-Promila Chaturvedi
Mulch your garden
• After mowing your lawn spread the cut grass in shrubbery and over the tree base. It slows down the water evaporation.
• Do not throw away your garden waste. Compost it and use it in shrubbery, flowerbeds and on tree basin to cover. Even without composting you can use the dry leaves and other fine material to cover the area near plant roots.
• Do not throw away kitchen waste. It can easily be composted. And in hot weather within a month's time the compost is ready to mulch your plants.
• Cow dung manure or other compost, which is available in the market, is also used for mulching the garden plants.
• Tree bark, if available, is used as mulch.
• In some cases pebbles are also used for mulching.
• Plants like tradescantias and buddleias are also used.
Beautiful Garden with minimum use of water
• Use of sprinkler Irrigation system and Drip Irrigation sharply reduce the water requirement. Though it is viable in gardens of bigger size.
• When garden is getting developed, try to install these systems at the same time. Once garden features are made get the Irrigation and drip system installed. Get the plantation and grassing completed.
• With drip use there will be almost no weeds in plants, while sprinklers not only irrigate the garden with less water but the plants and trees will look fresh and clean.
• A chemical-Agro Absorb- is also available in the market. It reads “add it to the soil and rake it and water the ground.” It is said “ It reaches the roots of the plants- while plants are watered it becomes some what like jelly and does not allow water to
dry quickly”.
( Picture: tradescantia)