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How to Look After Your Garden This Autumn

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 05:49:33 GMT

Follow these tips to make sure you'll have a beautiful, healthy garden this Autumn.

Take Care of Fallen Leaves and Debris

When you think of Autumn, the first image that comes to mind is probably the beautiful oranges and browns of leaves falling from their trees.

While beautiful, these fallen leaves can be a total nuisance to clean up, but clean them up you must, else your garden will suffer.

Letting leaves cover your lawn will result in it browning and dying as it is deprived of the oxygen and sunlight it requires. Falling debris can also block your roof gutters, leading to them sagging or leaking, either into your yard or, even worse, your home.

Prune Your Plants

With the leaves falling away, it is easier to see which branches need pruning (whether because they are too large, out of place or diseased) and far easier to get access to them.

You’ll want to do a bit of light pruning before winter. In the colder months a tree might lose its shape or shed its branches. By cutting back, you are giving your tree less to worry about and helping it stay in shape.

More than that, pruning will actually help your trees grow back even better in the spring. If you begin pruning after a tree has already begun sprouting, you risk stuniting the trees already blossoming growth.

Gather Clippings

Autumn is the best time of year to take cuttings from plants and grow entirely new ones. To try this, take a small clipping from a plant (roughly 10cm in length) and remove any low down leaves to allow the clipping to be planted.

Dip the clipping into something that stimulates growth, like hormone powder or even honey. Plant the clipping into a small pot of potting mix and store someone sheltered from the wind. Feed and water as you would a regular plant and watch it blossom into something more!

Work the Soil

Mulch, fertiliser, compost. All are great ways of nourishing your soil and preparing it for winter.

Your soil will harden in the winter and it will become much harder for anything to grow, but if you get ahead of that by preparing it, you can still have a strong, healthy garden, even when it’s dark and freezing.

Plant New Trees

Now your soil is prepared, you can get to planting new plants, should you wish.

Autumn is an ideal time for it, as it gives the young plants time to establish their roots before facing the harsh sun.

Talk to a Professional

Want to get your Autumn garden looking beautiful? If you live in Toowoomba and need some advice or would like us to take care of your Autumn preparation, get in touch with 1 Green Thumb Gardening through services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au today!

Snail Proof Your Garden (Safely)

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 05:47:37 GMT

Keep out pests without resorting to poison.

Ever found a collection of snails making themselves at home, chewing their way through your favourite shrub? Don’t know what to do? Let us help.

Ever wondered why you might want to keep snails out of your yard? Snail may only move a mere mile per hour but this won't stop them from destroying your garden. After all, there are twenty-four hours in a day and most gardens aren’t a mile long.

Snails eat all sorts of leaves and vegetables, even flowers. If you have a water feature, they will undoubtedly be drawn towards it, fouling the water and killing any fish inside.

So what can you do about it? Snail bait is a common solution to this problem and can be found at your average trade or gardening store. However, even if you are okay with killing the little creatures, there are problems that come with deploying the use of poison.

Snail bait is not only poisonous to snails, it can be deadly to household pets and small children. There have even been cases of animals getting poisoned after eating a snail that ate the bait.

So instead, here are some safer snail proofing alternatives:

Cut Back

Cutting back your plants will destroy the snail’s food source. This will force them to either move on or starve. Once they are gone your plants will grow back in a snail free yard.

Grow Sacrificial Plants

If you don’t want to damage the plants you have you can offer snails a plant you don’t mind them eating. Snails and slugs are known to particularly love the leaves of horseradish .

If you plant some in your garden, they will spend their time snacking on these instead of your good plants.

Crushed Oyster Shells

Pouring a layer of crushed oyster shells across your garden bed is an effective way of snail proofing your yard . The edges of the shells are razor sharp and will cut through their soft bodies. They are also high in calcium, helping to balance the pH levels of the soil.

Copper

Another more humane option is the use of copper. Slugs and snails hate the feeling of copper on their skin and will avoid crawling across it. You can buy copper tape to line your gardens with. This will keep them out without harming them.

