02/27/12

How do you know if it's time to water the lawn? A simple trick will tell you. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's WaterSense program, if you step on your lawn and the grass bounces back, there's no need to water. If you step on the grass and it stays flat, give it a good drink early in the morning or late at night so the sun's rays won't evaporate the water your lawn needs.

02/26/2012

With spring around the corner, your outdoor window boxes and garden pots may still have last year's potting soil in them. So the question is: Is it any good? Or if you are repotting a household plant, can you reuse the old soil? The answer is no, unless you know for sure the soil is free of any disease. Since that can be impossible to tell, the best way to reuse potting soil is to sprinkle it in the yard, where the sun will have a chance to "bake" the soil (killing any disease), and it can blend into the ground.

02/25/12

Look for new bioplastic bottles made from sugarcane that are currently hitting the marketplace. Sugarcane is grown on abandoned pasture land (so no deforestation), harvested and used not only to make plastic bottles, but also to power the factory in which they're made. This practice uses up to 70 percent less energy than using petroleum. The new bioplastic blended bottles, found in products like Pantene shampoo, can be recycled, too.