The Payday Loan Channel

Spring is in the air. If you are a gardener, then Spring is one of your favorite times of the year, and your first visit to the local garden centre is an experience that you have been anticipating all winter.Tesco Garden Furniture is a great place to do your research before venturing to your local garden centre.

There are 2 basic sections to most UK garden Centres and they are the perennials and annuals section. The implications of choosing one or the other without fully understanding the specific characteristics of that plant can sometimes have unexpected or undesirable consequences.

You will find that perennials could be large plants like trees but also small dainty flowers so you cannot rely on the size of the plant as the main factor in picking perennials.

Many perennials will come with old fashioned names and are the more traditional side of the modern garden centre. If perennials are the timeless elements of your garden, annuals are the trendy, showy brash elements that can easily be varied as your tastes. Winter will unfortunately kill off all your annuals and therefore you can easily change your colours schemes on an annual basis.

Annuals are the largest component of the plants on display at a garden center and they come in all kinds of different colours and styles. Each different species promises to deliver a memorable addition to the garden, even though that garden is, for the time being, nothing more than a mound of yet-tilled earth and vague images of what it was, and can be again. Larger garden centres usually have their own nursery which means that the annuals are usually freshly picked.

Water-wise gardening or xeriscaping - the practice of gardening in dry conditions - is becoming much more important to gardeners, especially those in dry areas.

If you have sandy soil, steep slopes where water runs off quickly, a country garden you visit only on weekends, high water bills or watering restrictions during the growing season, read on to find out how to save money, use water resources more responsibly and stop lugging all those hoses around unnecessarily.

Ten ways to make each drop count

1. Group especially thirsty plants together, so you can water them without having to do the entire garden; take advantage of low moist spots for such plants.

2. Investigate drought-tolerant plants - they often have taproots, or grey, fuzzy, waxy or finely divided leaves.

3. Avoid frequent, shallow waterings; water needs to penetrate about four inches into soil for it to do any good.

4. Encourage plants to develop extensive root systems by infrequent, but deep, generous watering - about one inch of water every week if rainfall is inadequate (buy a rain gauge to measure precipitation, so you don’t water unnecessarily).

5. Mulch bare soil to a depth of two to four inches to prevent evaporation and maintain soil moisture; use organic materials such as shredded wood or bark, straw, shredded leaves, compost or cocoa bean hulls; (inorganic mulch such as gravel or stone chips also retains moisture, but won’t break down to help improve soil).

6. Don’t water between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. when hot sun evaporates a lot of water.

7. Water plants at soil level to get moisture straight to roots, rather than on leaves.

8. Use soaker hoses or drip irrigation, rather than sprinklers (much of the water thrown into the air by sprinklers evaporates); these systems also avoid wasting water on walkways, patios and driveways.

9. Install a barrel to collect rainwater from roof; a modest rain of one quarter of an inch on a 1000 ft square roof yields 150 gallons; rain barrels come with a shut-off valve and hose connection so you can fill your watering can for hand-watering.

10. During drought, water large trees by allowing your hose to dribble a small amount of water around the drip-line for several hours to ensure that water is absorbed instead running off quickly. Newly planted trees need supplemental water for the first two seasons, especially in hot, dry summers.

Garden writer Yvonne Cunnington dispenses gardening tips at her website http://flower-gardening-made-easy.com/

Subscribe to the Flower Gardening Made Easy RRS feed at http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/Flower-gardening.xml

For more garden care tips, see http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/garden-care.html

Having a garden is one of the highlights of summer for many people but not everyone has a yard in which to plant flowers. Luckily, there are a few ways that even apartment dwellers can enjoy gardening.

If you are fortunate enough to have a balcony or deck off your main living area, you can use containers to turn it into a mini garden. Today, you can purchase containers that hang right on the railing without any invasive installation and large pots can be used on the decking. If you have a roof above your balcony, you may even be able to install hanging plants. Just be sure that you review the rules of your apartment complex before you add anything to your outdoor area.

When choosing flowers or plants for your outdoor area, you want to be sure to buy plants that will thrive in that environment. If your apartment balcony is shady then you want to get plants that like the shade. If it has blazing sun all day, buy ones that can take the hot sun, or be sure to move them into the shade during the noon heat if they specify that they are for partial shade. Buying annuals is probably a best bet as they will flower all season and you won’t have to deal with them in the winter.

When selecting your containers, be sure to get ones that have good drainage. You may even want to add some small rocks on the bottom to provide additional places for water to go. If you will be putting the containers on your decking, be sure to buy saucers for them so the water doesn’t seep onto the deck and stain it - if you don’t you might find yourself forfeiting your security deposit or re-staining the deck when you move out. Before drilling holes for hanging plants, be sure to check with your landlord or apartment caretaker.

