Top Tip: herringbone block paving

 Top Tips: a series of short, very short, articles featuring Things Which You Might Not Already Know.

Herringbone block paving - love it or hate it (type "block paving" into the search box, top left of the page, to draw your own conclusions about my feelings on the matter...) - it's here to stay. 

 

Good points: it's stylish, it's elegant, and it allows rainwater to dissipate gently, without flooding your house, your garage, or your beds, depending on what is downhill of your drive. 

Downsides: if you use a pressure washer on it, the blocks all come loose and jiggle about, which is annoying, and expensive to fix.

It also needs an annual scrub, which has to be done by hand. The least back-breaking way to do this is with a long-handled wire brush.

Now, here's the tip: don't buy one whose bristles are in a rectangular block:

...like this one, left.

Can you see how the bristles all stick up vertically, like soldiers on parade?

A brush like this will not clean your block paving for you!

Instead, look for ones whose outer rows of bristles have been set at an angle, so that they meet in more of a point, along the centre of the bristle block.

Like this one - right.

This one will slide quickly and neatly into the cracks,  rather than gliding annoyingly over them, as the one above does.

Ask me how I know: a Client's neighbour bought one for her drive, having watched me zipping around on the one next door.

She then stopped me, one day, to ask how I did it so quickly. ("Quickly" being a comparative term, it used to take me a good 2 hours.) She said that her beautiful new brush was really hard work and didn't make a neat job of it at all.

She showed me hers. I gave it a go. I handed it back. I went and fetched "our" one, and showed her the difference. She took hers back to the shop.

End of Top Tip. Although I do rather like the concept of the little metal scraper on the one in the picture - I've never had one of those, I wonder if it works? Or if it just sets your teeth on edge?

For more Top Tips, either type "Top Tips" into the search box at the top left of the screen, within the black strip: or go to the right-hand pane and scroll down below the Followers section (checking to see if you are there, as you go: what? You're not a Follower? Shocking! Follow me, immediately! *laughs*), then select Top Tips from the list.

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Top Tips: Wheelbarrows. Yes, again!

Top Tips: a series of short, very short, articles featuring Things Which You Might Not Already Know.

 Wheelbarrows: well, who knew that there was so much to say about them? This is my third Top Tip regarding the things!

Storage of wheelbarrows: when you are not using them, don't leave them just lying around the place, stand them up on end.

All wheelbarrows worthy of the name have what's called a Tipping Bar around the front wheel. This makes it possible to tip out the contents, without the barrow continuing to roll away from you. As per my post on terrible wheelbarrows, if yours doesn't have a tipping bar, throw it away and get a proper one.

These tipping bars also mean that a barrow will stand up on its own: it doesn't need to lean against a wall: it rests securely on the tipping bar, and on the front edge of the body.

Why store them standing on end?

Simply because if you leave them standing around in the "use me" position, the body will fill with water - rain, dew, dripping gutters, careless hose pipes, etc. And they will rust. Even the lovely Fort barrows, with their sturdy plastic bodies, have metal bolts holding the body to the frame, so rust is best avoided.

Standing the barrow upright keeps the rain out, protects the body from UV degradation, and takes up less floor space.

Here are two mis-matched barrows at my training garden:

As you can see, neatly stored, out of the way of the door.

(Number Three is away having a puncture fixed.)

Another advantage of doing this, is that it forces the user (ie my Trainees!) to ensure that the barrow is empty of mud, debris etc before they "park" them at the end of the morning, otherwise there's an avalanche of bits onto the shingle, and they would lose points for that.

(No, I don't actually dish out points to my Trainees: well, I do, but only informally, we don't keep score.)

And keeping our tools reasonably clean is all part of being a Professional Gardener.

The final point to note is that the barrows are NOT leaning against the wall - they are free standing.

So they are not damaging the wall.

And to prove it, here's a photo taken from the side, to show how the handles are clear of the wall.

If they didn't stand up by themselves, I wouldn't allow them to be stored in such a way that they rub against the painted wooden cladding of the wall, by the way: I'd find somewhere else for them to lean.

So there you have it, how to "park" your wheelbarrows!

 

For more Top Tips, either type "Top Tips" into the search box at the top left of the screen, within the black strip: or go to the right-hand pane and scroll down below the Followers section (checking to see if you are there, as you go: what? You're not a Follower? Shocking! Follow me, immediately! *laughs*), then select Top Tips from the list.

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!

Top Tips: wheelbarrows. Again.

Top Tips: a series of short, very short, articles featuring Things Which You Might Not Already Know.

Wheelbarrows are light when they are empty, heavy when they are full. Duh, obvious, huh?

So when you are doing a heavy job, such as digging out weeds, or clearing out a border in autumn, which means a lot of trips to the compost heap and/or the rubbish pile, always turn the wheelbarrow to face the way you are going to go, while it's still empty.

Here's how to do it - left.

