Elegant Make Your Garden More Beautiful with a Small Koi Pond!

You have your dream home along with a wonderful garden that enhances it's beauty. But... you want to make your garden even more beautiful. How about the idea of enhancing it with a small Koi pond? 

Koi fish are an ornamental variety of domesticated Common Carp or Cyprinus Carpio. Also known as Japanese Carp, these pretty fish are known as symbols of love and friendship. You can find Koi in a multitude of colors, including white, black, red, yellow, blue, cream and silver.

It is an old Japanese tradition to tame these fish in small ponds. Japanese homes have always been beautiful and wonderfully embellished. In the present the Japanese people widely use a small Koi pond in their home garden to decorate it and maintain a positive energy. Koi are traditionally known in Japan as a 'good luck charm.'

In addition to increasing the serenity of your garden, these small ponds add to your reasons for spending time relaxing in and enjoying it.

Another bonus of a small Koi pond is that building one is not an overly tough task. You can build it in hours without spending huge amounts of money. To make your job even easier follow these simple guidelines...

First, decide on location, where to place the pond in your garden? Selection of a shady area is always a wise decision as shade will help moderate water temperatures and provide some cover for your Koi. You must also select a place where you can easily keep your pond clean and free from garden wastes. You don't want chemicals or fertilizers to run into the pond since this would be likely to kill your fish.

You should also make sure that the place you have chosen for your pond has easy access to electricity. Electricity will be required for running your filter and water pump.

Size is another important factor, particularly if you are the one who is going to dig the hole. The size of a pond also varies in accordance with the number of fish, and depending on where you live you will also need to make sure your pond is of adequate depth. If winters get below freezing you will need to make sure that a good portion of your pond is a minimum of three feet deep.

To build a small Koi pond in your garden you will need a liner or preformed tub. After digging the hole, you can put the tub in and fill the dirt around it. This is the easiest way to prepare a Koi pond. But, if  you are using a liner  you must be cautious. Some rubber liners can be dangerous for fish.

The last, but most important component of your pond is your fish! You can have just Koi fish, or even a mix of gold fish and Koi. It is very enjoyable deciding on which colors and types to select and in just a short time they will become beloved pets!

Now your striking Koi pond is ready. If you would like to make it even more beautiful you could place a small wooden bridge over it. This will offer an arresting look to your garden. You will surely be enchanted by the beauty and tranquility of your small Koi pond!

Inspirational Small Vegetable Garden Plans for a Home Garden

Planting a small vegetable garden is almost as much fun as harvesting. Can't you just taste the plump juicy tomatoes and the sweet tasting cantaloupe? Before you grow the area's largest pumpkin or zesty collards, and are short on space and time, take a look at some creative small vegetable garden plans.

Square Foot Gardening--A Space Saving Plan

Intensive planting designs use every bit of garden space available. Square foot gardens (4 ft. by 4 ft.)are surprisingly productive. How many plants planted in each square foot is decided by the amount of room necessary for the specific crop planted to successfully produce a harvest.

For illustration, each single square in a square foot garden plan can contain 1-staked tomato, 4 bean plants, 1 pepper plant, or 50 radishes. Positioning of plants or seeds inside the square also depends on the crop selection. Where a single plant occupies a square, set the seed or transplant in the middle to allow room to grow in all directions.

Several plants may be planted in rows, smaller squares, or at random in small vegetable garden plans. For instance, fill a square with four bean plants, divide the area into smaller squares and plant one seed in the middle of each. A square can hold fifty radishes or twenty onions. The seeds can be scattered across the square or sown in small rows.

Harvest early by thinning out young plants for use as tender greens or roots, creating room for the rest to grow. Trellises add a third dimension to small vegetable garden plans. A trellis is useful to gardeners seeking to maximize space. Rather than allowing vine crops to sprawl across the garden, send plants such as cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers growing skyward.

Cages also can be used to take advantage of vertical space and keep crops from sprawling over the ground. Many plants can be successfully grown in cages, including tomatoes, watermelons, and eggplants. In addition to space-saving planting techniques, gardeners have an additional resource: dwarf varieties and bush forms of plants that originally grew only as vines.

Be advised, while the dwarf varieties take up less garden room, the harvests are somewhat smaller than their full size relatives. Geometric planting patterns make maximum use of space in small vegetable garden plans. Gardeners use simple designs to fill wide beds with vegetables. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Vegetable spacing for small plots

Beans are a sure producer and should be spaced four plants per square foot in small vegetable garden plans. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peppers, and eggplant may need staking and space 1 plant each square ft. Cabbage and cauliflower produces a single head planted at one to a foot. Trellis or stake tomatoes at one plant per sq. ft. Make successive plantings of endive, kohlrabi, and lettuce, at four plants per square foot. Harvest individual leaves of kale and parsley spacing four plants per sq. feet.