Make sure to buy wide tape as snails can stretch over barriers that are too thin. Note that this method is not 100% effective. Roughly one in ten snails will brave the copper and make their way across.

Salt

It’s well known that salt will kill slugs and snails. Lines of salt can sometimes be used to stop slugs in their tracks. This is an ineffective method in a garden, however, as salt can be harmful to plants, and will wash away in the rain.

Talk to a Professional

Need a hand keeping your garden pest free? If you’re living near Toowoomba, contacts us at 1 Green Thumb Gardening for a quote on services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au .

Taking Care Of Your Hedges

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 05:46:57 GMT

A few things to keep in mind while maintaining your perfect hedge.

Hedges can be a natural and more appealing alternative to fences. They act as a boundary line and offer amounts of privacy, all the while looking natural and gorgeous. Looking to put in a new hedge or just take care of the one you already have? Here are some things to think about.

Evergreen or Deciduous?

Hedges can be generally split into two categories: evergreen and deciduous.

Evergreen hedges will keep their green leaves year-round, though you will notice an obvious lack of growth in the winter months. If you’ve planted an evergreen, always trim them at the end of winter. Dormant buds will be waiting to go wild once spring hits. Get ahead of it!

Deciduous hedges will have their leaves change color in the autumn, before shedding them and remaining bare throughout winter.

Which hedge you choose will come down to a few things. Do you want privacy year-round? Then evergreens are the way to go. Do you maybe want a break of hedging during winter? Then deciduous is for you.

Carve an Angle

I t may be tempting to craft a perfectly straight, box shaped hedge. However, it’s important to leave the top of the hedge slightly narrower than the bottom, otherwise sunlight won’t be able to reach the lower branches. This ensures a thick, healthy growth all over.

If you are having trouble reaching the tops of tall hedges, here’s a little tip. If you carve an angle into the plant, you can then lean over this angle and reach your hedger further back. You can have fun with these angles and turn them into something unique, like this zig zag.

Put Down a Tarp When Trimming

When you are cutting back your hedges, put a tarp down underneath. The leaves will fall onto it, and you can simply drag them away. This will save you from spending time raking up fallen leaves and br anches.

Fill in the Gaps

It is important to have the hedge growing equally in all areas. Otherwise, you will end up with holes or bald spots. If you do find gaps in, you hedge it may not be getting enough sun.

Trim back the branches surrounding the troubled area to let the sun fall upon it. If the gap is rather large, there is a way to jumpstart growth in that area.

Take two branches and cross them across the gap. You can use bamboo shoots to hold the branches in place. Trim the tips of the shoots to encourage growth.

Water in the Morning

Water your hedges in the early morning while it’s cooler. There is less sunlight which means less chance of the water evaporating before it gets through the soil and to the roots.

When watering you hedge, aim the stream directly at the base of the hedge, soaking the soil and feeding the roots.

Watering the leaves directly won’t do much for the hedge. In fact, you could be inadvertently damaging the hedge by creating a damp environment for fungus to grow.

Contact an Expert

With this help you should be on your way to beautiful hedges. If you're after any further assistance looking after your hedges you may want to get in touch with a professional. If you’re living in the Toowoomba area, get in touch with us here at 1 Green Thumb Gardening on services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au.

Mulching Do’s And Don’ts

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 05:46:37 GMT

Follow these tips and avoid these pitfalls for a beautiful, healthy garden bed.

DO U se Organic Mulch

Organic mulch refers to mulch made up of recycled materials, such as wood chips or straw, often by-products of other industries. Because of this, organic mulch is a lot cheaper than its non-organic counterparts.

Organic mulches will break down over time, meaning you will occasionally have to buy more to top up your gardens. There are more pros here than cons, however, as the breakdown of the mulch not only helps prevent over mulching, but it will also give a healthy boost of nutrients to the soil below.

Despite this, you may prefer to search for mulch that takes longer to break down, as you don’t intend to spend extra time topping up every so often. There are some types of organic mulches that take longer than others to break down while still retaining all the benefits.

