Landscape Juice

Lawn Mower Safety tips and advice

If I said to you, do not put your hand into the grass ejection shoot at the rear of a rotary lawn mower when the blade is rotating, you would probably feel I was patronising you.

However, both professional and amateur, do lose fingers and sustain serious mutilations to their hand whilst trying to clear damp grass that has blocked the shoot.

Is it time to SELL Weather?

A strange headline you might ask but it is based on an analogy of the stock markets.

There is an 'irrational exuberance' which exists amongst the 'doom sayers' of perceived global warming - if temperature was a commodity price, one could accuse the scaremonger's of ramping up the temperatures to levels that could not be sustained just to 'sell' them short.

Reviewing Baxters Perfect Edge

Wading through the news which plopped into my inbox this morning, I noticed an item about Baxters Perfect Edge - garden border and edging system.

I have seen a lot of 'useful' tools, come and go over the years, and I am not entirely sure what category this one comes into.

Is it a useful gardening aid - On the face of it, using the special train track assembly, this looks as though it can provide an easy to assemble and consistent system for getting good repetitive edge results.

Biofuels to take flight on its Virgin Debut

I note, with interest, the first ever flight by a commercial airliner, is set to get off the ground, when Virgin, the Richard Branson owned airline, flies from London to Amsterdam, partly fuelled by Biofuel.

It will be another small step, in the worlds quest to steer away from the dependence on oil, but what impact will this have on the world in terms of farming and food production?

Rob McGee and Son - Landscapers Kent

I have a little apology to make!

James at RMS Landscapes, sent me an email and asked that their company could be listed in my directory.

Of course I said and duly added the details - and there the details rested, unpublished, since the 5th of February.

So James, I hope that you receive a few enquiries now and please accept my sincere apologies for my error.

Treating Peach Leaf Curl - Taphrina deformans

It looks as though I have missed the opportunity to treat my Peach Tree for Peach Leaf Curl ~ Taphrina deformans.

The extremely warm dry weather has caused the buds to burst very early which means that any treatment will be largely non effective.

What I should have done late last summer, was to spray all of the tree, copiously, with a Copper fungicide such as Bordeaux mixture, before the leaves had turned for Autumn.

The Lawn Society grows legs

I am back from my trip to the UK having spent a couple of days brainstorming with Mike Seaton at Grass Clippings and The Lawn Company.

Mike is also the founder of The Lawn Society and we spent a considerable amount of time on building a strategy for taking the The Lawn Society forward.

Landscape Juice visits Grass Clippings

I am going to have to apologise in advance if there is a little vacuum and silence from my keyboard.

I am off to Blighty this afternoon (Sunday) for meetings and fact finding for the company I work for and I am not sure that I am going to have time to post. I will have access to a computer but it depends on the workload when I am there.

Sudden Death Oak Syndrome hits National Trust for Scotland properties

The BBC reports the spread of the Sudden Death Oak Syndrome into Scotland, has claimed two of the National Trust for Scotland's gardens as well as two other private gardens.

Phytophthora ramorum, also known as Sudden Oak Death, was first discovered in the United States but until recently hasn't affected Scotland - although several cases of the disease have previously been detected in England and Wales as far back as 2002.

Patio heaters set to be banned on environmental fears

Patio heaters are set to be banned from the garden under a new European directive.

Friends of the Earth call them 'Carbon-belching monstrosities' claiming that a patio heater giving out 12.5KW expends the same amount of energy as making 5,200 cups of tea.