A single stake will support floppy, low growing plants that might otherwise be injured by winds or abundant productions. A wire cage gives the best support for tall growing plants.

Don't think just because you have small vegetable garden plans that means not much of a harvest. Vegetable gardening even on a smaller scale can produce bumper crops. In fact, with vertical gardening, the sky is the limit!

There are many more great plans and ideas for all types of vegetable gardening, (including indoor gardening), available for free on my website.

New Designing a Small Garden Sloping Towards the House

Garden that sloping towards the house has its own advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of having such garden perhaps is that you can view everything in it. However, it has some disadvantages as well, the two more prominent are: in case the slope is steep enough, the house appears to be dark, and the second disadvantage can be of drainage as the water accumulates at the bottom near the house and may cause dampness problem. But the slope in these designs is not that steep, so you need not to take too much account of these disadvantages. The shaped paving should have sloped away from the house and there must be a form of drainage at the foot of the steps. The circular area of the paving can be done in different types and shapes. The area other than circle could be shady and in winter it may become slippery as well with natural stone or smooth paving. The climbing plants on either of the corners will help to take off the bareness of the area.

The height of the retaining walls (that is of brick or stone) should be maintained all around. The ground height near the steps will manage the height of the retaining walls. Some backfilling with soil may be needed. Make sure that the plants on the top of the walls are not too high to obstruct the view.

A low retaining wall is used to level the area for the seat and pergola. Similarly, on an opposite corner, the small shed or summerhouse is treated in the very same way. The slope between the two borders should be from rear fence to down to the lawn and the lawn itself will slope down towards the steps. The structure used as a pergola needs to be of some heavy material so that it will support some climbing plants, such as a honeysuckle and clematis. If you prefer to enjoy the sun, you can opt out the pergola.  

As there is no room for shrubby plants, climbing plants are used to screen all the fences. To avoid any damage to the plants, the pergola timber used should be pressure treated and stained. There are different shapes of pergola that you can use, such as octagonal or hexagonal. But fore such designs, you need to adjust the seat under a pergola further back into the shade to have a comfortable sitting place. These designs are not suitable for people who enjoy the sun a lot.

If you are designing a hobby garden for a family, then there are certain modifications you can make in your garden accordingly. You can use a high quality fine lawn grasses. You can replace pergola and seat with greenhouse. And instead of shrubs, you can grow high amount of herbaceous and annual flowers in your garden. In case of alkaline soil, tubs and pots of acidic compost can be used to grow ericaceous plants, such as rhododendrons, camellias, pieris and azaleas and many more.

Elegant Small Chicken Coops

Are you planning to get some hens for your small garden? You might be thinking about getting a house for them as well, like small chicken coops? There are some points that you should be aware of before you actually go and get yourself one such coop. Here I have mentioned what to look for when buying small chicken coops.

Let the Chickens Have Ample Space

If you want the chickens to be healthy and get you more eggs, you must ensure they have enough space. The coop should never be congested. Ideally a chicken should be provided with around 8 sq feet of space. Calculate accordingly considering the number of chickens you possess and purchase one of the small chicken coops for them.

Space is an important factor as it not only keeps the chickens happy, but adds to their health and productivity as well. Too much congestion will attract germs. The atmosphere inside the coop may even turn suffocative. This is not desirable at all.

Airy and Sunny Coops

Small chicken coops must have enough ventilation to let out the gases formed inside. Harmful gases like ammonia and carbon dioxide get formed in such coops and can harm your chickens. An airy coop will get rid off these gases and allow fresh air to enter the coop effectively. This can maintain a cleaner atmosphere inside the coop and keep the chooks healthy.

Enough sunlight should be able to enter these small chicken coops. This reduces the moisture collected inside during the wet rainy seasons, keeping the coop properly dry and clean. During the winter months sunlight can warm up the coop through the day and keep it warm during the night with the windows properly shut.

Ensure the Security

Try to look for the small chicken coops that are secured enough to keep rodents, cats, foxes and other predators at bay. Make sure the doors and windows of the coop can be locked properly and the coop is strong enough to resist the attacks from such animals.

Bear these points on your mind and you will definitely get yourself the best of the small chicken coops for your chooks to be happy!