Here's another great tip from BobVila.com. Compost is known by gardeners everywhere to be the best insurance you can have for a great garden. But making your own gardener s gold has acquired a stigma it doesn t really deserve. Successful composting requires four things: carbon, nitrogen, water and oxygen. A good way to remember how to keep a balance between carbon and nitrogen is to think of them as brown and green. Brown materials are things with lots of fiber like straw, fallen leaves or woody plant stalks. Green materials are things with lots of nutrients like kitchen scraps and lawn clippings. Try to keep a balance of three parts brown to one part green. Contrary to popular belief, composting is not the same as rotting, and it shouldn t be smelly. Keep it moist but not soggy and turn it every week or so to keep it processing evenly. Avoid attracting animals by keeping it tightly covered and don t compost meat or fatty kitchen scraps. Even in colder climates, you can compost year-round. Add kitchen scraps even if they freeze and leaves and lawn clippings when you ve got them. For composting to happen quickly, the pile needs to be about a cubic yard of material. Too small and it won t heat up. Plastic tumbler type composters provide the fastest compost, but you can also just use wire bins covered with a sheet of plastic or a tarp. If you don t have a good place for a compost bin, try sheet composting. You can spread shredded materials up to 6 inches thick over your garden beds in the fall, till them in and let it all process until you plant again in the spring. No commercial fertilizer, even organic, can provide the range of nutrients, enzymes and helpful microorganisms that compost provides. It s impossible to over fertilize with compost. And it puts worms and other insects to work for you as laborers in your soil improvement project. Find out more at BobVila.com: The ultimate home improvement web site! BobVila.com 2008

Building and maintaining a compost heap is a great way to reduce organic waste and to make rich compost for your plants and gardens.

If you garden, you can cut costs and save landfills by making your own compost. Composters come in various sizes and shapes but are usually made of formed plastic and easily assembled. You can compost most yard waste and raw vegetable kitchen scraps to form usable humus in a matter of months.

Angela Polo and Ken Micklow are on hand to show Bob the sustainable plantings selected for the Punta Gorda home. Polo shows Bob the firebushes selected for the water side of the garden because they are dwarf varieties that will not block the water views but will attract butterflies. Micklow shows Bob how the vegetable garden is built with interlocking anchor blocks and erosion cloth to prevent the rich humus mixture from seeping out of the raised bed. The soil is a mix of compost, peat moss, bark, and dolomite. This sunny spot will house tomatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs that will thrive in the heat and sun. Craig Harmer from Gardens Alive brings natural plant and animal products that are suited to specific plants to enhance the soil and promote growth. These soil mixes are completely unprocessed meals and protein blends developed for each plant. The pesticide applications are natural pyrethrins and canola oils that target specific pests. Even snails are eradicated with Escar-Go! Composting is also encouraged through the Florida Yards and Neighborhoods program. Polo adds that composting clippings, trimmings, and kitchen vegetable waste will build soil enhancers and microbes to enrich the gardens and plantings.

Bob checks out the sloping bank that comes from the Western red cedar deck to the yard. Salvaged granite curbs serve as steps set into the bank, leading to the lawn. Foster explains that the gardens will be green, with junipers and yews for low maintenance, varying height, and deep green coverage. She also shows Bob the batch composter for making rich mulch or "black gold" for the plants and gardens. The gardens are dressed with two inches of pine mulch to keep the weeds down and the moisture in the soil. She closes with a self-watering window box that will complete the low-maintenance gardens and flowering boxes on the new deck.

If you're planting or replanting your yard, make sure you have a good layer of topsoil. There are many varieties of loam and soil available. You can essentially customize your yard needs. Most places mix their soil with peat moss, compost, and stabilizers, and screen it for impurities and rocks. Calculate about four to six inches over the area of your yard for a healthy lawn.

Here's another great tip from BobVila.com. The old adage, what goes around comes around is especially true in your garden. Because plants aren t the only things living there, your garden should be a friendly place for children, pets and you. Blanketing it with petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers is not only toxic, it kills the friendly insects, bacteria and fungus that are essential to a healthy garden. Fortunately, there are a lot of great natural options, like iron phosphate pellets for slugs, citrus oil-based weed killer and Pyola spray for pest insects. Products like these use naturally occurring chemicals to solve common garden problems, and they re worth a closer look. Probably the best thing you can do for your garden is to add organic material to the soil with compost. Unlike chemical additives, nutrients in compost are available to plants as they need them, making it very difficult to use too much. What you plant is even more important than how you plant it. If it s native to your area, it ll probably do better in your garden and require far less water, fertilizer and hassle than something exotic. Rather than coddling a vast expanse of lawn, design areas with mulch, low groundcover plants or even a rock garden. You ll use far fewer chemicals that can leach into the soil and the water supply, and you won t have to work as hard all season! Another way to be green in the garden is to use non-polluting garden tools. Instead of cranking out exhaust with the rototiller or tractor, pick up a shovel or a hand mower and save yourself a trip to the gym. Find out more at BobVila.com: The ultimate home improvement web site! BobVila.com 2008

Here s another great tip from BobVila.com. Mulch is probably the best tool you have to keep your garden healthy and green this summer. There are lots of different kinds of mulch to choose from, depending on what s in your garden and what s available where you live. Wood or bark chips, compost, straw, salt hay, cocoa husks, shredded leaves, plastic sheeting and even gravel can all make good mulch for different reasons. In the right quantities, they serve as a shield for the soil so it can do its best work. Mulch protects the soil from erosion and helps it retain its moisture so you can water less frequently and roots grow deeper and healthier. It also keeps weeds down, reserving precious nutrients for your vegetables, flowers and shrubs so you don t have to add as much fertilizer. You spend less time and energy weed whacking and don t need to use poisonous herbicides. After you ve mulched everything once, you don t necessarily have to spend a fortune every season on new bags of commercial mulch. As a matter of fact, be careful of mulching your garden with anything that attracts pests or contains dangerous chemicals, especially on vegetable gardens. Adding some organic material might be enough. Autumn leaves are a gift to your garden that literally just falls out of the trees. Instead of getting rid of them all, put them through a leaf shredder or just run over them a few times with the lawnmower, rake them up and use them as fall mulch on flower or vegetable beds with a little fertilizer. You can add compost to them and turn them into the soil in the spring. In play areas or anywhere you don t want to maintain a lawn, try a recycled mulch like rubber chunks from used tires that would otherwise sit in landfills. Find out more at BobVila.com: the ultimate home improvement web site! 2008 BobVila.com

Landscape designer Ruth Foster gives a quick "how-to" on planting techniques using the shrubs for the Elizabethan-inspired garden as examples. A shrub is placed in a shallow hole, one inch higher than the grade. Compost and peat moss are added to the soil. A deep basin is created around the base of the tree and it is thoroughly soaked with water two times.

A new tree can improve the look of a yard and add personality to a home.