Be sure to use a good potting soil for your plants and water thoroughly. Plants in containers can dry out rapidly and you may have to water them every day. Be sure that you don’t over water, you want the soil to be moist with no standing water. Container plants do well when fertilized about once a month with a general fertilizer or one made specifically for your type of plant.

In addition to planting flowers outdoors, you can also enhance your balcony area with interesting potted palms and other tree like plants that can be moved into the apartment when cold weather comes and enjoyed all winter long. When arranging the plants, be sure to use pots and plants of varying heights - all plants of the same height will look boring, but if you put together containers of different sizes and heights in groups this will add a lot of interest.

Be sure to check your plants every day and pinch off any dead flowers and leaves to keep your balcony garden oasis vibrant and fresh.

Lee Dobbins writes for Apartment Rental Guides where you can leaarn more about apartment rentals and apartment living.

Do I Need Annual or Perennial Plants?

The crocus delights us in early spring as it dares to peek through the snow and lift its face to the sun. Soon after follow tulips, narcissus, iris, lilacs… all perennials that welcome spring with vibrant color and fragrance. Perennial plants bloom at different times during the growing season and delight you with variety in color and size from earliest spring to late autumn. However, many perennials like those mentioned, bloom only for a few short weeks and then disappear from the landscape until the following year.

Annual plants provide a garden with continuous bloom and color throughout the summer. The “mission” of an annual is to produce seed. Seeds sprout, foliage grows, flowers bloom and then the plant goes to seed. When the annual completes its mission, the entire plant– flower, foliage, and root system –dies.

Some annuals have a very short life span and depending upon when they are planted, may reseed and go through two or more growing cycles per season. Other annual plants grow continuously from spring planting until the first frost of autumn.

Since annual plants die completely at season end, they need to be replaced yearly. Depending on the cultivar, annual seeds can be planted directly into a garden or sprouted indoors for transplanting when weather conditions and soil temperatures are right for growth.

Annual transplants are also available each spring at gardening centers and many are sold in inexpensive flats that contain four or more plants. Annual plants can often be closely grouped to fill in barren areas of your landscape whereas perennials often need space to multiply and/or to grow to maturity.

Although some perennial plants are more expensive to purchase than annuals, in the long run you may find them less expensive since they last for longer than a single growing season. You can also purchase groups of assorted perennial bulbs in very inexpensive packs.

Perennial foliage and flowers also die at the end of a growing season, but contrary to annuals, the root systems of perennial plants live over winter and resprout with new growth each spring.

Another advantage of perennial plants is that although flowers and foliage die back, the branches of perennial shrubs offer some visual appeal to a winter landscape.

Perennial plants may take more than one season to reach full maturity. Because perennials propagate from root structures, many types of perennials also need to be divided after three or four seasons to reduce crowding and maintain their vigor.

Although all perennial plants are able to resprout for multiple seasons, perennials are divided into to categories of hardy perennials or tender perennials according to the temperature zone in which they are grown.

Hardy perennials are those that can be left in the ground to return the following season. Except for occasional division and/or pruning, hardy perennial plants need little care once established.

Bulbs like tulips and daffodils are among the easiest plants to grow and excellent choices for a beginning gardener. Tender perennials need your help to survive the winter. Some can over winter when covered with a layer of mulch or otherwise protected from the elements with gardening appurtenances such as rose cones. Some tender perennials need to be lifted and stored indoors over winter.

So the question remains, do you need annual plants or perennials? Each type of plant is ripe with “pros” and short on “cons” if you love flowers. The best solution is to experiment by planting some of each to get a summer full of color, variety, and pure gardening enjoyment!

About the Author

Hans is leading author of Gardening Guides.com
Your place for information on gardening topics and free e-books

With all the stories of people making tremendous amounts of money in real estate it’s no wonder why so many are looking at real estate as an investment vehicle. It offers more security than the stock market, provides great potential returns, offers tax benefits and let’s not forget; it sounds cool to be ‘in real estate’. Everybody can buy and sell stocks from their phone or computer these days. But real estate, now that’s something else.

One of the challenges that many are faced with is putting up the money to acquire a piece of property. Although in reality this is usually not the biggest obstacle. You might say “Hey, what do you mean, not an obstacle. I would love to invest in real estate, but I just can’t afford to!” The point is that hardly anyone who buys a piece of real estate has enough money in their account to pay for it. That’s where your banker comes in. Let’s face it. Do you know anyone that owns their own home? I mean truly own it? Probably not. Sure, you know a lot of people that have a house to their name, but wait until they get behind on their monthly mortgage payments and you will soon find out who really owns their house. That’s right, the bank. So if these people can use the bank’s money to buy a house, why can’t you?

