AH Crafts Home Improvement And Interior Design Site

Natural stone pebbles are becoming extremely popular in homes because of their wide range of colors and uses. Here are a few ideas for use in your own home.

Japanese Gardens

Japanese Gardens and known for their peacefulness and tranquillity. This style of garden uses specific plants as well as rocks and water to create this effect. Often these gardens are small in scale and are incorporated into an overall garden design rather than being the whole garden.

Decorative Pots

Placing some pebbles around the top of a potted plant can make indoor plants more attractive. Consider what part of the potted plant you want to make the focus. You can use a decorative ceramic pot as well. Decide whether you want matching or contrasting colors in the pot and the pebbles you choose. The pebbles and chosen pot should help focus your eye on the plant you have chosen.

Vases

Pebbles are also very effective used in the bottom of vases. Glass vases in particular look superb with some colored natural stone in the bottom. The pebble base also helps hold the arranged flowers in place. Decorative vases make great table decorations for dinner parties.

Paths and Drives

Paths and drives become very low maintenance when covered with a topping of small natural stone pebbles. The pebble size you choose needs to take into account how the path or drive will be used. Heavy car traffic or foot traffic areas need smaller stones as they are more comfortable underfoot and better for cars to drive over. Gravel drives and paths should have retaining edging to hold the stones in place. Drives and paths need to be topped up with extra stone occasionally. They are very durable and much nicer looking than a plain old concrete driveway.

Water Features

It seems now that everyone wants a garden water feature. They can be very small or quite large and bold but always add an element of tranquillity to any garden. When planning a water feature you can incorporate natural stone in a variety of ways. Larger stones around the edge of the feature can add character. Pebbles can also be used to cover the base of the water feature and to cover up any cords or pumps that are used to power it. Before choosing your stone remember to wet a sample as this is how it will look in your water feature.

Ponds

The same rule applies with ponds to wet your sample and check the colour of the stone. Natural stone is normally dusty when collected and when the dust comes off the real color is revealed. Ponds look great with built-up edging. You can use a variety of materials including feature rocks, wood, metal and many others. You can also mix and match various sized stones for a more natural look.

Pebbles as Mulch

Mulching is something more gardeners are doing in the garden. Basically it involves adding a layer of material over the top of your soil to aid with water retention. This means less watering which saves time and also water supplies. Not everyone has an endless supply of water or the enthusiasm to maintain lawns and pebbles are a great alternative, particularly in naturally dry areas.

Weeding in garden beds is greatly reduced. It is quite easy to pull the few weeds that attempt to grow among the pebbles. As the plants mature and fill up the planting spaces there is less room for weeds to find a place to grow.

To stop the grass from coming up through the pebble mulch paths we have found that a heavy layer of newspaper and then a layer of plastic or weed mat on top works very well. The newspapers and the plastic help to retain moisture, another important reason for mulching. On top of this plastic the pebbles that were recently in the planting holes are spread in a thick layer. Larger flat rocks are used as edging.

Compost, made from decomposed grass clippings, leaves, twigs, and branches, becomes a dark, crumbly mixture of organic matter.

Learn how composting works. Even a newbie to composting can make good quality compost. It can be compared to cooking as art or part science. The following 7 factors will help you master the art of composting.

1. Materials
After a time anything that was once alive will naturally decompose. But, not all organic items should be composted for the home. To prepare compost, organic material, microorganisms, air, water, and a small amount of nitrogen are needed.

These items are safe to compost at home:
* grass clippings
* trimmings from hedges
* vegetable scraps
* leaves
* potting soil that has grown old
* twigs
* coffee filters with coffee grounds
* tea bags
* weeds that have not went to seed
* plant stalks

These items are Not safe to compost at home:
* weeds that have went to seed
* dead animals
* pet feces
* bread and grains
* meat
* grease
* cooking oil
* oily foods
*diseased plants

2. What To Do To Make It Work
There are small forms of plant and animal life which break down the organic material. This life is called microorganisms. From a minute amount of garden soil or manure comes plenty of microorganisms.

Nitrogen, air, and water will provide a favorable environment for the microorganisms to make the compost. Air circulation and water will keep the microorganisms healthy and working. The nitrogen feeds the tiny organisms. You may have to add a small amount of nitrogen to the pile.

Putting on too much nitrogen can kill microbes and too much water causes insufficient air in the pile. You just cannot add too much air.

3. Beneficial Microorganisms
Bacteria are the most effective compost makers in your compost pile. They are the first to break down plant tissue. Then comes the fungi and protozoans to help with the process. The arthropodes, like centipedes, beetles, millipedes and worms, bring in the finishing touches to complete the composting.

4. Smaller is Better
The materials will break down faster if the microorganisms have more surface area to eat. Chopping your garden materials with a chipper, shredder, or lawnmower will help them decompose faster.

