11 - Friday, July 6, 1990 -

North Shore News

© LIFESTYLES

FUER

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Fe
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Keep your lawn mower sharpened
DULL MOWER BLADES WILL FRAY AND DEHYDRATE LAWN

MY WIFE keeps quoting the Farmer’s Almanac to me. It
is apparently suggesting that 18 days of total sunshine is
the best we can hope for this summer. Cheery little thing,
isn’t she? Sort of reminds me of me.

© Lawn Care - Besides the usual
urgings that you water, feed and
cut the lawn regularly, | would
like to talk to you about the im-
portance of keeping the mower
sharp.

First of all it looks bad. Dull
blades on the mower will fray the
ends of the blades of grass. These
eventually turn yellow brown,
contributing to the burned,
unhealthy look of the lawn in the
summer months.

It’s unhealthy as well. This
fraying will speed up the dehydra-
tion of the grass and promote the
buildup of thatch in the lawn.
Thatch buildup is one of the
conditions that can promote the
invasion of moss, weeds and
diseases.

If you take the time to remove
the sticks, stones and empty beer
cans from the lawn prior to cut-
ting and if yours is not so uneven
as to cause scalping (cutting dirt
instead of grass), then sharpening
every two or three years will be
sufficient. Otherwise do it once
per year.

The smart ones had their
sharpening done over the winter
when the service centres weren't

COLORED,
HOLLAND

U

over the
garden gate

Geoff Tobiasson

too busy. You will now be well
advised to call ahead and reserve
some of their busy time.

»® Flower Beds ~ Now is a good
time to begin seeding out peren-
nials and biennials directly into
the garden. The warm (choke)
summer weather will germinate
them quickly and put them well!

on their way towards producing
summer color next year,

It never seems to be quite as
easy as the directions on the label
indicate. They would like you to
think you could throw flower and
vegetable seeds out the window
one night and wake up to a
glorious garden by morning.
Sounds to me like they have been
reading too much into Jack and
the Beanstalk.

The biggest problem ahead is in
trying to figure out which are the
weeds and which are your flowers.
You must weed these areas or else
you risk having your valued plants
crowded out of existence.

A vigilant eye and a_ few
mistakes will get you through it.

© Vegetable Beds - Weeding and
watering! lt sometimes seems as
though these are the most often
used words in the English lan-
guage. Repetitive yes, redundant
no. Often as | mention these two,
I still see these as the most often
neglected chores in the garden.

By all means there's lots to keep
you busy. What with thinning
transplants, staking tall or vining
plants, reseeding some of the fast
growing vegetable crops for this
summer as well as those fall/
winter crops, harvesting and dry-
ing herbs, onions, and garlic, etc.

{t is easy to see why one might
forget to pull out the hose or

INTERLOCKING CONCRETE PAVERS FOR DRIVEWAYS AND PATIOS

HERITAGE

a

VANCOUVER'S LARGEST SELECTION OF OUTDOOR PLANTERS

OVER 60 STYLES
OF CONCRETE
PLANTERS

OVER 20
STYLES
OF WOOD
sits,

% '9.95.$

“Lng pen:

those weed seedlings. Don't let it
happen! Why wait for today’s
minor inconveniences to become
tomorrow’s major probiems.

© Trees and Shrubs - July is the
last safe month to feed most of
your trees and shrubs this year.

this time of the year, ie: those
bigger than your thumb.

Be careful pruning spring
flowering deciduous shrubs and
evergreens such as rhododendrons
and azaleas. These plants normal-
ly begin developing next year’s

Now is a good time to begin
seeding out perennials and
biennials directly into the

garden.

Applying fertilizers beyond the
end of this month could cause a
late burst of growth which could
be susceptible to an carly frost.

And lest I forget to restate what
must be by now obvious (if not
positively painful), water and
weed. Broadleaved evergreens will
weather the winter months ahead
much better if spared the stresses
of drought over the months to
come.

Do a littl: summer-pruning on
those trees and shrubs which need
it; ie: water sprouts on flowering
trees, tidying up coniferous and
broad-leaved evergreens, cutting
back wisteria and clematis, etc.
Try not to make any major cuts at

flowers immediately following
those of this year. Pruning too
much this year can leave you with
no flowers next spring.

© Deadheading - is the term used
to describe the removal of spent
flowers. The idea is to re-channel
the energy spent in the production
of seed into enhancing the growth
of the plant.

Rhododendrons and_ similar
flowering shrubs, for an example,
should be deadheaded immediately
after they have finished blooming.
Annuals such as marigolds and
petunias should be done two or
three times per week 10 achieve
the best results.

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