The following is not a paid post. Consider it a mock!
After the excitement of buying a home comes the excitement of making the place yours. That includes putting your own stamp on the garden - especially if you’ve inherited a yard that has been neglected. Here’s where to start.
Clear plants from outside walls
Plants, dirt, garden beds and debris are often pushed up against the exterior of houses. Do your best to create some distance from the wall - especially around vents. This will improve airflow, promote drier conditions under and in your home, and help prevent termite infestations.
Trim fruit trees
It’s essential to trim your fruit trees every year for the health of the tree, improved fruit production and general aesthetics. There are a few important things to keep in mind before you start hacking away. If you go overboard, it’s unlikely that you’ll kill the tree, but you may hinder fruit production for the upcoming season.
Find out when the tree bears fruit
That’s often during spring and summer, making autumn the best time to prune. To get the job done, you will only need a couple of basic tools like this pruner for smaller branches and these loppers for thicker and higher branches. Bunnings has a great range, so get a feel for them in the aisle before you buy.
Trim no more than one-third
Pruning too much can shock your tree, causing it to prioritize survival over fruit production. This can leave you in a tricky position if your tree is wildly overgrown. If you go overboard and prune too aggressively, you’ll miss out on fruit for a season, but it should bounce back the following year.
Be strategic
Don’t start chopping branches willy-nilly. A healthy tree will have three branches branching from the main trunk. The tree will then become wider toward the canopy - think of a vase or upside-down pyramid. Then, you’d be looking to clean up the ‘inside’ of the tree, so all branches are pointing outward from the center, opposed to pointing to the middle.
As you can imagine, if you want to be gentle on the tree for fruit production, you’ll have to be strategic in what you snip.
Cut on an angle
Keep those cutters sharp and clean, and do your best to prune each branch on an angle, ideally the bare wood will face the sun so it dries out quickly, which will reduce the chance of disease.
Take care of your lawn
Your lawn will love you if you cut no more than one-third of the leaf at a time. In summer, this might see you pushing the mower a couple of times a week, compared to winter where you might mow a couple of times a month.
This is just basic lawn care and there’s an entire section dedicated to it at Bunnings if you’re interested in making your lawn Insta-famous.
Start composting
Cleaning up your garden can create a heap of green waste, which you can throw in your green bin along with your food scraps. If you have the room, why not make your own compost?
You don’t need anything fancy to get started. Some people opt for a simple pile in the yard - not great if you have kids or pets. There are easy setups where you just throw your clippings in the top (like this one) to let the worms and nature do their thing, and after about a year you’ll have some nice compost to add to your garden.
Think about how quickly you want your waste to break down, and how you might like to access it. Warmer conditions inside the bin will encourage faster composting. Sitting the bin straight on the ground will allow worms to chomp away, while a compost tumbler (take a look at this) will promote aerobic decomposition for a more ‘mature’ and nutrient dense compost.
Each option has its benefits and if you're unsure what’s right for your garden, just chat with a team member at Bunnings.
This is NOT a sponsored post for Bunnings, but if it was, this might be where a call to action might be. I hope you found it useful!