5. Size of The Pile
The activity of millions of microorganisms generates heat in the compost pile but a minimum size 3-foot by 3-foot by 3-foot is needed for a hot, fast composting pile. Piles that are any larger may hamper the air supply needed in the pile for the microorganisms.

6. Moisture and Aeration
If you can imagine a wet squeezed out sponge with its many air pockets, then this would be the ideal enviroment for the microorganisms in the pile to function at their best. Pay attention while your pile is composting, to the amount of rain or a drought you may have. Water in a drought and maybe turn the pile in a lot of rainy days. The extremes of these two may upset the balance of the pile. The use of a pitchfork would come in handy at this time.

7. Temperature and Time
Keep your pile between 110F and 160F and the beneficial bacteria will love it. Not too cool nor too hot.
The temperature will rise over several days if you keep a good ratio of carbon and nitrogen, maintain lots of surface area within a large volume of material, and maintain adequate moisture and aeration.

-Importance of Compost-

+Compost has nutrients, but it is not a complete fertilizer.

+Compost provides nutrients in the soil until plants need to use them.

+ It loosens and aerates clay soils

+ Retains water in sandy soils.

-Using the Compost-

+ A soil amendment, mix 2 to 5 inches of compost into gardens each year before planting.

+ A potting mixture, add one part compost to two parts potting soil.

+ Make your own potting mixture by using equal parts of compost and sand or perlite.

+ A mulch, prodcast 2 to 4 inches of compost around annual flowers and vegetables, and up to 5 inches around your trees and shrubs.

+ A top dressing, mix finely sifted compost with sand and sprinkle evenly over lawns.

The final thing I would suggest once you have mastered the art of composting is to look very seriously at making your very own aerated compost tea. This elixir will give you results that are hard to believe.

The fireplace has long been the favorite spot to gather in the American home. A place for warmth, the fireplace adds ambience, sparking memories that are to be treasured. With all the benefits that a fireplace can bring, there are some major downsides that if not addressed can cause a love for the fireplace to wane.

With soaring energy costs, the chief negative of having a fireplace has to be its inefficiency. When there is a fire burning, the fireplace does indeed radiate warmth in its general vicinity, but it also creates a convection current that can actually pull conditioned air out of the room and up the chimney causing your furnace to work overtime. When the fire is not burning, the fireplace has a damper which is supposed to block inside air from escaping and outside air from invading. The problem is that the damper is usually made of metal (this type of damper technology hasn’t changed in over 100 years!) and has no seal, which means that the damper is incredibly inefficient.

Your home has a dirty little secret – the fireplace that is designed to warm your house is actually doing the opposite and costing you hundreds of dollars in energy costs. Don’t fret – with a little investment of time and money, you can turn that inefficient fireplace into a powerhouse heater that will reduce your energy bills and add even more charm to your existing fireplace.

The following is a list of 4 things that you can do yourself to drastically reduce the heating costs associated with the inefficiency of your fireplace.

1. Top Sealing Dampers replace the fireplace throat damper and are installed at the top of the chimney. The top sealing damper has a seal that acts like a storm door keeping the expensive conditioned air inside the house and the outside air – outside. This principle works year round, whether you’re heating or cooling your house. This product can be purchased online and is easily installed by either a homeowner or a handyman.

2. A fireback is a cast iron plate that is placed at the back of your fireplace. Its purpose is to protect the back wall from fire damage and it usually features a design that adds to the homes decor. The fireback improves the fireplaces efficiency by absorbing the heat from the fire and radiating the heat back into the room.

3. A Fireplace Heater pulls fresh air from the room, circulates it through a chamber that is heated by the fire and then blows the heated air back into the room. These heaters are closed systems so no smoke from the fireplace is invading the home. Depending on which kind you purchase, these heaters can make a significant difference in your homes temperature, even heating a full room on its own. Specific fireplace heaters can be installed with fireplace glass doors which will kick your cost savings up another notch.

4. Fireplace Glass Doors will likely carry the largest investment, but you can reduce some of that cost by doing some of the work yourself. There are a number of fireplace doors that can be purchased online and come with easy to install instructions. The fireplace glass door creates a barrier between the living space and the chimney, thus reducing the area that your furnace will have to heat. This alone is a good reason to install these doors, but it’s not the only reason. Fireplace glass doors offer another level of safety for the home by protecting children and pets from the fire. If you have a wood burning fireplace you will want to purchase the screen mesh that is designed to go with the fireplace glass doors. This will allow you to have the doors open while the fire is burning and still have your home protected from sparks and embers. Fireplace glass doors are now being manufactured with modern designs and really add beauty and charm to the fireplace.
If you’re handy, all of these suggestions are easy to accomplish. In addition, all of the products, while difficult to find locally, can easily be purchased online. If you’re concerned about high energy costs but you want to keep your fireplace, then it’s time to plug up the holes in your monthly energy budget by plugging up the holes in your fireplace.