The time for BBQs & outdoor living is upon us. In this short article I’ve gathered together 20 important tips to help you enjoy to the full your outdoor cooking.

1. You have a choice when cooking outdoors, will you use gas or charcoal? Chose charcoal if you love those wonderful flavors that come from the smoke; chose gas if prefer cleanliness, control and convenience. If you go for charcoal always start the fire naturally, never use lighter fuels or you’ll pick up those ugly chemical smells, no matter how long you wait!

2. Ask yourself, are you making an investment for the future when buying your outdoor cooking equipment? Cheap equipment just won’t last and it will disappoint! Make it an investment, go for quality.

2. Ask yourself a simple question when buying outdoor cooking equipment. Is my money going towards an investment or something that just won’t last. If its an investment you’re after, don’t go for something cheap, it simply won’t pay off in either the short or long term; and maybe worse, it will soon become a great disappointment! Go for quality; you know it makes sense.

The sight of beautiful homes and well-kept gardens are a sight to behold. A lot of work and keen creativity is needed to be able to cultivate a rich and blooming garden. It is for this reason that homeowners extend their doors to visitors who would like to marvel at the beauty of their surroundings.

The Garden Club of Charleston sponsors a house and garden tours every spring for its members and other participants. The tour will include a visitation of Charlestons historic and magnificent homes and their gardens. A fresh flower arrangement can be seen in each rooms of the house that are regularly created and maintained by its members. The owners of these homes have graciously opened their doors for the garden club and its visitors to see.

The House and Garden Tours possess strict regulations that should be observed during the duration of the tour. Children below 12 years old are not allowed since the travel could not make them comfortable. Children also tend to be playful and the club does not want to them to break anything in this private homes. A comfortable clothing and pair of walking shoes or sandals are recommended because of the spring temperature in South Carolina which is humid. The participants will walk on streets lined with bricks and cobblestones that is why high heels are not advisable.

In your quest for fresh flowers, it pays to know the right florist. Knowing where to go saves time, money and will help you sleep better the next time you need flowers for any occasion.

It’s not enough that you call or visit any flower shop for your special needs. True, there are lots of florists in town but not all of them give excellent service. So you have to look around until you find one that suits you.

While the nearest florist may sound like the right choice, don’t use this as your sole criterion for judging the merits of a flower shop. It’s a mistake to confine yourself to nearby shops since location does not necessarily guarantee quality.

Look at this way: a good florist should be like your best friend. That person should be around when you need him or her. He or she must be sensitive to your needs and know exactly what you want. Nothing is more frustrating that a florist who doesn’t understand you and can’t satisfy your need for certain flowers. Avoid that individual unless you want to waste time and money.

Wheelie bins have evolved into a necessary, but ugly, part of waste disposal in our homes. They are extremely useful but dont look particularly appealing, especially the larger versions. How then, can you disguise this useful monster in between collection days? Here, we will discuss a number of winning ways to store|methods of storing| a wheelie bin.

Firstly, the portable screen.

The portable screen is a relatively inexpensive solution to this unsightly problem. They can be purchased from garden centres or hardware stores and they come in many different materials. A popular choice is the bamboo screen that can double as a dividing wall in a garden: there are alternatives that are made from expanding trellis made from either wood or pvc slats.

Due to their portability, these screens can be shifted around the garden and can also be used to disguise other essential items in the garden that you dont necessarily want to show off. They are also the perfect solution for people who are renting: the screen can go with you to your new address.

Secondly, a permanent screen.

Conservatories are really great for enlarging your home and they will really bring more space to your living room or dining room - they’re ideal. There are lots of deals avaialble online for conservatories. There are plenty of places where you’ll be able to find lots of offers available.

Conservatories can have chairs, benches, tables and loungers to make a conservatory stylish and very relaxing so you can enjoy it. There are plenty of options available, even for small conservatories. Conservatories are suitable for almost any garden space, size and shape.

If you get yourself a conservatory you’ll be able to relax in the outdoors and you certainly won’t be disappointed by the weather. Consider your space before you buy a conservatory because you’ll need to know what size you can have before you go shopping for conservatories.

Chairs and tables are an important part of your conservatory because they are the centre of entertainment in your conservatory. Conservatories that are sleek and stylish are very popular these days. Tables and chairs can be hard to choose but stick to simplistic designs.

Any corrective pruning should be finished in February. Remember to paint all wounds over one inch in diameter with a pliable water-proof paint. This prevents drying out and checking of the wood and resultant decay and also prevents the entrance of disease or insects.

