Free Landscaping Guide from Fenris Distribution

Fenris Distribution is pleased to announce the release of our new Free Landscaping Guide. This free guide contains some of the articles posted here as well as many others. Covering 20 landscaping topics it is sure to be a valuable resource to any home gardener.
Covering the Topics : Annuals Attracting Hummingbirds and Butterflies Design With Shrubs Feeding Your Lawn With Fertilizer Feeding Your Lawn With Water Gardening in the Shade Gardening in the Sun Landscaping 101 Lawn Care Making Plans Managing Insects Managing Weeds Managing Wildlife Destruction Perennials and Biennials Pruning Trees Selecting Trees The Zone System Tools Transplanting Winter Choices	Free Landscaping Guide
Written in simple nontechnical language and bookmarked for easy reference this Free Landscaping Guide showcases our past newsletter articles, and will prove useful to everyone from the beginner to the advanced home gardener.
These simple and practical techniques will save you time and effort as well as tips to help you achieve a professional look without the professional price. This free guide is our gift to you and we wish you luck, and hope you enjoy your new garden.
If you or a loved one enjoys to garden our free monthly newsletter is a must have. It contains articles and tips as well as a 10% off promotional code good on all products at FenrisDistribution.net .

New Religious Statuary

Fenris is proud to announce it’s new line of Religious Statues. Featuring Angles and Saints in a variety of high quality styles made to withstand the elements for years and still look beautiful. Like all of our items they come with a Lifetime Guarantee.

Basic Weed Control Methods

Fenris Distribution is happy to bring you another example from our newsletter. This article is from our July edition. If you want to receive more articles as well as a store discount code visit our site and join our newsletter.

Basic Weed Control Methods

Keeping weeds down is more than just an aesthetic issue. Weeds consume space, water and soil nutrients needed by growing vegetable plants. They also act as vectors for insects and disease, as well as providing cover for mice and other pests. When they grow out of control, they can even block needed sunlight.

Weed control is an ongoing task, but one that is made easier by employing a battery of methods.

One of those methods begins before the first seed is planted. Proper soil preparation can help reduce the problem before it begins. Churning the soil by a good tilling prevents weeds from getting started and disrupts the growth cycle.

Seeds will remain, but putting down a weed control fabric over the topsoil can help. It blots out needed warmth and light and provides a physical barrier that makes it more difficult for them to rise. Mulches provide a natural cover that will help suppress weeds. Manure, bark chips, sawdust, leaves and other forms can block sunlight.

Laying down a pretreatment, such as a pre-germinating herbicide can prevent weeds from ever developing that might already have seeds in the ground. Exercise care to get the proper one. You don’t want to make the soil inhospitable for your new vegetable seeds and transplants.

Proper seed selection will help, as well. Some fast growing, shading vegetables will block sunlight that weeds need to develop. They’re sometimes called ’smother crops’. As they spread out under the soil, they help crowd out the weed roots, thus providing double prevention. Planting them at the correct depth, with the right fertilizer and water, will give them a head start against weeds. Their action can sometimes even help over winter to suppress weed development.

When weeds do get started, it’s best to try to remove them mechanically right away. That’s more difficult because there is less to grab onto. But the larger they grow, the more their roots spread.

We often think of weeds as isolated plants, but an ‘underground view’ shows that they’re more like a tree on its side. The ‘branches’ are just the weed part that sticks up above ground. The ‘trunk’ is the web of material that connects them all. Getting one just disconnects that ‘branch’ from the ‘trunk’. But the smaller they are the less time they’ve had to branch out. Getting one helps prevent their spread.

Hoes, weeding forks and other tools can be a big help here.

But when all those methods still don’t entirely eliminate weeds – as they probably won’t – don’t be afraid of using a chemical herbicide. Take care to find one that will take out the weed and not your vegetable plant. But once you do, they can be used safely and effectively. Chemistry has developed a great deal in the past 50 years and there are many that are actually less harmful to you and the environment than some natural methods.

