Keep Safety In Garden

While making your garden colorful and vibrant, it is equally important to make your garden safe, a place where the family can relax while learning about nature. Here is how you may practice safe gardening and have a garden accident free.

Garden Hazards: How Are They Caused?

To make your garden safe, it is important to understand how just being careless can cause garden hazards and result in a garden accident.

• The lawn mower is one of the most dangerous garden implements if it is kept unguarded. Most garden accidents happen due to it.
• The innocuous flowerpot may cause a garden accident. Lifting injuries happen and one should be careful in exerting the back as little as they can to avoid painful back injuries
• Broken and uneven pathways are garden hazards.
• Barbecues cause major garden hazards. They should not be left unguarded and once they have been used, the flame should be totally extinguished.
• Garden accident caused by stepladders are common and one must be cautious, not stretching out too far or trying to work sideways while ensuring the ladder stands on firm ground and is in good condition.

Creating Gardening Safety

While introducing children to the garden categorically tell them what they may and may not touch to maintain garden safety. Garden hazards caused by power driven machines such as lawn mowers and hedge trimmers should be emphasized. Eye protection goggles, gloves, garden safety boots or shoes defenders should be worn if necessary for extra gardening safety. It is important to plan the garden well so that it does not require high maintenance or frequent heavy lifting.

Safe Gardening By Putting Away What Is Not Required

It is important to put away sharp gardening tools for gardening safety. After the rake and wheelbarrow have been used in the garden, safe gardening implies that they be kept in the gardening shed. To avoid a garden accident that can turn really nasty put away all electrical equipments after use so that they may never be out in the rain. Weedkillers and insecticides, though they may have organic elements in them should be kept aside for garden safety purposes.

Gardening Safety Precautions For Children And Pets

When gardening with kids if you have pets, some extra garden safety measures must be taken. Prior knowledge about poisonous plants can help you maintain garden safety by keeping children and pets away from them. Similarly, while treating plants with chemicals, to avoid garden hazards pets and children should be away from the greens and not allowed to come to them for at least 24 hours. In case of a garden pond put a fence around it to practice safe gardening. Having a pond with gently sloping sides will also help in making the drop gradual. Further, if dense plants are placed around the border of the pond, children and pets will have lesser access to the water, making the garden safe.

When the garden is icy and slippery, it is best to avoid it. Further, even with the best precautionary measures one may be unlucky enough to face a garden accident. However, following these basic rules will surely lead to safe gardening and ensure that this space remains an enjoyable one for friends and family.

Soil PH And Its Effect On Your Garden

As you may have observed from your gardening experiences plants can be fussy things. The right location, amount of sunlight and 101 other factors influence your plant's growing ability. One factor which is very beneficial in understanding before putting that new plant into the earth is soil pH.

What is Soil pH?

Let's get all scientific for a moment and learn what pH is. In chemistry pH is a measure of how acidic or alkaline a solution is. Okay chemistry lesson over. Basically soil pH is a measure of how acidic or alkaline your soil is. Soil pH is measured on a scale of 1 to 14. If your soil has a pH value of less than 7 then you have acidic soil. On the other hand if your soil has a pH value of greater than 7 then you have alkaline soil. A pH value of 7 is neutral, meaning you have neither acidic or alkaline soil.

The Effect of Soil pH on Plants

Knowing the pH value of your soil before planting is very important as it has a direct influence on the health of the plant. Each plant has its own recommended soil pH value range. The reason for this is that soil pH effects the availability of nutrients within the soil and plants have different nutrient needs. For example the nutrient nitrogen, a very important plant nutrient, is readily available in soil when the pH value is above 5.5. Similarily the nutrient phosphorous is available when the pH value is between 6 and 7. If a plant is placed into the wrong kind of soil it will be lacking in nutrients that it needs which will promote disease. In general the best pH value range for soil is approximately 6 or 7 as this is the range in which most nutrients can be readily available.

Finding Out pH of Soil

Finding out the pH of soil is usually a trivial matter and the kits to do so should be available at most good garden centres. Usually a pH testing kit will include a small container / test tube, testing solution and a color chart. A sample of soil is taken from your garden, placed into the container / test tube and a few drops of testing solution are added. The container is then shaken and left for a certain period of time. The color of the sample in the container is then compared against the color chart to determine the pH value of the soil. Note that if you want to determine the soil pH of an large area it may be a good idea to take soil samples from many different locations, combine the samples and then perform the test on the combined sample.

A quick way to find out the pH of an area is to look to see if there are any house hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) already growing in the area. If so observe the color of its flowers. A soil pH of 6 or below will produce blue flowers while a soil pH of 6.8 or higher will produce pink flowers.

How to Make Soil More Alkaline (Increase pH)

If your soil is acidic or slightly acidic you can take steps to make it more alkaline to accommodate the plants you want to put there. You can make your soil more alkaline (increase its pH value) by adding a form of lime. Lime is a compound of calcium or calcium and magnesium. It is usually applied in the form of ground agricultural limestone, burnt lime or hydrated lime (slaked lime). The smaller the limestone particles then the quicker your soil will become more alkaline. For this reason hydrated lime will offer the quickest performance because it is slightly soluble in water so it can permeate the soil quicker and reduce acidity faster.

Increasing the pH of your soil is not an overnight process and it is best to allow 2-3 months to allow the lime to neutralize the acidity of the soil acidity.

How to Make Soil More Acidic (Decrease pH)

Some ornamental plants and fruit plants like blueberries require an acidic soil. To make your soil more acidic (decrease its pH value) you can use either aluminium sulphate or sulphur. Aluminium sulphate is the quickest acting as it will increase the acidity as soon as it dissolves into the soil. The downsides are though that its effects can be short term and it is possible to over-apply it.

The more recommended but slower way to increase your soil pH is to use sulphur. Sulphur converts to sulphuric acid with the help of bacteria in the soil but this takes time depending on factors like the presence of bacteria, texture of the soil and moisture levels. This could take months if conditions are not ideal.

Conclusion

Remember to always take into account soil pH when deciding what to plant in your soil. If you do not know what the pH of your soil is then test your soil and if needs be take steps mentioned earlier to change the pH value over time. Best of luck!

Writer: Francis Kilkelly