Do not prune the early flowering shrubs such as forsythia, lilac, spirea, quince, currant, red bud, peach, etc., until after flowering as any material removed now will reduce the number of flowers. Prune these after flowering to encourage new growth for blooms next year.

This is the month to do shearing or pruning of evergreens as they are usually unsightly after this operation, but with the beginning of new growth, they are unsightly for a shorter period of time. Prune the flowering shrubs that bear their blooms on new wood like althea, vitex, crape myrtle, and buddleia - this will stimulate flower production.

Whatever pruning you do, especially on your shade grapes trees, be sure you know what you are doing or call a recognized tree surgeon. Do not butcher your trees or allow inexperienced “tree surgeons” to do so. Irreparable damage can be done and often results in the death of the tree.

If you have a lawn, you probably wondered often enough why you keep up with such a useless, time-consuming and expensive piece of outdoor landscaping when you could instead have a healthy and productive organic vegetable garden. Now that even the White House is starting a garden, it could be the right time for you as well!

Many people who would like to turn to organic vegetable gardening are put off by the idea that it must be a difficult and time-consuming endeavour, and that a lot of tilling and other back-breaking work is involved. In fact, if you follow some basic permaculture precepts and let nature do its work, it will be very easy work. Unless your lawn is contaminated by a lot of pesticides, you won’t even have to remove the grass.

First, use chalk or some other system to mark off the area of your future organic vegetable garden. You may make it as big as the one of the White House, which can feed a dozen people or more with its eleven thousand square feet, or smaller, according to your needs. Once the area is delimited, water it well.

Not all garden shed designs have the kind of information that will help make your job easy when building your own garden shed. But there are some things you should know which will help you evaluate which plans are of better quality.

You will of course need multiple plans to help you decide which type of garden shed fits your taste as well as budget. It should include a ‘deluxe shed plan’ which gives you the prints for vinyl siding and trim. It should also include the economy version which gives you the wood siding version.

If the garden shed plans are lacking in any of these areas- easy to read building plans, complete materials list, full size rafter templates, door and window framing instructions, then you may want to pass and look at other prints. And by having the full size rafter template the hardest part of building a shed just became easier. The rafter template can just be traced on to the rafters to make the cutting job much easier. This eliminates the mistakes in trying to read a framing square.

In modern history, hydroponics has only been around since about the 1930s. It is a relatively new technology, and has grown rapidly since its inception 70 years ago. It began first as an academic exercise and soon grew to be embraced by industry and government.

Hydroponics has found many new applications. It is a very versatile technology, and has a very beneficial use in developing countries as well as high technology space stations. Hydroponic technology can efficiently grow vegetable crops in what was previously unthinkable - from barren desert sand to desalinated ocean water. It thrives in mountainous regions too steep to farm, on rooftops, in small yards and in arctic communities. In areas with high populations where land is expensive, hydroponics can providehigh-value specialty crops such as fresh salad greens, herbs and cut flowers.

Agriculture tends to migrate toward higher-technology solutions and more capital-intensive solutions to problems. Hydroponics is highly productive and suitable for automation. However, the future growth of hydroponics depends greatly on the development of systems of production that are cost-effective with those of common agriculture. Many improvements in these technologies such as lighting and plastics, and new cultivars with better pest resistance and disease resistance will yield increased crops yields and reduce costs. Hydroponic greenhouses which can use the ‘waste’ heat from industry could expand in the next few years. Geothermal heat could support large areas of greenhouses in the right locations.

I think that many of us can agree that the Hot Tub Manufacturing is generally not considered a GREEN industry. To put out their products, most Hot tub companies just spray fiberglass and resins, use plastics and steel without much regard for the environment, except to follow EPA guidelines. Well all that just change when “The California Energy Commission (CEC)” recently updated some of the most rigid standards in the USA that monitors energy efficiency. The CEC recently revised a bill called “title 20″, which sets a standard amount of allowable energy used by a portable spa/hot tub. These new guidelines were NOT met by 65% of hot tub manufacturers who failed an independent study done by California Polytechnic State University. Softub, on the other hand, was the ONLY manufacturer to pass these new guidelines without having to make any changes to its manufacturing process.

There are now some hot tubs that comply with these new regulations or have since complied with manufacturing changes, Softub is a first in the Hot Tub Industry considering its unique design, function and in its green industry standards that have been a part of the “Green Movement”, since its inception. Many states are now adopting the CEC standards and implementing these energy requirements.