FSC Timber & Pressure Treatment

FSC Timber

Whilst you have been looking at garden furniture on Alfresia, you might have spotted that many of our wood products are manufactured from FSC Certified Timber. This is all very well and good, but what does it actually mean? FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. Across the world, destructive deforestation occurs every day, resulting in habitat destruction, pollution of the water and air, the displacement of inidenous peoples and violence against both people and animals in the forest.

A growing number of companies reject the idea that this is the only way to source timber, and instead believe that forests can be both managed and protected simultaneously. The FSC certification means that timber has been taken from the forest in an ethical manner. If all logging was forced to apply for FSC certification, through pressure from consumers like yourself, then we would be able to preserve enormous areas of the vital resource that is the forests: still supplying ourselves with timber, but doing so in a safe and sustainable way.

The FSC has a list of 10 principles that must be met by companies who want this certification:

1. That the forest management in question complies with all local, national and international laws to which the country with the forest has signed up to.
2. Long term rights and tenure to land must be well documented and legally obtained.
3. The legal rights of indigenous peoples to the lands for living or gathering resources must be respected and given precedence.
4. Operations shall endeavour to maintain or enhance the long term social and economic wellbeing of both workers and forest dwellers.
5. Operations shall encourage the efficient use of the forest’s multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits.
6. Management must maintain the biodiversity of the forest and protect and respect its associated resources.
7. A management plan — appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations — shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date.
8. Appropriate to the scale and intensity of forest management, monitoring to assess all aspects listed above and any further effects to the forest.
9. Management activities in high conservation value forests shall maintain or enhance the attributes which define such forests.
10. Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1 – 9, and they should complement the management of, reduce pressures on, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests.

If all this seems reasonable to you, then why not start ensuring that the products you buy are made from FSC timber?
What is pressure treatment?
Pressure treating is a process by which chemical preservatives are forced deep into the timber. As an aside to its preservative benefits, this process makes the wood unappealing to vermin, insects and fungus, accounting for its 20+ year lifespan under even the harshest conditions. A preservative coating should be applied, however, to prevent slight weathering.
When working with pressure treated wood, remember that it does have a chemical inside and exercise these cautions:

• Wear a mask when cutting – the sawdust can be an irritant to nose/eyes/mouth.
• Try to collect sawdust for disposal – put a tarp down over the whole area.
• Do not burn this wood. Give it to professionals.
• Under no circumstance use this wood for surfaces that will come into contact with food.
• Only use outdoors.

Alfresia is a supplier of garden furniture.

Planting In November

Sow and Plant

Towards the end of November start planting bare-root trees, shrubs or hedging, or get your order in now for plants to be delivered in early winter.

For much of this month conditions should be good for planting, so provided the soil is neither unusually wet or cold, get any new plants in the ground promptly to allow them to establish before the onset of winter.

Bare-root and container grown roses can be planted now, and make great additions to any garden. Specialist rose nurseries offer a far greater range of bare-root roses than most garden centres. Climbing or rambling forms can transform a pergola or archway and if planted now establish particularly well. Ramblers have stems that are somewhat more flexible than climbers so are especially useful over arches and pergolas. When planting a bare-root rose, make sure that the roots are spread out really well in the planting and prune out anything that is much longer than the majority or diseased or damaged. incorporate plenty of bulky organic matter into and around the planting hole. Place a cane over the top of the planting hole to help you gauge the correct planting depth: the slightly swollen area or graft point needs to be just at soil level.

Alfresia is an online retailer of garden furniture.

Deluxe 3 Seater Hammock

Deluxe 3 Seater Hammock, a photo by alfresia.co.uk on Flickr.

Lawn Care: How to Treat your Lawn

Treating the Lawn
There are a bewildering number of lawn fertilisers available. This means that people can struggle to know when to use different fertilisers. If you want to use just one kind for the year then growmore, containing equal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, is a good choice. Sprinkle on about 2oz per square yard in early April as the growth starts, the same in June and the same in September. If it doesn't rain within two days of sprinkling, water thoroughly. This pattern of feeding will be adequate for a family garden. Don't expect it to give you a perfect lawn though.