Dealing With Pests Tips From Fenris Garden & Patio

Hello,
Fenris Garden And Patio is happy to bring you this article from our June Newsletter.
Vegetable Gardening – Dealing With Pests

Unfortunately, you’re not the only one who loves your fresh, home grown vegetables. Insects, rabbits, mice, deer and other pests do too. And they eat more than just the vegetable itself, often munching on leaves and even roots. That takes away not only the food, but the ability of the plant to create more. Very greedy, these little creatures.

Controlling pests in order to produce a healthy crop is an ongoing task. But it can be made easier by taking an integrated approach. Don’t rely on just one method, but employ a variety.

Good pest control starts even before the vegetables grow, by proper soil preparation, plant selection and watering practice. Maintaining a slightly acidic soil, around pH 6.5 can help. Keeping the soil well fertilized helps the plants grow well, which gives them the needed assistance to fight off pests.

Seek out seeds that are pest resistant. Don’t fear genetic modification programs, since one goal is to create just such seeds. If you transplant, select healthy plants.

Be on the lookout for harmful insects and other pests. But don’t react to every insect with a chemical spray. There are many helpful organisms, some of which treat the soil, others consume harmful insects. Knowing which is which is the first step to biological control of gardening problems. That creates safe, tasty vegetables that grow large and healthy.

Assassin bugs will eat aphids, caterpillars, Japanese beetles and other pests. Stink bugs will feed on potato beetles and some caterpillars. Ladybugs eat aphids, mealybugs and spider mites. These are just a few examples out of dozens.

Watering in the morning will help. It keeps fungus and other problems to a minimum. Just as with grass, vegetables can be prone to growths that are encouraged by nighttime temperatures and excess moisture on the leaves. Allowing the plant to soak up needed water early, then dry before the temperature drops, will help prevent such problems. Keeping them disease free minimizes insect damage, since a weakened plant will often not survive minor infestations. A healthy plant can fight them off.

Alternating the planting of different species will help prevent the spread of pests. Some like one type, others like another. But when many similar plants are spaced close together, that contributes to a population explosion among similar pests. They either reproduce more rapidly, or gather together. Getting rid of a huge population is more difficult, in part because they can devastate a plant before your other efforts take effect.

Remove any part or plant that has been attacked in order to prevent spreading. Just as with animals and humans, pests spread in part by contact. This isn’t necessary at the first sign of a problem, but when it reaches the level where you can’t save the plant, it’s best to save the others.

Building a good fence with narrow mesh at the base will help keep larger animals – rabbits and deer, for example – from getting to your vegetables.

But when those efforts are not enough, don’t be afraid to use an approved commercial insecticide. Chemistry has come a long way in the past 50 years and they’re designed to eradicate insect infestations while still being safe for humans to contact and eat the vegetables.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to receive more please go to http://FenrisDistribution.net and join our newsletter. You will also receive a store discount code good for all items in the store.

