While it seems straightforward, watering your plants properly is one of the most important, and most difficult, parts of keeping your plants happy and healthy. Overwatering and underwatering are some of the quickest ways to kill a plant, and it can often be difficult to identify what is going wrong until it’s too late. Let’s face it, there are a lot of different factors that go into how often you should water your plants....

First, a fountain can help to create a peaceful and harmonious environment. The sound of trickling water is very soothing and can help you relax any tension or stress you may be holding onto. Fountains also invite the water element into your space, which can help activate water element qualities in your life. Water can be deep and still, like a lake, or flowing and changeable, like a river. The deep aspects of water are connected to wisdom, insight and intuition, while the more flowing side of water represents our social connections and how we interact with the world around us....

Same Vegetable, Staggered Plantings Space out plantings of the same vegetable every two to four weeks. Many vegetables fade after producing their initial crop, setting a heavy yield initially, then smaller and smaller yields throughout the summer. Rather than planting your entire row of beans all at once and having feast or famine, you can plant part of the row at the beginning of the season and then plant more in about two to four weeks....

Create a Larger Cooking Surface A range bridge element is a smooth cooktop design feature that expands use by providing the option to join two burners to make one long cooking surface. If you have a bridge element, you no longer need to try using two standard elements for a griddle and have uneven or no heat in the middle. There’s no such heat loss when a bridge element is used....

Understanding the basics of bird wing anatomy is a great way to sharpen your bird identification skills. Because wings are so very important to birds, a birder who learns to identify differences in their structure and feathering will be much better prepared to identify species. Wing Structure of Birds in Flight When identifying a bird in flight, observing the structure of its wings is the place to start. After noting each of these structural elements, you may have all the clues necessary to make an identification based on information in a good bird field guide....

Synthetic Fabric Care When synthetic or man-made fibers appeared in the marketplace, they changed the face of fashion and, in turn, laundry care. Gone were the days of cotton and linen that could be cleaned with hot water and strong soaps and required ironing. Most man-made fibers are strong and durable but each has its own specific laundry care and stain removal requirements. Acetate fabric dissolves in acetone or fingernail polish remover and triacetate and modacrylic fabrics can also be damaged by acetone or paint thinner....

Just because they are called evergreen does not mean you are restricted to the color green with these landscape workhorses. And depending on your tastes and goals, evergreen shrubs (or deciduous ones, for that matter) can be planted in hedges that can be trimmed, planted in rows and left untrimmed, or grown in mixed borders. Bamboo is also a member of the grass family and is increasingly used for property lines and as a privacy screen....

This is snow mold—a lawn disease caused by two principle fungal culprits: gray snow mold (Typhula spp; also known as Typhula blight), and pink snow mold (Microdochium nivalis, also known as Fusarium patch). As the names suggest, gray snow mold shows a white-to-grayish webbing to the infected areas, while pink snow mold is grayish to pink. Life Cycle The fungi remain inactive in the soil in the form of resistant fungal structures or spores, easily surviving high summer temperatures but not actively growing....

The spotted laternfly in all its stages, from egg masses to nymphs to adults, can be hitchhiking on trees, plants, bricks, stones, firewood, building materials, patio furniture, vehicles, kiddie pools, and equipment such as lawnmowers—virtually anything outdoors that has a hard, solid surface. With its piercing-sucking mouthparts, the spotted lanternfly drills into the phloem of a plant to feed on the sugary sap. It attacks a wide range of trees, fruits, especially grapes, and ornamentals, severely damaging the plants if not killing them....

Installing Over Concrete Installing ceramic tile over concrete requires repairing all cracks and voids in the concrete prior to the installation process. Cracks in the concrete eventually will lead to cracks in the tile, because the concrete at the point of the crack won’t be able to support the tile. For cracks less than 1/8 inch, use crack suppression products. If installing over larger cracks, you must consider removing the concrete section and pouring a new concrete slab....