DO Us e Bark Based Mulch

Bark based mulches will take longer to break down. Two of the best options of bark-based mulches are tea tree mulch and cypress pine mulch. Both will take a long time to break down and offer several unique benefits.

Tea tree mulch is full of nutrients and provides a pleasant aroma that’s said to act as a mosquito repellent. It’s full of nutrients that release as it breaks down, feeding plants and soil.

Cypress pine mulch doesn’t contain nearly so many nutrients, however, it does contain a chemical that inhibits weed growth. Additionally, while other mulches will often attract termites, cypress pine mulch instead wards them off.

Bark mulch is offered in larger or smaller pieces. These are better for the soil as they allow in more water and air. Keep in mind larger pieces are more likely to wash away if the garden bed is on a hill, making smaller pieces the better choice.

DON’T Use Rocks or Gravel

Rocks and gravel are an often-used form of inorganic mulch because they don’t need to be topped up often and can look quite nice. However, rocks are also notoriously bad for trapping debris.

Whereas organic mulch will allow the debris to break down with it, rocks will trap the debris, running the nice look you aimed to achieve. It will take time and effort to remove this debris by hand, a lot more than would have been spent applying organic mulch.

People are often tempted to simply pour more rocks on top to cover up the debris, but DO NOT DO THIS. Over mulching is a serious problem, especially when using rocks. If you over mulch you will be suffocating the soil beneath, which may kill the plants in that garden bed.

Over mulching can even be a problem for organic mulch so keep an eye on how much you are using.

DON’T Put A Weed cloth Beneath The Mulch

Placing a weed cloth beneath the mulch is a common method of keeping weeds from growing up from underneath. However, you may be surprised to learn that weed cloths can often cause more harm than good.

Weeds will often grow on top of mulch rather than from beneath (read more about weeds and how to get rid of them here) so the weed cloth is less effective than most think.

More than that, it will suffocate the soil and prevent any plants from getting the water they need.

Ironically, it can also make it harder to remove weeds. After time weeds will find their way through holes and rips in the cloth. When this happens, it is much harder to pull them out as the roots can get caught beneath the cloth.

Talk to a Professional

Want to get your garden looking beautiful? Contact us on services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au and let 1 Green Thumb Gardening make it so!

Spring Lawn Care

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 05:46:06 GMT

Fast-track your lawn care and bring your yard back to life

Too often will we watch our beautiful lawns wither away in the winter months. By the time spring arrives they might need all the help they can get to start growing again. Luckily, it couldn’t be easier! You can revitalise your lawn in just three steps.

Fertilizer

First, fertilize your lawn. It's best to use fertilizer made for lawns, such as Earthlife Lawn Blend.

Grass is continuously damaged as it is walked upon meaning parts of the lawn can grow at different rates. This leads to yellow patches or areas of thinning grass. Fertilizer not only feeds your grass but will also condition the soil by attracting earthworms and naturally encouraging the grass to grow.

Topsoil

Next is topsoil. It does provide some nutrition though not nearly as much as fertilizer. But the real reason we spread the topsoil is to level out the lawn and fill any holes.

To apply topsoil, pour the soil out on the grass, across uneven areas and fill any holes. Use a broom or rake to spread the soil out on the grass.

If you’ve ever been on a golf course you might notice sand amongst the grass upon the greens. Sand is often used in topsoil blends which helps keep those greens immaculate and as even as possible.

Water

Finally, the thing every lawn needs is water.

When the grass is thinning out the bare soil is exposed to the sun, raising the temperature of the soil. This leads to the grass roots drying out, slowing growth, or even killing the grass.

Consistent water will keep the topsoil cool and the grass growing.

Get yourself a super soaker hose and spread it out across the problem areas of your lawn. They are a cheaper and often more effective alternative to a sprinkler!

When you first begin your lawn care you need only to water the grass for 10 minutes, twice a day. 11am and 3pm are good times to keep the grass dry, as they are the hottest times of the day.

After a week of this you can dial the water back to once a day. After four more weeks you can reduce the water to only twenty minutes every three days. By this time the grass should have grown nicely, covering the soil and shielding its roots from the sun.