Now ‘owning’ your own home may sound like a somewhat obvious way to get started in real estate, but it is also a very good way to do so. You might say “Duh…” But apparently this little step is overlooked by a lot of people. Just take a look at how many people are still renting a property instead of buying one. Now of course the relation between rent and housing prices varies from country to country and even from area to area. But wherever you go you will still find people renting, because in their mind “they don’t have enough money to buy a house.” In reality it would be much cheaper for them to buy!

When you rent, you are pretty much flushing your money down the toilet. Of course you are getting the pleasure of living, but the point is you’re not building anything long term. Every dollar you spend on rent is a dollar you will never see again. Whereas if you own your own home, instead of paying rent you would be paying for your mortgage. Even though there is a lot of variety in mortgages these days, the basics of practically all mortgages are more or less the same. Every month you make a payment which consists of two parts: interest and principle. The interest part can be compared to rent. Those dollars are gone with the wind and you will never hear from them again. However, the part of the payment that goes to the principle is money you keep. Every dollar that is used to pay off the principal is a dollar you put in your own pocket.

So if you’re thinking about getting started in real estate and you don’t ‘own’ your own house yet… Change it, and get some experience. It’s a great first step towards building your capital and in many cases, it just makes more sense financially. It can also supply a range of opportunities for accelerating the process of building your net worth. When real estate prices go up, so does the value of your property. Whereas the money you owe the bank, your mortgage, remains the same. In other words this helps you build your net worth. Compare this to people that are paying rent… Their net worth does nothing. However their landlord’s net worth is doing very nicely in this scenario and he or she will probably love you for it. So if you get a warm fuzzy feeling about making somebody else rich at your own expense… Keep renting. If you would rather build your own capital instead… Buy your own house!

Many home owners have accumulated more money through appreciation of their property than by working a full time job for many years. Now before you go out and buy the first property you lay eyes on, don’t forget that some security measures are in order here. As you may or may not know, real estate prices do not always go up, and certainly not in a straight line. Yep, this can be shocker to some people, as well as an ugly reminder for those who overlooked this minor detail in the past. If for some reason you would have to sell your home in a down market, it can be a costly adventure. You wouldn’t be the first to end up with a house worth considerably less than the mortgage resting on it. So make sure to keep some slack. In the long run real estate prices have always been on the rise, but in any cycle there are down periods. By keeping some slack and being patient you will be able to sit through these times and profit from the long term up-trend.

About the Author: Cedrick Reese is the Webmaster of www.Eclectic-Info.com, Start an easy Home-Based Business through Affiliate Marketing and Adsense. Other sites owned are www.Your-RealEstateCourses.com and www.PremeirHosting.com

Source: www.isnare.com

(NC)This is not a true statement. You could say something like: “A second, operating fridge could be costing you up to $100 per year on your hydro bill, say energy analysts, and the coolant chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) emitted by the fridge, contribute untold and unnecessary pressure on our planet’s ozone shield.

It is further calculated that by removing one fridge from your household, the electricity savings average 1124-kilowatt hours (kWh) per year and 12364-kWh over the life of the fridge. This is a cost saving, according to BC Hydro, of $741.84 per home.

To encourage consumer action on these findings and to underscore a proactive commitment to reduce energy consumption and costs, BC Hydro is offering an incentive to every customer homeowner:

• Receive $30 by taking part in the Power Smart Refrigerator Buy-Back Program - an initiative that will pick up your old energy guzzling second refrigerator and dispose of it, free-of-charge in an environmentally friendly manner. The program is in effect from September 2003 to August 2004.

“The buy-back program is a re-launch of a similar, highly successful initiative that ran province-wide from 1990 to 1999,” says Elisha Moreno, spokesperson for BC Hydro Power Smart Communications. “At the peak of that program, an average of 42,000 operating refrigerators were collected yearly, saving 15,000 kilograms of CFCs from the environment. Overall, a total of 160,000 refrigerators were collected and recycled.”

In the spring of 2002, a short, three-month campaign in the communities of Courtenay-Comox and Quesnel, brought in more than 500 fridges. Similarly, in the fall of that year, a six-month program on Vancouver Island collected just over 6,000 refrigerators. This time, the BC Hydro goal is to recover and recycle at least 25,000 refrigerators in the first year.

If you would like to participate, here’s what to do:

• Homeowners should call 604 881-HELP(4357) or 1-866-516-HELP(4357) outside the Lower Mainland and make an appointment to have their second operating fridge picked up by the contracted vendor in their area. Once the fridge is removed and the necessary paperwork is submitted, a $30 “buy-back” incentive will be mailed out, which takes approximately six to eight weeks. The buy-back is limited to two operating fridges per BC Hydro customer. Refrigerators must be between 10-24 cubic feet and in working condition.

- News Canada

About the author:

News Canada