Looking after your Lawn in Winter

After a long absence due to the start of term at university, I returned home last weekend to see my family. It was also the perfect time to tidy up the lawn before the worst of the winter begins. Not many people are aware of some key steps that need to be done to keep your lawn healthy during the winter, affectionately known as “putting your garden to bed”. In this post I’ll cover the most important (and surprisingly simple) things that you can do to keep your garden healthy.

Mowing

You should really try to not mow your lawn at all over the winter period. An important exception is if you get a period of unusually warm combined with damp weather, similar to the weather we had last week (around Halloween), with late October temperatures as high as 23^oC. Even under these circumstances, you only want to take about a third to a quarter of the growth off, leaving the grass at a height of at least 2 – 3 inches.

Feeding

You should also try to not feed your lawn at all in the winter months. If the lawn is fed, then it will start to grow to heights which it can’t sustain in low levels of sunlight, causing it to die. The best is to just eave the lawn to its own devices, as bits of decaying leaves should provide enough nutrients to sustain the grass.

Objects/leaves on the grass

With grass it is important to try to keep it exposed to light as much as possible, and this is especially important in winter with low levels of sunlight. Garden furniture like tables, trampolines and children’s play houses (for example) will all need to be regularly moved around to give all of your lawn good sunlight exposure. Leaves on the lawn will also need to be regularly raked away. If left for too long, the grass won’t get enough sunlight and so will die. Although in the summer months grass takes very little time to re-grow, grass that dies in the winter months won’t re-grow until at least the autumn, leaving your lawn looking brown and patchy for the spring and summer.

Jack's final thoughts and recommendations 

After the winter months, the first time I give my lawn a first light mow, taking only about half of the grass off, in early March. Make sure that you do it on a dry day, and don’t go overboard with the amount of grass you take off. Give the grass a little bit of time to get going, and then give it a cut about 2 weekends after. You should then continue to cut it about twice a month. I hope this guide helps you prepare your grass for the winter ahead, and will leave you with a healthy lawn next spring.

Raised Flower Bed Construction Part 2: Piecing it together and Painting

About 3 weeks ago now I posted up the first part of two blog posts describing how to build a raised flower bed. In the first part I covered getting the materials you need and putting the planning in place to be ready to start building and in this part I will cover actually building the bed and then painting it.

Piecing it together:

After going through the first blog post, you should now have all the materials and a plan to build the flower bed. As a reminder, these are the materials that I have ready to start building with, along with where in the bed they will go:

• 12 x 1m cut from the long boards, 8 for the long sides and 4 for the base
• 8 x 37.5cm cut from the longboards, 4 for each short side
• 4 x 42.5cm cut from the short boards, for the legs of the flower bed.

The next step is to get the tools ready that will be needed for building the flower bed, and are relatively simple tools to get a hold of:

• A drill to screw the boards together (I used a Black & Decker impact driver)
• Screws, both long (about 6 - 8 cm long) and short (about  3 - 5cm long)
• I also used a smaller drill to pre-drill the holes so the screws would go in easier and are less likely to split of damage the wood.

Now we’re finally ready to start the actual building! Although all the getting prepared does take a while, it’s absolutely necessary to ensure the building process goes well and gives you the best looking flower bed at the end. I decided to write this part of the blog as a sort of list/set of instructions to help you follow the process I went through as I built the bed.

1. The first thing to build is the two longer side walls for the bed. These were made out of four 1m boards and two 42.5cm boards each. The 42.5cm boards are the legs for the bed, and are used as the supports to screw the four 1m boards together, as shown below. I used two screws to screw each side board onto the leg board, the positions of which are shown as the black dots on the diagram.

    

   The side panel for the flower bed.

   A small gap is left between the top of the leg board and the top of the side board, as this allows the top of the leg to be covered in soil and so make the bed look nicer. When doing this ensure that the gaps are the same height, as this will mean that all the legs will be the same height.
2. Once the long side walls are made, it’s now time to connect them together. This is done using the 8 x 37.5cm boards, with 4 used at each end. As these boards are the same height as the boards used on the two longer sides and so care should be taken while building to ensure all the boards line up around the outside. You should now be left with what looks like a flower bed, minus a bottom part.

   

   Attaching the end panels to the long side panels.

3. The last step in the construction process is to attach the bottom panels. For my flowerbed, the bottom panels needed a small corner taken out to allow them to fit around the legs of the bed. The panels were first attached by screwing them to the side panels. This isn’t a very study method to join them, so I built a support rail that fitted to the bottom of the inside of the flower bed and attached to the side panels and bottom panels to give a more secure fit. With this, the flower bed construction is complete! Only one step remaining now…

Painting:

Painting the flowerbed is often ignored by people as unimportant, but sealing the wood to prevent it from rotting is key to the longevity of the bed. For mine, I used Hazel brown Ronseal woodland colours paint. This is a one coat paint, and painted on very easily with a simple brush to give a nice medium brown colour. After giving the bed time to dry, I moved it to its final position in the garden, ready to have some lovely daisies and lavender planted in it.

