The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Improve Your Home Landscaping

The following are luxuries, perhaps, but they will help you do a professional job: a pressure sprayer, root feeder, wheel hoe and cultivator, spreader, soil-testing kit, garden tractor and garden lawn sweeper, or mechanical garden mower with mulching attachment and power rotary tiller, and, finally, an electric hotbed.

The mechanical, or power, machines are bringing about changes in gardening. The mower-mulcher for example, suggests a new way to gather fall leaves and use them for mulching. You run it over the lawn in the usual way. The leaves are cut into small fragments and deposited beneath or to one side of the machine, where they sift down among the grass leaves and form a light, protective mulch layer. This decomposes after a while and adds to the organic fertility of the lawn.

Other equipment to have on hand that will keep you from running to the store just when you want to be out working on the grounds, includes: plant ties, stakes, labels; burlap or canvas, chicken wire, garden line; a yardstick and a measuring cup and spoons; creosote and other needed paints and a paintbrush ; sand, peat moss, lime, plant foods and insecticides and other chemicals and, finally, pots and flats.

Garden hose rack built on garage studding.

Storage Tips

Storage of garden tools in a precise fashion helps keep them in good working order, and saves you time in locating them. A tool house 3x6 feet can take care of a great deal of equipment.