Thank you for your time,
Derrick
http://FenrisDistribution.net

Landscaping – Managing Insects

Landscaping – Managing Insects Keeping destructive insects to a minimum is now easier than ever. Thanks to innovative biologists and chemists, there are a dozen safe ways to control damaging insects. The first step is to correctly identify what kind of insects you have or are likely to get. There are thousands of common species, but typically only a handful do most of the harm in any given area. These can often be identified in one or more of three ways. You can check the leaves of your plants, flowers and shrubs and match them against photos you can find online. If you search for information about the specific plants you’re worried about you’ll quickly find the most common pests. Accompanying that information is frequently a photo you can use for comparison. Many times, though, insects on flowers, trees, grass and other plants are hidden. In that case you can rely on a guess and apply control methods based on the common invasive species. Aphids frequently infest rose bushes, for example, and can be difficult to spot. Grass often has grub infestations that could only be visually detected by careful inspection underneath the soil. Another method is to examine the effects. If you find large, roughly round, brown spots on grass – especially in late Spring through Summer – you probably have a Japanese Beetle grub problem. There can be other causes, double check your guess by the previously listed methods. If you find that patches of grass pull away easily from the soil like carpet that has come loose from its tacks, you probably have a grub problem. Once you identify the species that is causing the problem, eliminating it is usually safe, inexpensive and easy using modern control methods. That doesn’t necessarily mean purchasing and spraying large areas with chemicals, though many today are designed to be perfectly safe for humans and the environment. Instead of using grub killing fertilizer or insecticide, for example, you can use biological control methods. These are becoming more popular and more effective all the time. A substance called ‘milky spores’ can be a very cost effective way to control grubs in lawns. Initially biological control may be more costly than a bag of grub insecticide. A 30lb bag of grub killer may cost $10 and last two years where a 1-liter bottle of milky spores may be $30 or more, but it lasts for 10 years. The substance works well because it actually contains living organisms that invade the grub larvae and interrupts their growth cycle. In effect, you have one organism killing another. But the spores do no harm to your lawn, only to the grub. There are many other biological control methods, each tailored to attack a specific problem. They have to be, since organisms are fairly particular about what insects they will invade and when. But you’ll find them safe, cost effective and frequently longer lasting than chemical methods. You can always fall back onto chemical insecticides when needed, too. Modern insecticides have become very sophisticated, frequently decaying from the environment safely and quickly into harmless byproducts. At the same time, they do the job before fading away.

Landscaping – Managing Wildlife Destruction

Landscaping – Managing Wildlife Destruction Your trees, shrubs and flowers often look like a free lunch to wildlife. Rabbits love to munch on clover and other grasses, as well as certain kinds of flowers. Deer love fruit and certain kinds of shrubbery. Moose will feed on the large and small branches of apple and other trees. And, of course, there are the ever-present gophers that populate large areas of the U.S. All these critters, and many more, can make keeping a beautiful garden, a nice lawn or some outstanding trees in good shape a real challenge. Fortunately, there are several simple and inexpensive ways to keep the damage to a minimum. Deer, for example, are very fond of apples. Having a feeder away from the garden will keep their focus where you want it to be, away from your plants and flowers. Or, you can try one of the many commercially available deer repellent sprays. But, you can add another item to your toolkit by careful selection of what you plant. If you live in an area where deer frequent (and a surprisingly large number of people do), there are all sorts of options that are attractive to you but not to them. Germaniums, tansy, daffodils and many other flowering plants are not favored by deer. Thyme, myrtle, spearmint and other herbs, too, are generally left alone. Rabbits will eat plants and flowers out of gardens, but a simple, narrow mesh fence can keep them out. Surprisingly, even full-sized rabbits can squeeze between the gaps in standard chain link fence. It doesn’t generally need to be more than 18 inches high to discourage them, especially if there are easier food sources elsewhere. Rabbits can dig a hole under fencing, so it’s not a foolproof method. To discourage them further, sink the fencing a foot below the ground as well. Planting a section of clover near the back of an unfenced yard will tend to keep them there and away from your garden. Monks hood, hollyhock, aster, borrage and many others are beautiful as well as not preferred by rabbits. Gophers (and some types of mole) are found in many places around the U.S. Even a single gopher can cause considerable damage in only a few hours. And, if you find evidence of one, there are often at least one or two more around, sometimes more. They make roundish holes in the ground, sometimes with a mound with tunnels going off in two directions. Sometimes all you see is a very neat hole. There are several methods for dealing with them, including chemical repellents, vibration producing devices and a variety of traps. One common chemical repellent is a solution of Castor oil. The theory is that spraying it on grass and plants near where the gopher has been observed causes the oil to coat the roots. The gopher feeds on the roots, gets a sour stomach and leaves. It has been known to work. Vibration devices are available, but the results are more difficult to judge. In theory, the beep and vibration they emit annoys the gopher and they leave the territory. The labels often say it takes up to two months to judge results. That makes it difficult to know whether they had any effect or the gopher left for other reasons. In the meantime, they can do lots of damage. Some traps work by killing the gopher. A common type is similar to a mousetrap, except it has jaws which clamp the gopher around the middle. They are effective, but fairly gruesome, and using them requires practice and persistence. Other traps lead them into a chamber, where they can be trapped harmlessly. The gopher can then be transported to another area. However, catching a half-dozen gophers this way is time consuming and difficult and the traps require digging large holes in your yard to get them into the gopher’s tunnel. No single method will eliminate all wildlife from your lawn and garden. A good fence is a good start, but fencing off a large yard particularly in a rural area on a large property can be very expensive. But a combination of low-cost, low-effort methods can improve your situation dramatically.