Painting the beds to protect them from rot.

Bed in its final position with the first daisies planted in.

Raised Flower Bed Construction Part 1: Parts, Planning and Preparation

About two weeks ago now I was tasked with the construction of four raised flower beds for a back garden. I have no real experience building these kinds of things, but with some help from friends and books I successfully built them. The process requires some planning and the right tools, but is easily do-able by anyone, so I thought I’d write my building process for one of the beds up as a blog post to anyone who’d like to learn. Good luck with the construction!

Parts:

The first thing I did was find out what materials I had to build the raised beds with. There was a cedar wood pallet left over from bringing in materials from a job earlier this summer with good quality, not rotting wood. I took the pallet apart with a crowbar, leaving me with 14 long pieces (2.5m long, 7.5cm wide and 2cm deep) and 5 short pieces (1.2m long, 9cm wide and 3.5cm deep).  As the flower bed I was building was going to be relatively small, this was all the wood that I needed.

Getting the pieces of wood ready to go

Planning:

The flower bed was going to be positioned on a raised decking area, in a space 1.7m wide between two steps to different doors, and could also be no more than half a metre tall or away from the wall, as it would get in the way of people walking.

This part of the construction process is unfortunately quite difficult to explain using a blog, but you have to try and design the flower bed in a way to optimize both how good it looks where it’s positioned, and also to optimize the usage of materials available to you. This optimizing of materials is a very important part, as it will allow you to save money by limiting the amount of waste or additional material that needs to be bought. In this example, I settled on the following design:

Side on view of the bed with my plan for the size of the walls.

Top down view of the bed, the green rectangles are the legs that hold the structure together and raise the bed off the ground.

The majority of the planning I did when I was actually designing the bed was through sketching in a simple school-esque exercise book with a pencil. Although my drawing skills are worse than a new born baby, sketches are still an incredibly powerful tool. They let your mind really work through the problem, and gives you a solid blueprint in place to work off.

This would require the following materials to be cut:

• 12 x 1m cut from the long boards, 8 for the long sides and 4 for the base
• 8 x 37.5cm cut from the long boards, 4 for each short side
• 4 x 42.5cm cut from the short boards, for the legs of the flower bed

Using these measurements allowed me to cut 2 x 1m and 1 x 37.5cm out of each long board, helping to minimise any wasted materials. The legs of the flower bed will be positioned at each of the 4 for corners of the bed, and will create the basic structure for the side boards to attach to, and will also raise the bed off the floor.

Preparation:

Most of being prepared to start the job is about having the materials and tools you need ready for the job. The main equipment I will use are split into 2 sections, the tools I need to cut the wood planks, and the tools I need to put the flower bed together.

Tools to cut and shape the wood into the required shapes:

• A rip saw to cut up the wood (although a hand saw works perfectly fine too at home)
• Tape measure to measure out the pieces
• Pencil to mark the wood for cutting

Rip saw set up and ready to go!

Tools I need to put the flower bed together:

• A drill to screw the boards together (I used a Black & Decker impact driver)
• Screws, both long (about 6 - 8 cm long) and short (about  3 - 5cm long)
• I also used a smaller drill to pre-drill the holes so the screws would go in easier and were less likely to split of damage the wood.

Although this doesn't seem like much, these simple bits and pieces are all that’s required to put the bed together.

Using the rip saw to cut up the wood pieces:

To anyone who isn't familiar with a rip saw, it’s basically a chainsaw attached to a moving arm that can be brought down to cut narrow pieces of wood. The main use of it in this project was to cut the pieces of wood to size. Mostly due to the loud noise, the rip saw can be a daunting tool to use, but with a bit of practise you’ll get the hang of it in no time. Here are some of my helpful tips to using the rip saw.

• The first thing to do is make sure that the rip saw is set up in a secure area. I placed mine on the floor, and buried it a bit in the gravel, to ensure it wasn't moving anywhere.
• The second step is to cut the wood. Measure out one board to cut, and then use this board as the template for all of the other boards. Then, even if this first board is out by a few cm, all the other boards will be of a similar length so everything is still fine.
• When you line up the cutting mark on the board to the rip saw, line it up with the rip saw switched off. This may seem obvious, but it’s often easy to get carried away with how quick the sawing is going, and slip while lining it up and put a finger through the saw.
• Cut through the wood slowly. Although it might be tempting to just wiz the saw straight through the plank of wood, doing it too quickly may result in the board splitting apart and breaking. The key thing is to take your time while cutting through the wood.
• Once the piece of wood has been but through, keep the saw on when you lift it up from the wood, to prevent the wood getting stuck to the rip saw on the way out.

With these simple steps it’s very easy to cut through the wood needed for the flower bed.

