Here in the Upstate of South Carolina we are experiencing severe drought conditions. plants are dying for lack of moisture. People such as yourself have stopped improving your yards. Why spend time and money and effort, just to see your plants dry up and die? I can show you how your plants can beat the heat with ease. And, by protecting your plants from drought conditions, you will also be reducing the growth of weeds and automatically be saving yourself the effort of putting down costly ground cover cloth.
One very simple way to help your plants stay moist all summer long is to build layers of water-saving mulch. While you are saving your plants, you will be doing yourself and your community a huge favor; you will be recycling. That mulch is already waiting for you at no additional cost to you.
If your home or business is anything like mine, you generate loads of junk mail, phone books, catalogs, cereal, cracker and cardboard boxes every day. If it is made out of paper, it will bio-degrade! Keep it out of the landfill. Why purchase bagged soil amendments when you are hauling free mulch home in every grocery bag or picking it up by the handful from your mailbox every day? A shredder is nice, but you don't really need a shredder if you don't already own one.
Here's how you do it:
1. Use a shovel to loosen the soil in a small area around where you want to put your new plant.
One very simple way to help your plants stay moist all summer long is to build layers of water-saving mulch. While you are saving your plants, you will be doing yourself and your community a huge favor; you will be recycling. That mulch is already waiting for you at no additional cost to you.
If your home or business is anything like mine, you generate loads of junk mail, phone books, catalogs, cereal, cracker and cardboard boxes every day. If it is made out of paper, it will bio-degrade! Keep it out of the landfill. Why purchase bagged soil amendments when you are hauling free mulch home in every grocery bag or picking it up by the handful from your mailbox every day? A shredder is nice, but you don't really need a shredder if you don't already own one.
Here's how you do it:
1. Use a shovel to loosen the soil in a small area around where you want to put your new plant.
2. Wet down the ground, either with water from a bucket or garden hose.
3. Set your plant in the ground. Set it high in the hole. Leave some of the potting mix showing above the ground to start with.
4. Place at least 10 layers of newspaper all around the plant. Don't crowd the paper up too close to the plant. Mice might like to chew on the paper and enjoy your tree, too.
5. Wet down the newspaper so it will not blow away while you start the next step.
6. Flatten out a large cardboard box. Cut a hole about 3-6 inches larger than your plant.
7. Lay this cardboard around your plant to hold down the wet newspaper. Or, you can use several smaller boxes and overlap the edges so weeds can't get through.
8. Wet down the cardboard.
9. Mulch over the cardboard and up around the new plant. (Bark or pine straw mulch, leaves, grass clippings, anything that will eventually rot down, but will hold moisture now.
10. Wet down the mulch as you put it down so it is nice and damp.
11. Inspect you tree after several days. Stick your hand in under all that mulch and see if the ground is moist. If not, water again.
12. It is possible that you may not have to water again all summer. Please do check under the mulch every few weeks if there is no rainfall. Some plants require more water than others.
13. Fertilize in the spring. Do NOT fertilized late in the summer. It will encourage tender new growth too late in the season and you plant may be damaged by frost during the winter.
14. Renew the mulch as needed. If the grass and weeds really take over, put down more layers of wet newspaper and cardboard and mulch.
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