Landscaping – Design With Shrubs

Landscaping – Design With Shrubs Landscapers often consider the color provided by flowers, the convenience and beauty of stone walking paths, the shade and fruit of a nice apple tree and other elements. But no landscaping effort is complete without the proper selection and placement of some great shrubs. You’ll want to select a shrub based on your desire to add a certain color, shape and size to your landscape design. A Burning Bush, for example, provides an effusion of lovely red color in a big, round form. Perfect for Summer and Fall, these large shrubs make a great centerpiece. China Holly is a good choice for anyone who wants some contrast against winter snow. The evergreen foliage and bright red berries help relieve an otherwise bleak landscape. Or, you may want to provide a nice green border in contrast to a white picket fence. Shrubs have many purposes beyond adding color, though. You may want to have a row of hedges to complement its base or mask the foundation of your house. They can form the center of a circular garden design, with flowers or ground cover planted all around. Sumac, the non-poisonous and most common type, makes a colorful and shapely choice, for example. You may want to show off your topiary skills by carving some shrubs into interesting shapes. ‘Topiary’ is the art of forming bushes into geometrical or animal shapes. You may have seen photos of some of the spectacular examples in the gardens of Versailles. Just keep in mind, that once you begin that practice, it takes a lot of effort to maintain the desired shapes. You can select your shrub based on height, to get just the effect you need in a certain spot. Smooth Hydrangea, for example, grows from 3-5 feet. A Chinese Juniper, will reach 5-8 feet. Or you may need something smaller for those special spots where nothing else works. Try a Cranberry Cotoneaster or a Dwarf Honeysuckle that rarely get over three feet. If you want shrubs that are easy to care for, you can look into a Bougainvillea. Its bright red leaves provide beautiful color while the bush is very drought tolerant and requires very little pruning. Or, for something a little taller, try a Mentor Barberry. These hardy plants require very little care to stay attractive year after year. A Purple Sand Cherry will give you lovely flowers in May and colorful cherry berries in the Fall, making it a great multi-season shrub. The purple foliage lasts for months, persisting until winter. You can supplement your shrub selection and placement with vines for a truly complex design. You’ll find many color and shape options there, too. A climbing vine threading through a trellis set against the wall behind a shrub makes for a design worth photographing. While you shape your landscape, let your imagination grow wild.

Landscaping – Attracting Hummingbirds and Butterflies

Landscaping – Attracting Hummingbirds and Butterflies One of the most beautiful landscape designs incorporates plants and structures to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. These colorful creatures add a wonderful natural touch to a garden and landscape. Hummingbirds, with their colorful bodies and fast-flitting flight, are a delightful contrast to the multi-colored butterflies who move slow enough to be caught by hand. Hummingbird feeders are one popular way to attract these tiny birds. You can stake a cane-shaped pole in the middle of your garden to hold a feeder, or just hang the feeder from a tree branch. But the most fun way is to select flowers that the hummers naturally enjoy. That delights the birds and adds color to your garden. You have many choices, though there are some limitations depending on your zone. One excellent option is a Red Columbine, which will thrive in zones 2-8. Their color adds to your garden and they bloom early, making them a perfect attractant for those hummers returning after the end of Winter. Delphiniums are another great choice. Hardy from zones 2 through 9, they can grow up to five feet tall, making them perfect for the rear of a garden near the house. You’ll have a great view, without being too close to these nervous little girls and the flowers come in a variety of colors. You can’t go wrong! Hummers and butterflies can easily occupy the same space. To attract the latter you can plant a verbena bush, or hang a fuchsia depending on whether you have sun or shade. Butterfly bushes, appropriately named, are another popular choice useful especially for attracting swallowtails. Marigolds make for great butterfly nectar-producing flowers and their lovely color adds a bright splash to your design. Sunflowers are another favorite and you can use the seeds to feed other birds or even squirrels. Which flower you choose will be influenced also by which butterfly species you want to attract, but they will still need to be native to your area. Monarchs like Rabbitbrush and Canada Thistle, Swallowtails like Geraniums and Lilacs. Queen butterflies are very fond of daisies. Gray Hairstreak is favored by many different species. Take care if you want to keep your plants attractive to butterflies. Many common insecticides will do more than just kill bugs that eat the leaves, they’ll make them toxic to butterflies as well. You may also find there are common wildflowers that butterflies like, such as Dandelions. They have an attractive flower for both human and butterfly, but they tend to get out of control, as the flowers change into seed balls that are blown by the wind. Also, some weeds (certain kinds of milkweed and thistles) are great butterfly food, but they can be invasive and some areas require they be plucked regularly. It’s easy to add a dynamic look to your garden by bringing it even more alive. Add some flowers to feed the hummingbirds and butterflies. They’ll give you hours of viewing pleasure.

