Garden Solutions With JamesJames Burns (544)   Rational Environmental Solutions 12 Green Reasons For Using The Greenest Pest ControlPosted Saturday, January 05, 2008 (125 days 22 hours ago.) Viewed 44 times. Thinking
of going green with pest control? Superb idea! Before you place an
order, or head to your local retail outlet for a car load of earth friendly products, I have some
suggestions that might just save you some money, and do a favor for the planet! What I prefer, is the use of pest prevention, the greenest form of pest control. Let me explain what I mean and why. It has to do with mindset, with our tendency to put out fires, instead of preventing them. We seem to have no problem understanding this as it relates to disease. Preventing the flu, preventing the common cold, or any other virus or disease is the standard. Controlling the flu, or treating the flu is understood to be the least appealing scenario outside of dying from it! Would you prefer to avoid pneumonia, or control and treat it with a non toxic remedy? Yet somehow, we can't seem to make the logical next step of applying this to the problem of pests. Allow me to offer some environmental incentive. 12 reasons why preventing pests is the greenest form of green pest control, greener even than the use of green pest products: 1. No energy spent on the shipment of raw materials for the product to a factory. By using prevention, you will not only avoid the use of commercial pesticides, but you will also reduce your need for organic or natural pesticides. This will reduce your carbon footprint! I hope this has been an encouragement for you to give pest prevention a try before you try any other means of control. 
Permalink Comments (0) Caring for a Cut Christmas Tree: 12 Tips For Your TannenbaumPosted Tuesday, December 11, 2007 (151 days 2 hours ago.) Viewed 34 times. "O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, dein Kleid zoll mich was lehren: Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, with faithful leaves unchanging." Caring for cut trees can be difficult. They can be fire
hazards at there worst, or you can find your tree devoid of needles
before Santa arrives if you don't use proper care. Don't disappoint
Santa. Almost
everyone loves the fragrance of a real tree. It blends well with hot
chocolate and Christmas carols. These are a few tips on keeping your Tannenbaum's leaves from changing. 1. Please measure carefully, be sure the tree will fit into the living room without massive cutting. If you have to take off too much, your tree may start to resemble "Charlie Browns" tree! 2. If you are not cutting your own tree from the farm, check to make sure that it is fresh. Brush it with your hand a few times and watch for falling needles. Drop the base on the pavement and check for the same thing. It will drop a few, even if it is fresh, but they should not fall out in hands full. 3. Cover it well for the ride home. 70 mile per hour winds will tend to desiccate, and defoliate. 4. Make sure it is well secured. Dragging it along the highway will leave it a little lopsided. 5. Please check your tree for pests, before you bring it inside. Just give it a few good shakes, and a visual inspection just to be sure you are not inviting any hitchhikers in to enjoy the cookies left out for Santa. 6. When you arrive, makes sure that everything is in place, you should have a good tree stand with plenty of room for water. 7. Water is the key to longevity. The trees from a lot, probably were sprayed with an anti desiccant spray before they were cut, or soon thereafter. You should trim an inch or two off of the base of the trunk, to assure that the tree can absorb the water. 8. Make sure that the tree is held firmly in place by the stand, and is stable. 9. Add water. 10. Check the water pretty often. The tree can soak up a lot of it. Evaporation will also lower the supply. It will need a constant supply to keep it fresh. 11. Decorate, and enjoy! 12. Something to consider: Go to a local nursery and buy a living Christmas tree! Buying a container grown tree can be fun and you can use it in your landscape when it outgrows your containers! You can re-pot the tree as needed, and use the same tree for several years, then when it grows too large for practical use, plant it in your landscape! This is a nice, environmentally friendly way to celebrate the season. Don't forget to leave some milk to go with those cookies! Merry Christmas!
Permalink Comments (0) 5 Steps Toward A Pest Free Home EnvironmentPosted Friday, December 07, 2007 (155 days 2 hours ago.) Viewed 34 times. We can never live a completely pest free existence, but we can make it a lot more comfortable by following a few simple rules. 1. For pest free property: Start your prevention at the rough edges of your property. Brush and debris control, will provide a clear zone starting with the parameter of your property to move the pests further away from you. Then follow the directions bellow: 2. For a pest free landscape: Use pest resistant plants, these are usually native plants. Mulch carefully with weed seed free products, don't over water. When pruning trees, do it right so that pest, fungus and disease don't have an entry inside the tree. 3. For a pest free lawn: Mow more often, use sharp blades, water Less, only fertilize enough to keep the lawn healthy, don't fertilize too late in the year, don't aerify to late in the year. Clean mower between "roughs" and lawn. 4. For a pest free garden: Use bug resistant varieties, make sure that the amendments you use are free of weed seeds. You have now taken steps to keep pests off your property, out of your landscape, lawn, and garden, and that should reduce the numbers available to assault your home. 5. For a pest free home: Follow all the above steps, and then seal all pest entries into your home. These steps are just the basics, get creative in your thinking of how to carry them out. Good luck on your quest to prevent pests.