Getting the wood ready to be chopped up

The wood ready to be put together into a flower bed

You should now have all of your materials ready and waiting to turn into your own raised flower bed. In my next blog, I’ll go through the stages of actually piecing your flower bed together.

Lawn Mowers: Ride On vs Walk Behind

Having used both a ‘ride on’ and ‘walk behind’ lawn mower for clients of Carmichael Gardening Services, I began comparing which was better for mowing lawns. Lawn mowers are a unanimous tool of choice for gardeners with all types of lawn and garden, and with such a bewildering choice of mowers out there, I thought I’d offer this simple guide to humble lawn mower.

There are essentially two main types of lawn mower. Ride on lawn mowers tend to look like large go karts with a large cutting blade underneath, whereas walk behind mowers have a smaller cutting blade that propels itself, but that you guide by walking behind it.

Most of the lawns I mow for Carmichael Gardening tend to be quite large, usually around 100 metres long by 20 metres wide, and so I will use this size of garden to discuss the advantages of each type.

Using a ride on lawn mower

Much faster cut time than a walk behind mower:

• Much larger cutting blade (usually twice as large) so can cut twice the area in the same number of lengths
• Has a self-propelled engine that isn’t hindered by walking speed, and so can travel up to 10 mph
• Means a large lawn will typically only take up to an hour to cut.

However, ride on lawn mowers don’t collect the cut grass, and rather unceremoniously spew cut grass back out onto the lawn. If you want a clean looking lawn, this can then result in a number of hours of raking to clean the lawn of the cuttings. 

Using a walk behind lawn mower

The main advantage I find with using a walk behind mower is the higher quality of cut:

• The smaller mower and slower travel speed cut the grass much more evenly, and don’t leave any tufts of uncut grass behind
• The smaller mower and slower travel speed cut the grass much more evenly, and don’t leave any tufts of uncut grass behind
• This means you often don’t need to go round the garden again, whereas using a ride on often results in having to go back around the garden with a strimmer to get in the corners.

They are also much cheaper to run and operate:

• They consume far less petrol than the ride on mowers for cutting the same areas, which is good for the environment and for your wallet
• Walk behind mowers are also much easier to have repaired, as if they break down or need a service, they often can fold up into the back of a saloon size car and can be taken to a repair shop
• Ride on mowers on the other hand need to be picked up and taken away by a specialist engineer, which is a pain as it takes much longer and can also be quite expensive.

Of course, the main disadvantage is it does take more time and effort to cut the lawn using a walk behind, and they often struggle to cut grass higher than a foot. This is in comparison to ride on mowers, which are often fine cutting grass up to about 2 feet in height. 

Jack’s final thoughts and recommendations

Over my time in my garden, I much prefer using the walk behind mower. I find the overall experience much more enjoyable and less stressful than using a ride on mower due to the slower speed it travels at and the higher quality of finish cut. However, if you have a large garden and are less fussed by the quality of the cut (and are willing to fork out around £1500) then you can do worse than using a good quality ride on mower.

If you’re looking to buy a ride on or walk behind mower, my first piece of advice would be to pop down to your local garden centre. They will usually have a selection of both, and will usually let you test both out to see which you enjoy using more. I personally use a Mountfield self-propelled (Honda petrol engine) lawn mower, which I find gives a very high quality of cut, and is also very reliable and sturdy.  

Introduction to me and Carmichael Gardening

Hi, I’m Jack and I recently set up Carmichael Gardening, a company that provides gardening services to households in Surrey. I have also set up this blog post to accompany Carmichael Gardening, to let me write up about jobs I am doing. I will also be writing guides for things to do in the garden, as well as tips on general garden maintenance.

In this introduction post I thought I’d write a little about myself, and also the inception of Carmichael Gardening. I’m 20 and have lived in Surrey my whole life, and have helped in my parent’s garden since an early age. As we have a fairly large garden at home with quite a large lawn, I was always needed to help mowing the lawn and weeding the flower beds. Although a little resistant at first to help with these fairly tedious tasks, my parent’s passion for gardening infected me, and I grew to love being outside and helping in the garden. Every year I would look forward to the annual pruning of our apple tree, as I was the only one in the family who could climb up it and cut the highest branches. By the age of 15, I started helping my neighbour in his garden by helping him cut his lawn.

This was my first foray into the world of being a local gardener, and from there I started working for several other residents of my street. I also picked up work from friends of my parents, and by 2013 I had a collection of repeat customers who I helped with a range of gardening tasks. Mostly the tasks involved lawn mowing, weeding and hedge cutting, and the largest to date has been helping in the construction of a small outbuilding that now contains a Jacuzzi.

After the large quantity of work I undertook in the summer of 2013, I decided to set up Carmichael Gardening. This was to provide professionality to my already high quality of work, and also allow me to advertise easier and buy insurance.  I also set up a website (www.carmichaelgardening.co.uk) something I’ve never done before, which (despite minor nerves) I really enjoyed.  

The final step of setting up Carmichael Gardening is what you’re reading right now!