The DIY Water Conserving Garden Sprinkler

Watering your garden with a garden hose wastes a lot of water and the pressure of the water can damage your baby leaves and buds. Sprinklers, on the other hand, work wonders in a garden. On high pressure, they spurt water out for your leaves; while on a low pressure, you can use them for soil wetting too. This DIY garden sprinkler is easy to make and it helps conserve water.

Things You Will Need:

• A strong used Plastic/glass bottle 
• Water-proof tape
• Black & Decker 10mm Keyed VSR Hammer Drill
• A simple garden hose
  

Here’s What You Need To Do:

• The first thing you need to do is connect your bottle with the hose using the water proof tape.
• Tape the hose to the bottle multiple times and make sure there is no gap, thereby avoiding leaks. 
• Be sure to test it against pressure as you do not want it to disconnect later. 
  

• Drill holes in the bottle, placing the holes wherever you want water to spurt. Be sure to use protective gear while drilling to prevent any injuries. Safe DIY is good DIY!

• Test-run your sprinkler and check for any leaks, especially where the tape connects the hose and bottle. If there are, identify the leaky spots and reinforce with the tape.

                            

• Finally, turn the tap on and reap rewards for your labour. Keep your gardens looking its best while saving water! Also, don’t forget to use kitchen waste and kitchen water for your garden to keep it nourished and healthy. 

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Do-It-Yourself projects are perfect activities to beat the summer boredom, follow us on Facebook for more DIY projects. Also, don’t forget to share pictures of your own projects with us; we’d love to see what you’ve done.

B&D and the DIY Revolution

Black & Decker were one of the first to recognize the significance of the DIY revolution in the United States. While in India DIY is just picking up steam, we are already well prepared with the wonderful range of products from B&D.  Here are some simple projects you can try your hand at along with our appliances that can help you with it:

Nail in the wall: The usual situation in our homes is to think of a carpenter even for a small task of putting a nail in the wall to hang up something. With the drill kit or the home utility kit from Black & Decker, you can do this task in a jiffy, and this will improve your confidence for other tasks too. From hanging up a portrait in your living room, to a new shelf in your bathroom you can be empowered to do it on your own.

Painting your home: This is something we always envision as a long drawn and messy process with brushes or rollers and paint splattering all over the place. But when you use an intelligent tool like the B&D RapidRoller you can contain the dripping to a minimum, and as the paint is constantly fed from the container it all gets over really fast. For small areas, you can even dry the coats of paint faster using a tool like the hot air gun.

Gardening: You no longer need to struggle with that heavy and unwieldy pair of cutters. Trimming hedges and mowing your lawn has now become so much easier with our range of gardening tools. Even for larger landscaped areas, the maintenance will not be a daunting task any more and you can do it yourself, without waiting on a gardener every time.

Car Maintenance: How many of us depend on a car cleaning service or person to get our cars in good shape once every few days or weeks? B&D provides you a range of options from pressure washers for cleaning the outside, to car vacuum cleaners to reach even the difficult gaps on the inside. For specialized use, try out our polisher that will enable even a beginner to do a professional looking polishing job.

For all these and more appliances, do check out page: http://www.blackanddeckerindia.in

Top 5 Garden Care tips for summer - Black and Decker, India

Those of us who have gardens at home might have already started seeing the effects of the increase in temperatures. This is all the more important in case of container gardening, where the plants are completely dependent on the water and nutrition we supply to them. Here are a few tips to help care for your gardens in summer:

Mulch, mulch, mulch: The main issue with the heat is that plants seem to need more water, but this is always tough to balance with the worrying water situation. The best way to resolve this situation is to use good mulch, whether your garden is on the ground, or in containers. Straw or dry leaves can make very good mulching material, and you can get most of this from your garden waste itself.

Watering: Once mulching is done, it is easier to assess watering needs. The mulch will conserve the surface water from drying up too soon, and in some cases even watering once in two days might be sufficient. Do check your plants twice a day though, because some plants might need extra care due to the high heat.

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Weeding: This is always an ongoing activity in any garden, but in summer you may find quite a few weeds coming up and crowding out the space. In some cases, you might be pleasantly surprised to find many edible weeds like clover and purslane that seem to grow out of nowhere and you can just pluck regularly and put them into your dal. Some weeds though have extensive roots that drink up all the water, and these need to be pulled up along with the root as soon as you notice them.

Pruning: In a season where plants find it difficult to get water and nutrition, pruning dead or dying leaves and branches is a good way to help the plants thrive. By doing this, the plant does not need to waste energy on the older branches and leaves, and will look fresher and flower or fruit much better.

Nutrition: This is something that’s important in every season, and especially in the case of kitchen gardens, some additional inputs during flowering and fruiting will give good results.

On the subject of gardens, we cannot help but mention our great range of gardening tools from Black & Decker that can be of use in home as well as landscape gardens. Please see our webpage for more details: http://www.blackanddeckerindia.in

5 Useful Gardening Tips for Winter - Black & Decker, India

If you have a kitchen garden, you might already know that winter in India can be a great time for gardening, if you are not subject to extreme temperatures. In extreme cold, your only hope of growing something might be if you have an enclosed area like a greenhouse. In other places too, it can be an interesting experience to prepare your garden for the winter climate, and here are some tips:

1.     Grow according to the season: There are a lot of options for winter vegetables, starting from greens like lettuce and herbs, to a variety of vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli. All these do very well in limited sunlight and love the cool weather, so you should get very good results.

2.     Collect leaves for mulch: Autumn and winter is the time when leaves fall in plenty from the neighbourhood trees, and collecting these is a great way to make use of them for mulch later in summer. This way you are saving a lot of trash from the roads, not to mention using rich matter that nature has provided for you instead of it getting burnt and going waste.

3.     Establish a cleaning routine: All the falling leaves, including those falling from your own plants, can make a mess of your garden space very soon. Regular cleaning, at least once a week, is an absolute necessity at this time of the year. Make use of a strong vacuum cleaner for this task, and you won’t find it too difficult.

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4.    Composting: From your kitchen waste, to all the dried leaves from your garden, all of it can be turned into rich organic material, going right back to enriching your soil. Start and promote composting as a practice in every home, and you will be amazed at the reduction in waste going out of your home.

5.    Pest control: This always has to be an ongoing routine in any garden, but winter can be a time for a lot of pests to get comfortable on your plants. Look out for aphids, especially at the bottom of the leaves, and use an organic pesticide like a neem spray regularly until you see a reduction in the problem.

At Black & Decker, we offer you a range of gardening tools, from grass trimmers and cutters, to lawn movers. Check out more details on our website: http://www.india.stanleyblackanddecker.com