Call an Expert

That’s all there is to it. By now you should have a lush and healthy yard. Should your problems persist, it may be time to call in an expert. If you’re living near Toowoomba, get in touch with us for a quote on services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au .

Keep Your Garden Weed Free

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 05:45:34 GMT

With just 3 easy tricks, weeds will cease to be a problem in your life.

Weeds. The great enemy of a well-maintained garden. They run rampant, spoiling the view, and even damaging other plants. Whether you are a professional gardener or simply someone taking care of your own backyard, sooner or later, we all have to face down these green foes.

When it’s your turn to try to keep weeds out of your garden, here are some tips to do the job that much better.

Make Use Of Mulch

One of the best things you can do for a garden bed is fill it up with mulch. It not only looks a lot nicer than bare dirt, but it also provides a lot of benefits for the plants growing beneath.

Mulch protects the soil from direct sunlight, keeps it cool and dry. It also keeps light and moisture from reaching seeds lying dormant in the dirt, stopping them from growing.

It's important to remember that while mulch will help keep weed seeds from growing, it will NOT stop them altogether. Weed seeds will blow in from all over, carried by birds or the wind, landing on top of the mulch and growing there, now needing to be pulled out.

A good way to combat this is by using drip irrigation instead of a regular hose. Regularly watering your mulch will also water the weed seeds on top. Lay out a drip hose and the water will fall through the mulch, watering the plants below and leaving the seeds on the surface to dry out and starve.

Using organic mulches is better for stopping weed growth More than that, these mulches will break down over time, feeding the soil. You will have to top the mulch up more often, but it also keeps you from suffocating the soil each time you do (Read more about the proper applications of mulch here).

Cut Weeds, Don’t Pull

Pulling out weeds can sometimes take a little longer than poisoning, but it is often the better method. You cannot always rely on the poison to be strong enough, whereas taking the weed from the soil is a guaranteed and instant solution. It also removes the chance of the poison working too well and damaging other parts of your garden.

However, when pulling weeds out of the ground we also dig up the earth it resides on. This earth is usually filled with weed seeds that were buried too deep to receive enough light and water to grow. These seeds can lie dormant for a very long time and, ironically, bringing them to the surface when removing one weed can result in the unintentional planting of several more.

Instead of pulling, use a sharp knife to cut through the dirt and the roots of the weed, severing its head, so to speak. The best time to be doing this is when the weather is hot and dry, because any remaining roots left in the ground will then wither and die.

Fill The Gaps

Weeds will thrive in the areas between plants, stealing nutrition from these plants and taking over the garden bed.

Fill these gaps in with new plants. Even better, when planting, make sure you have no gaps in the garden bed from the get-go.

Tight-knit plant spacing will keep the sun from the soil beneath (and therefore weeds seeds). Also, the more plants there are the higher your chance of turning the tables against the weeds growing, stealing the vital nutrition they need.

Call a Professional

Having problems with weeds that you just can’t fix? Contact us on services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au and let 1 Green Thumb Gardening take care of it for you.

Thatch & Your Lawn

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 05:45:14 GMT

Is it time to dethatch your lawn & what actually is thatch?

Thatch is an interwoven layer of dead and living plant materials that lies between the grass and the soil beneath. Leaves falling on your lawn or mowing without using a catcher can greatly increase the rate of which your thatch builds.

The Pros of Thatch

A thin layer of thatch (about half an inch or less) is actually good. It helps your lawn growth, as it protects the roots from damage caused by foot traffic.

It also attracts insects who make their home inside, valuably contributing to nature’s ecosystem.

The Cons of Thatch

When thatch grows too thick it becomes a problem. Thick thatch can restrict the amount of water and nutrients your lawn receives causing it to brown, thin out, or die.

Additionally, if you’re not a fan of bugs you might have a problem with the overabundance thick thatch collects.

What To Do

While gardening, you can prevent thatch from building by mowing with a catcher or blowing off any leaves before they begin breaking down. However, if you already have a build-up, there are several options that anyone can take to dethatch their yard.

