site for your garden bed.
You will need a place that gets nice warm sun for much of the day, where water doesn't sit for hours after a massive rain (i.e. it has good drainage).  Most yards have a spot like that somewhere. If there aren't any suitable spots you can grow vegies in pots or the like but we will stick to garden beds here. Growing in pots is for another day.

2. Prepare the bed.
Seeds and seedlings are quite small and weak. They want an easy place to live. If you are a plant, what does easy living look like? Well, it looks just like your dream of comfy. It is soft and warm with plenty to eat. So prepare a soft nutritious garden bed and you on the right track.  It is easy:

• Kill the grass.
  
• Soften the soil.
  
• Add nutrients.
  

Easier than you think. You don't even need a spade. No sweat either. Lay a good thick layer of newspaper down over the area you want to turn into a garden bed. Cardboard is also fine. Water it down so that it doesn't blow away and it is ready to  build a soil biota (soil population of micro organisms) Stopping the lawn from getting light will kill it.

Spread plenty of compost over the newspaper. Kitchen scraps, shredded paper, compost, anything really. If you are patient you can spread  anything (organic)  over it. Sticks and more carbonaceous material will take longer to break down, but if you  are patient, it will become a garden bed eventually. If you use mature compost you can usually plant straight into that. If you use less decomposed material it may take a few weeks or a month to break down enough. That is it! You have a garden bed.

3. Plant your seeds.
 Plant some seeds in it (At a depth of about 2 or 3 times the size of the seed), cover the seed with soil, give it a firm but kind pat and water it with rain water (from your rain water tank). It helps to label the seeds so you know what is germinating and what isn't and also to remember what you have put where. Talk to a more experienced gardener as to what seeds to plant as the seed companies are sometimes a bit generous with their sowing 'windows'. We all love fresh tomatoes but it is no good planting them in late autumn (in Orange anyway).

4. Water and watch.
Different seeds require different moisture levels but a good generally rule is to try to keep the bed a little drier than moist at all times. If moist is right before wet, then try to keep them a little drier than that. In the cooler months that will almost take care of itself. In the summer, a evening stroll with the watering can will be required on most day.

5.Mulch
Mulching is spreading dry carbon-rich material over the bed while still allowing light and moisture to reach you seedlings. It helps retain moisture and keeps competition from weeds to a minimum.

That is it. This process will take a couple of months from lawn to table but it is well worth it. You will learn a lot and get some of the most nutritious food ever for your efforts.  Most of all, enjoy it! There should be no pressure, it should be fun. Start small and as you gain experience and confidence you can enlarge your beds and your crops!

When you start gathering produce from your garden you will wonder how you ever did without it. The time and money you will save will really add up and you new health and vitality will really add a gleam to your eye.

What? A lawnmower? That's right.  Websites and magazines and newspapers and open houses are all fine tools to help sell houses. But if you want to use any of those things to sell your house, you had better start with a lawn mower. 

The front of you house gives people the first impression of your house. First impressions count. How many buyers will choose to come and see your house on open day if they don't like the out side? How many will choose not to?


A picture is worth a thousand words. Your house is going to need to 'put it's face on' as my grandmother used to say. Edges, paths, light, privacy and general tidiness will all be taken into account when your agent is considering whether to promote your home this weekend or not.


The nitty-gritty: Ten jobs you can do to sell your house faster:

1. Mow the lawns.
 Just do it.

2.Trim the edges.
A good trim will really clean up the lines of your garden. It will highlight edging and paving or if your yard is 'nothing special', it can give the buyer the impression that while you are too busy to maintain an amazing garden, you keep the place fastidiously.
 
3.Sweep the paths.
Again, it sets up the buyer to believe the place can look 'like a new pin'.

4.Wash the windows.
You'd be amazed what people try to sell a house looking like. Clean the windows. It will let light in, adding to the feeling of space and warmth. Just the thing to help undecided buyers.

5.Remove any rubbish.
We all have a bit of clutter around. Even buyers do. But they don't want to see it. And telling everyone at a busy open house that the old sofa on the verandah 'is just for the dog to sleep on' won't cut the mustard. Take it to the tip, to the new house or clean it. But just don't leave it sitting there.

6.Fix the fence.
The front fence in particular. If it looks a bit sad, fix it, paint it or pull it down. But a sad front fence is part of a sad first impression.

7. Let the light in.
Pull back the blinds. Clean the windows. Trim the vines and the any low limbs from your trees. These things all help lend an air of light and warmth and space. It can be a big job, but it can make your house look bigger.

8. Highlight the features.
Federation wrought iron? Get the wisteria out of it. Beautifully paved entertaining area? Clean it and keep it weed free. Let your house show off its natural assets.
 
9.Clean out the shed.
Organise your junk. Or put it somewhere else. We all have some special treasures in the shed, but buyers don't want to see them. They want to see how big the shed is. Empty sheds look bigger.

10.Keep your privacy
Careful pruning and trimming can be the difference between living in an oasis and a zoo. Buyers will feel it straight away.

Doing all of these jobs can take a while and may need a bit of elbow grease. But if you do them well, you can really make a difference. And a difference when selling your house can mean thousands of dollars and weeks of your time. Good Luck!

Compost has been beaten up into this big hoopla with dos and don'ts and methods and products and rights and wrongs. It is all a load of rot. Literally.

Compost has become sexy all of a sudden because people are beginning to realise that the food we eat is not always good for us, or our communities, or our planet so they are growing their own. Which is leading people to discover that growing food is not that difficult. You need only a few things: seeds, soil, sun and water.
Compost comes into all of this because compost is natures fertiliser. When leaves fall from trees, when fruit ripens and falls and when animals poo wherever they poo, nature composts all of this stuff into a mixture of substances that have an incredibly rich concentration of plant-soluble nutrients.

All of our new gardeners then realise that this is the magic stuff and want more of it. Then industry steps in and tries to fill that gap, with a lot of the 'nutrient' ending up in bank accounts belonging to compost merchants.

So here we have it: Compost 101

Compost: the natural degradation of organic matter by microscopic organisms. 
Or:
Compost: Really small plants, animals and mushrooms eating your garden and kitchen scraps. Easy. See?

To make compost you need 4 things:
1)A place
2)Some organic matter
3)Some water
4)A rocking chair

Put all of the (2)organic matter in the (1)place and wet it with the (3)water. Then sit in the (4) rocking chair until you have compost.

That is it!

There are more complex methods, which will speed things up, but that is the basic method. We will look at those another time. 

Enjoy your gardens folks. And don't stress! After all, plants kinda already know what to do.

We often get asked about the best way to water a lawn. This has become all the more frequent owing to the dry condtions we have had of late. 

Well, "it ain't rocket surgery" so here we go.

Water your lawn in the morning. Preferably between pre-dawn (that might be a job for those with timers) and about 10AM

Water deeply (put heaps of water on) two or once or twice a week to maintain a healthy roots system and build water stress resilience (tough lawn, not weak sickly lawn)

That's it. They are the basics. Water big and seldom and water in the morning. Your lawn will be healthier, you will use less water, and your lawn will be more resilient so when you go away for an Australia Day barbie, you won't be inviting the Browns to come and live in your front yard.

And that is how we like it. Short and simple.