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How much is your home worth?

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Do you ever wonder what the value of your home really is? Do you think it’s increased or decreased over time? If you’re curious you should visit Valuesinfo.com for an online house appraisal to find out how much homes in your area are worth.

If you’re thinking of selling it’s good to know what kind of price you might get for your home.

We were quite lucky when we bought our house five years ago. The people selling this house were moving to a retirement home on a specific date so they wanted to sell their home quickly. It turned out that not only did we manage to get this house at a lower price than many others that were for sale in this area, but it also happened to be the most solidly constructed and in the best condition of the 40 to 50 houses that I’d looked at with my real estate agent over a two month house hunting period.

The value of homes in our area has steadily increased in the last five years. Our house is now worth more than twice the amount we paid for it, perhaps even slightly more since we’ve done a lot of upgrading, renovations and landscaping.

We aren’t planning on selling our home any time soon, but it’s nice to check what the value of homes in our area is every now and then. It certainly makes me feel good knowing we made a sound investment when we purchased our home.

Did you check to see if the prices of homes in your area went up?






Helpful gardening tips

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Here’s a a few handy gardening tips that you might find useful, particularly if you are new to gardening:

1. Do your homework. Visit public gardens, read magazines and books.

2. Amend the soil for success. Lighten clay loam soil with compost.

3. Design for surprise: place some curves in your design or interesting nooks that visitors to your garden have to enter to see what magically beautiful plant you have growing there.

4. If you inherit a garden: Wait a season to see what comes up. You may destroy something you want to save. We were lucky to have purchased our house in June. I was able to watch what grew that year and used the following winter to plan out my new garden.

5. Smart plant picks. Purchase plants that are drought tolerant or said to be easy to care for if you don’t want to spend too much time in the garden watering and pruning.

The Well-Designed Mixed Garden: Building Beds and Borders with Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Annuals, and Bulbs

6. Mass appeal. Plant large areas with one flower in one color, such as purple phlox. You can always tell who’s a beginning gardener because they plant one of each plant. masses of three to five or more plants planted together in the garden bed make a much more satisfying display.

7. A wild prairie garden can be work until it gets established. If you want a natural looking garden find out what plants are native to your area and use them abundantly.

8. Japanese-style garden do’s. For dimension, build hills and cover them with moss.

9. Time-saving trick. Plant hosta around the base of trees and you won’t have to trim around them.

10. Get the kids to help. Most kids like helping in the garden. You may still end up doing more work than they do, but it’s a way to spend some quality time with them and also a way to get them outside.

11. Sure-fire critter repeller – build a fence with a gate if you want to keep out skunks, who don’t climb but can dig just fine) and other pets that might frequent your garden. Gates and fences don’t stop all critters but a fence might deter a few of them.

The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals

Controlling house plant pests

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In many parts of North America and other areas of the world gardeners have traded their backyard gardening for indoor houseplant gardening. Bringing some plants in from outdoors, and tending to others that are indoors all year round.

Every home owner who keeps houseplants will encounter, at one time or another the dreaded house plant pests. Little bugs that you can often barely see that start to suck on the leaves or burrow into the stems and cause parts of the plant or the leaves to die. If measures aren’t taken to eradicate these pests quickly a whole plant could die.

There are only five major groups of insect and mite pests on house plants, they are very difficult to control and highly persistent, once established. Not only that- but many types of house plants re sensitive to pesticides when they are used on them, plus pesticides used indoors can be quite dangerous to the home owner, small children and household pets.

The three steps to controlling pests are:

Step 1 . Know how to recognize at least the major insect and mite pests that attack foliage plants: aphids, mealybugs, scale insects, whiteflies, and spider mites.

Step 2. Prevent the introduction of pests into the home or existing plant specimen arrangements:
a) buy or propagate only pest-free plants;
b) keep new plants separated from other plants for 4 to 6 weeks to see if any pest problems develop;
c) carefully inspect all plants at least weekly for signs of insects and mites.

Step 3. If a plant is found to be infested with insects or mites:
a) isolate the plant from other plants;
b) correctly identify the pest;
c) determine and apply appropriate control measures;
d) keep the plant separate from others until all evidence of infestation is eliminated, which may be several weeks or more.

Take Control

There are three popular general methods for treating house plants infestations: physically removing the pests and or washing the plant, general purpose ready to use sprays, and chemical concentrates for preparing spray mixtures.

Physical removal is easy enough for large pests- slugs, caterpillars etc.. Pests can also be swabbed with a small brush or cotton tipped applicator moistened with rubbing alcohol.

You may also opt to rinse or wash plants with a diluted mix of dish detergent soap or an insecticidal soap. Sometimes just placing a plant in your shower stall and gently spraying them with lukewarm water on the tops and undersides of the leaves is enough to rid the plant of an infestation, plus give it a good drink and flush it’s substrate at the same time.

Often the soap sprays or rinses need to be repeated over a period of time to totally rid the plant of pests. I also try to isolate plants that I find are infested – I’ll move them several feet away from uninfected plants at the very least, and often into a totally different room if it’s possible. There’s nothing worse than having several plants infested with pests at the same time.

In your garden centres you’ll find ready to use sprays, but if you go searching for one of these types of sprays make sure it’s labeled that it’s safe for use on house plants. Always read the labels and precautions on any of the ready made sprays that you are planning on using as some sprays are effective only for certain types of insects, while others are only effective when the pests are in certain stages of life.

Whiteflies are very difficult to control with standard sprays, but easily controlled with other sprays that are made specifically for whiteflies. Be sure to follow directions. There are many individual products on the market; be sure to read the label to determine which one to use.

Chemical concentrations are available to mix with water for application with a hand sprayer or mister. Insecticides and/or miticides are available separately or in mixtures. Generally insecticides will not control mites, and miticides will not control insects. Only the appropriate pesticide is needed. The wrong one will not be effective.

Another way to prevent infestations in the first place is to care for the plant properly. Many people end up having white fly and mite infestations on their plants in the winter time. The air is dry in the house and the plants are not kept moist enough. Misting the plants with water sprays a couple times of day or keeping the room they are in adequately humidified should help lower the chance of pest infestations in some plants.

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