The most common practice is simply taking a rake and vigorously raking through the grass to pull up the dead thatch beneath. This is cheap and relatively easy to do but can consume both time and energy depending on your yard. There are also mechanical means such as vertical mowers and power rakes, which use vertical blades to cut through and pull up the thatch build up.

You should only ever dethatch a lawn in dry conditions during cool weather, otherwise you could seriously damage your lawn.

There are also certain chemical products that destroy the dead thatch matter without affecting your grass. A personal recommendation is Earthlife Breakdown. You simply need to mix it in with water and spray it across your lawn. If you mix 50ml with 1 litre of water, you can cover up to 20 square metres of yard.

A little-known fact about this particular product is that it contains a natural acid that breaks down the weed seed germinating node. While using Earthlife Breakdown on a lawn you can see a reduction of weeds of up to 80 per cent!

Call a Professional

Dethatching a lawn can be a lengthy and exhausting experience. If you have problems, it might be time to get a professional. If you’re living near Toowoomba, contact us for a quo te on services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au .

Condition Your Soil for the Best Results

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 12:46:04 GMT

"You could buy the best plants in the world; it won’t matter if you’re working with bad soil. "

Determine Your Soil Type

There are essentially three kinds of soil found in Australia: clay, sandy and loam.

You can find out what kind of soil you have by digging a couple of inches into the dirt and pulling out a handful. Squeeze that soil into a ball.

Clay soil will hold its shape and harden when dry, sandy soil will crumble in your hands, whereas loam soil will find a nice middle ground between the two. It will hold its shape while you hold it but will crumble easily under pressure.

The big difference between these three soil types boils down to water retention. Here’s how to handle each type.

Clay

Clay soil is heavier and made of fine particles. This can lead to the soil becoming waterlogged if it has poor filtration.

To combat this, mix some gypsum into the dirt. This will break up the soil and allow for better aeration and filtration.

Sandy

Sandy soil is made up of larger particles meaning it falls apart easier. Unfortunately, when sandy soils dry out, they will naturally repel water, making them a tricky soil to grow anything in.

If you have sandy soil you will need to mix in a lot of organic material, maybe even up to 50%. Otherwise, the soil won’t get the water it needs.

Loam

Finally, Loam soil is usually the ideal type. Not as fine as clay. Not as coarse as sandy.

Loam soil will retain water far better than sandy soil while offering better filtration than clay.

Add Organic Material

All soil types will need organic material mixed in. Organic material means any material derived from plants or animals. This can refer to compost, manure, animal blood or bones.

When using fertiliser, it is important to use organic fertiliser over synthetic. Organic fertiliser will feed the soil which in turn will increase the rate of nutrients your plants get. On the other hand, synthetic fertiliser will feed the plants directly.

While synthetic fertiliser will offer faster, short-term results, the rate of growth and greening in your plants won’t stay for long. It will offer no nutrients to the soil itself, whereas organic fertiliser nourishes the soil itself, allowing for it to feed the plants in a self-sustaining ecosystem. It may take a little longer, but your plants will be far greener for far longer.

Adding organic mulch on top of the soil is a great way to shield the soil from the elements, keeping it cool. Using organic mulch over synthetic will also allow for the mulch to break down over time and release nutrients into the soil (read more about that here).

Check pH Levels

Some soils are naturally too acidic or alkaline for plants to grow properly in. Soil testing kits can be bought for very cheap prices at most gardening stores.

These kits can be used to find where your soil falls on a scale from 1-10. Anything below 6.5 is considered acidic while above 7.5 is alkaline. 6.5-7.5 is neutral.

Most plants prefer soil that is ever so slightly acidic, as acidic soil provides more nutrients. 6.5 is the magic number here. Too much acid, however, will effectively poison your plants.

If your soil is too acidic, you can add things like lime or dolomite to raise its pH levels. If its levels are too low, you can add sulfur or aluminium sulfate to raise them.

Talk to a Professional

Does your soil need special treatment? Contact our team at services@1greenthumbgardening.com.au and we'll handle all your gardening needs.