Permalink Comments (0) Pest Routes Of Entry: How to Close The Border To BugsPosted Friday, November 16, 2007 (175 days 15 hours ago.) Viewed 39 times. It is a necessary fact of life. You have to breathe. Stop doing it for more than a couple of minutes, and you are a goner! Your home has to breathe too, and In order to breathe, in order to allow entry for pipes and cables, in order to vent heat and harmful gases, there have to be openings in a home. The primary openings are: Vents: *Attic Vents: For dissipating heat. *Soffit Vents: For dissipating heat. *Plumbing Vents: For dissipating fumes and allowing the air needed for proper function of drainage systems. *Range vents: For dissipating the heat and smoke from cooking. *Hot gas vents for ventilating the hot gasses from gas hot water heaters. *Dryer vents for dissipating the hot air from clothes dryers. *Fan vents, for removing nuisance odors from bathrooms. *Weep holes are small vents for allowing the drainage and drying of condensate from natural heating and cooling in the walls of your home, to prevent mold. Other openings: Power, communication, and transmission lines and pipes: *Air Conditioning Condensate drains: Very often, these are small copper pipes through the walls of the home. These allow the removal of moisture from air conditioning units. *Plumbing pipe openings: Allowing plumbing into your home; In most cases today, this is done through the floor of the concrete slab, but sometimes in other areas for homes on blocks or pier and beam construction. *Electrical lines. To allow electricity transmission: These are most often at the upper portion of an outside wall. *Cable communications lines: For satellite or cable line entry: The location can vary. A home with out some forms of ventilation would soon destroy itself. A home without electricity, plumbing and communication would not be much fun! So, how do we accommodate all these holes in our homes, and still keep little critters out? Well, that is what this is about. How To Close The Border: Vents: Before central heat and air, there were devices in homes to allow for the adjustment of temperature through the use of ventilation. We still have them in most homes today where they often serve as nothing more than vestiges of the ancient past. These were known as windows. Often the doors were used for the same purpose in the summer. How did they manage to open these ventilation devices without allowing bugs in? This was accomplished through window and door screens. Taking a lesson from the past, we might consider the use of screens over the vents. Most home builders now screen vents, but there is always a chance, and you should check yours. Sometimes some are omitted by accident. I have seen a number of cases where rodents gained entry through dryer vents, and then chewed through the vent hose to get to the cheese and crackers. Write yourself a note to periodically check these vent screens for clogging. Other openings: For other entry routes into the home, pipes and cables, will need to be sealed using another ancient technology: Caulk. A tube of high quality caulk is one of the best tools in home pest prevention. Seal around those entries on the outside of your home. Even the very small cracks and holes. You might be surprised just how small an insect or a rodent can become when it is hungry, thirsty, hot dry, wet or cold. When you are done with the outside of your home, you are not done! On the inside of your house, you should do the same thing. Give special attention to plumbing drains. Very often a box was used to to form around the bathroom piping for the plumbers to make all the connections. If this area is not filled before the walls are completed, there will be exposed soil on the inside of the wall. Most pretreatments for termites will lower the chances of anything coming into the home through these openings, but occasionally some do. If you have easy access to these areas through a pipe chase, filling the area with mortar or some other hardening substance is a good option, if not, the first time that a repair is made to your plumbing requiring a plumber to open up a wall, you might be able to do it. Otherwise, make sure that the inside wall is sealed well. Caulking around doors and windows, inside and out should be checked, and resealed if needed. Door sweeps should be checked and replaced if they do not reach the floor, or do not go all the way to the edges of the door. All weather-stripping around doors and windows should be checked. All screen doors should be in good order with no holes. The same is true of window screens. Look for a good fit. Check the window surface to surface seals where they open, make sure the seal is tight enough that the bugs can't crawl between. OK, now you have the house zipped up, what else can you do? A lot! If you stop more pests from coming into your lawn, you can stop more from coming into your home. If you stop them before they get to your lawn, you raise your chances of winning even more. Try these 22 Tips to get started, and don't let pests get your best!
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