The gate is to the left, so we turn the barrow to face that way, while it's still empty.

This avoids having to do an awkward manoeuvre with a heavy barrow, so you don't spill mess on the grass, don't grind a hole in the turf with the wheel, and last but not least, don't strain yourself trying to turn around in a confined space.

This is exactly the same principle as parking backwards, by the way: I always park backwards, wherever I go, because then I am doing all my manoeuvring with a warm engine, while I fully attuned to driving, and have already been looking at all the other traffic/pedestrians/obstacles etc. Then, when I drive out, the car is facing the right way, so it's easy to drive off with a cold engine and no faffing.  I never fail to be surprised at people who live or work (or shop) in places where they have to reverse out onto a road, often with steamed up windows, and usually in a hurry. Why don't they do all that faffing when they arrive? If you've accepted that you are going to hold up the traffic one way or the other, why not hold it up when you get there, rather than when you are trying to leave? (*shakes head*) Just saying!

Back to gardening....

For more Top Tips, either type "Top Tips" into the search box at the top left of the screen, within the black strip: or go to the right-hand pane and scroll down below the Followers section (checking to see if you are there, as you go: what? You're not a Follower? Shocking! Follow me, immediately! *laughs*), then select Top Tips from the list.

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!

Top Tips: instant makeover - lawn edges and mulch

Top Tips: a series of short, very short, articles featuring Things Which You Might Not Already Know.

Visitors due? About to put the house on the market? Wanting to take a nice photo, but the garden looks scruffy?

No matter what the time of year, an instant makeover for a garden is to clip the edges of the lawn, and to throw some mulch onto the beds.

If you have time to cut the grass, that's great, but if there isn't time to do the whole lawn, clipping the edges immediately improves the look.  It's a bit like not having time to go and get a haircut, but if you just trim your fringe, you suddenly look a lot tidier. 

And the mulching - there is nothing like a quick layer of fresh mulch to make a bed look tidy and well-kempt.

Here's a nice example - left: this bed looked as though a bomb had hit it, half an hour earlier.

A quick weed-round, a quick clipping of the edge, and a bag-and-a-half of mini bark chips, and look! Stunning!

 

 

For more Top Tips, either type "Top Tips" into the search box at the top left of the screen, within the black strip: or go to the right-hand pane and scroll down below the Followers section (checking to see if you are there, as you go: what? You're not a Follower? Shocking! Follow me, immediately! *laughs*), then select Top Tips from the list.

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!

Top Tips: wheelbarrows

Top Tips: a series of short, very short, articles featuring Things Which You Might Not Already Know.

When loading your wheelbarrow, always load the end away from the handles first: and if you are moving a small amount of something heavy, ie rocks, bags of materials, an old tree stump etc, then make sure you put it at the wheel end of the barrow.

Why?

Because having the heaviest part of the load over the wheel means it is easier to wheel it.

Go on, give it a go: get something heavy, like a bag of compost or bark, heave it up into your barrow and have it at the handle end. Now trundle the barrow around. Ooer, heavy, and unbalanced. Stop, and move the bag to the far end, over the wheel. Now try again. Ah! Much better.

There's more information on wheelbarrows in this article, enticingly titled The Good, The Bad, and the Flipping Ugly.

For more Top Tips, either type "Top Tips" into the search box at the top left of the screen, within the black strip: or go to the right-hand pane and scroll down below the Followers section (checking to see if you are there, as you go: what? You're not a Follower? Shocking! Follow me, immediately! *laughs*), then select Top Tips from the list.

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!

Top Tips: a new feature!

 I'm adding a new feature to this blog - Top Tips!

These are things which I know so well that I don't even think about them, but which you might possibly not have thought of.

They are usually very simple, and are often the sort of thing that make you think "why did I not think of that?" and I'm very happy to be passing such things on.

Most of them are self-invented, or self-noticed: some of them are things I've picked up from other people.

And I'm doing it because my previous Trainee used to shout "Top Tip!" with glee, every time I told them something useful, and now, with my current Trainee, I find myself saying "Here's a Top Tip for you..." 

We talked about it, and agreed that Top Tips are a good thing to share. The modern phrase, is of course "hack" but I don't like that phrase: to me, hacking is either something done by 50-a-day smokers, or it's a cyber crime. And I don't approve of crime, generally speaking.

So, how do you find all my Top Tips: well, you can either type Top Tips into the search box at the top left of the page:

...there, I've ringed it in red for you.

 Or,  you can scroll down and look on the right-hand pane, underneath the box which says Followers (*big wave and hello to all my lovely Followers! Hi, guys!*), where you will see a list of "Frequently covered subjects!".

If you select Top Tips from that list, it will sort out all the articles with that label, for you.

Easy, huh? 

So if you are new to gardening, or if you are embarking on a career as a gardener, check out my Top Tips - and keep coming back, as I will be adding them every time I think of one!

 

 

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!