Landscaping – Annuals

Landscaping – Annuals Most flowers, and some non-flowering plants, can be divided into annuals, perennials and biennials. Biennials bloom only every other year. Perennials will lose their flowers, but then come right back the following year – often for many, many years. Annuals, by contrast, bloom one year and never again, typically dying out entirely. As a result, annuals have to be freshly planted every year – hence the name. But as a kind of reward, they offer gardeners and landscapers the widest array possible of stunning color and style choices. Annuals are the brightest, the most intense and among the most beautiful flowers available. If you want a garden that is full of the deepest colors – shocking yellows, deep purples, vibrant reds – annuals are your best bet. If you want to pack your garden with an effusion of flowering plants, annuals will give you what you’re looking for. Just don’t forget you will have to re-do the effort every year. But then, for some, that’s part of the fun! Annuals can be further divided into Spring, Summer and Fall annuals. Spring annuals such as pansies, violas or snapdragons can be planted in early Spring. Summer annuals, such as petunias or impatiens should be planted later, in order to avoid exposure to any late cold snap. Unless you grow from seed, you’ll pick up some annuals already growing, probably already in bloom. Look for soil that has been kept moist but not wet. Excessively wet soil promotes diseases and harmful growths that often don’t show up until after you’ve had the plant for a while. Soil shouldn’t be too dry, either. That leads to sickly plants that sometimes don’t survive transplanting. Young annuals are fragile and if the conditions in which they were raised before you acquired them aren’t right, they often won’t last very long. Best to invest your time and money in ones that have the best chance for survival. Give them that chance by planting in loose, well fed soil. For fertilization, fish emulsion or other commercial mixtures containing the right amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients are a good start. Just follow the directions on the package. Annuals can be planted close together, provided each has adequate soil, water and nutrients. A good guideline is to observe wild flowers in a densely packed area. Nature has figured out long ago how much room, sunlight and water a plant needs to thrive. Many annuals are best acquired before they’ve begun to blossom. When you find young ones that have many healthy looking buds, you can bet you’ll have lots of flowers before long. Since they haven’t blossomed yet, they’ll have the maximum life span. Picking out healthy plants isn’t hard. If it looks healthy, it usually is. Straight sturdy stalks (for those that grow that way naturally), no wilting, bright greens (with little or no browning), and other obvious signs rarely lead you astray. Don’t worry too much if your first experiments aren’t 100% successful. In some cases, plants will die no matter how well you treat them. Annuals are relatively inexpensive and you’ll have plenty of room in your budget to create that carpet of color you want.

Hello We Are Fenris Distribution

Founded in 2006 Fenris Distribution is an Internet retail store.  We specialize in outdoor furniture and landscaping supplies.  Our Furniture is all high grade solid Teak.  Fenris also carries a variety of indoor and outdoor Water Features:  Waterfalls, Floor Fountains, Wall Fountains, and Birdbaths, as well as artificial rocks used to cover stumps, pumps, and other eyesores. 

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