House And Office Cleaning

If you really are devoted to gardening, you should be aware that cleaning of your garden during the fall has more to do with the aesthetics of gardening and sometimes for the reasons of sanitation of the garden. It’s not that plants wanted it that way. So, don’t worry if you had no time to cut off peony leaves, remove the tops off the mums after they got frozen or cut back the delphiniums. In the end, if they grow wild the tops would continue to stay and the plants would still live to grow.

Unless they get diseased why not put them in the compost pit and let the germs work overtime and produce organic substances for being used in the garden in future. Else, destroy the diseased tops by all means. Some people sort of make a clean slate of their beds by taking out roots and ripping the plants away, not realizing that such a cleaning does more harm than good

After you have cleaned your garden by a leaf blower and dumped all the leaves and trash that had been collected all this while into the compost pit, spray some insecticide or neem oil on the cleaned area. It helps in two ways. It does away with most of the sow bugs (pill bugs) and leaves your compost pit free from their attack. The other benefit is keeps away earthworms that wipe out a lot of organic materials. If you fall short of leaves, visit the nearest sawmill to get sawdust or wood shavings to mix them with your garden trash. That way it works out much cheaper than going to buy peat moss.

One last tip for the lazy gardener who is in the habit of leaving wheelbarrow or garden cart in the rain! If you would simply drill a couple of quarter inch holes at its bottom, the drain water would drain out, leaving the contents of you vehicle washed and clean and the earth gets a bit richer thru the minerals that were washed down the vehicle.

The method followed for cleaning of your gutters determines the right kind of gutter equipment to be used for the purpose of cleaning. Another contributory factor is the volume of built-up that you might have in your gutters. Nevertheless, the basic equipment for all gutters includes a foot ladder (10 to 32 foot), gloves and a bucket. Here are the four cleaning methods people resort to for cleaning of gutters:

The first method makes use of a leaf blower to blow out the build up from the gutter. Unless your roof is too steep, this is conveniently done on top of the roof. This is ideal for dry gutters and is very fast too. But, the negative point of this method is you’ll take a long time in clearing the mess that gets created below. And, keep in mind that a gas blower delivers better results than an electric one and is slightly faster also.

The other option for cleaning the gutter is by using a wet vacuum. The most convenient part is that all the mess from the gutter is collected within the container and that makes cleaning easier. The difficult part is that vacuum is heavy and if there’s a lot of build up in the gutter, you have to empty the container a number of times. Many householders don’t consider this method to be heavy at all. It all depends how frequently you have been cleaning the gutter and what are the contents of the gutter. For example, pine needles are much heavier than leaves. So if there are lots of leaves in the gutter, this will be a very convenient way to clean the same.

But I prefer to use the third method here that involves using a combination of a gutter-cleaning rake with a bucket and ladder. I find it safer to work from a ladder than from the roof. Plus, you get an extension of extra five feet on either side of the ladder on using a rake. You can work two times faster with this arrangement. Here’s one more tip for making a gutter tool: cut a milk carton to get a scoop with handle and use it for removing debris from the gutter.

You may use any of the three methods whichever suits most.