Planting trees has many benefits: improved wildlife habitat, high-quality trees for timber or specialty wood products, revegetated buffers along streams to protect water quality, increased species diversity and resiliency, enhanced attractiveness, and a more valuable estate for your family or heirs.
An expanse of green lawn provides a place to lounge, play, and picnic on warm summer days. A healthy, lush lawn doesn’t happen by magic. Without proper care, your lawn can become filled with weeds, suffer from a lack of nutrients, or develop a ragged appearance. Although you should tend to your lawn year-round, spring is a good time to work on improving the vitality of your grass.
You need to make sure that you treat your new lawn like a newly born baby – look after it! Feed it, water it, caress it, talk to it if you have to, but most of all do not neglect it. The first two to three weeks are the “critical phase” in the establishment of a new lawn from the turf. All too often, lawn owners have a new lawn laid then fail to look after it and then blame the company who supplied or laid the turf when problems develop a few weeks later. Follow these simple rules to ensure that your newly laid lawn gets a head start.
Irrigating a farm can double the amount of food it produces. But even with that potential, 80 percent of farmland worldwide is not irrigated, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Part of the problem may be the high cost of irrigation equipment. Also, the prospect of wasteful irrigation techniques raises the specter of environmental damage including water shortages, erosion and soil salinization.
A healthy lawn requires about one inch of water per week. As a general rule, apply the water all at once rather than in several light waterings. Before you water, do some arithmetic.