Grass ideally needs a different treatment at different times of the year. During the growing season, from mid-March to September, it needs a good supply of nitrogen. This will keep it growing strongly and give the rich green colour we look for in a lawn. A high nitrogen fertiliser will mean regular mowings too: nitrogen makes the grass grow faster.

From October to mid-March, the aim is to keep the grass in good condition but not to encourage growth. Give it a fertiliser high in potassium. This will toughen the grass and prevent the lush growth which is more likely to suffer disease and cold in a harsh winter. In essence, the aim is to make the grass grow up in spring and summer, down in autumn.

Summer feed can be applied in granules or liquid. Most granules need to be watered in: check the maker's instructions and scatter the granues just ahead of rain if possible. Granules release their constituents into the ground more slowly than liquid feeds, so you won't need to treat the lawn so often - every 5/6 weeks from early April instead of every 3/4, as would be ideal with a liquid feed. Apply an autumn feed of high-potassium fertiliser, at the rate recommended by the maker, only once - in October.

Alfresia is an online retailer of garden furniture, and lawncare products like lawnmowers.

Lounger with Cushion

Lounger with Cushion, a photo by alfresia.co.uk on Flickr.

Gardeco Tia Steel Chimenea with Swivel BBQ Grill

Gardeco Tia Steel Chimenea with Swivel BBQ Grill , a photo by alfresia.co.uk on Flickr.

Desinging a Alpine Garden

The thing about alpine plants is that they are very hardy and can grow in a number of difficult locations. Have a look at just a few ideas for planting with them...

Can anything be done with a rocky bank with little soil?

If you have a rocky area in your garden, which seems to contain more rock than soil, you can still try planting on it, by designing a scree garden. This type of garden is devoted to those alpine plants which thrive naturally in the rock-strewn slopes of mountains, where soil is exceptionally sparse and rains drain away quickly. Such plants can be a bit tempremental, but, once established, put down deep probing roots which grip onto even the most perilous slopes. Erinus alpinus is the easiest scree plant to grow, seeding itself and producing neat little mounds of foliage which bear masses of starry flowers. Some are a deep lilac-blue, but there are pink varieties and white ones, too - all flowering from late spring well into the summer. Many saxifrages are natural scree plants, as are alpine violas such as Viola biflora. The white-flowered Arenaria balearica clings to rocks and stones in a minature green carpet, while Gypsophila aretioides, which is also white-flowering, grows in hard green hummocks.

The genera draba, sempervivum, rosularia, azorella and raoulia all include species suitable for a scree garden and are worth trying in your setting.

Fancy constructing a 'sink garden'?

A sink garden is a great way to brighten up your patio or paved area. Get hold of an old kitchen sink, throw the plug away and stand it on raised bricks. It should stand in a fairly sheltered, yet sunny, corner of your space. Fill the lower third with a layer of broken crocks covered by a layer of gravel or shale. Top up with a mixture of soil, peat and grit or sand in equal parts.

Go for smaller alpines to make the most of your space. A dwarf conifer and perhaps a small rock or two among them can radically improve a design. Alpines are usually bought as growing plants in small pots from a nursery or garden centre - try to find one which stocks a good collection. They can be transplanted from pot to sink at any time. When choosing, give special consideration to dwarf species of aethionema, campanula, dianthus, gypsophilia, sempervivum, saxifrage and sedum.

Alfreisa is an online supplier of garden furniture.

Preparing your Garden for Spring

Autumn is the wind-down season when it comes to gardening. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t things to do in your garden to prepare it for the colder months. Here we share some tips on how to care for a few plants and vegetables in your garden, however be sure to act quickly, before the snows and frost come.

Out With The Old…

Heavy dew on autumnal nights encourages rot and botrytis which can eat away at your plants. Dead head any dahlias to prevent botrytis attacking blooms that have not come yet (this way you will get autumn flowerings). Equally, thin autumn lettuce to prevent the spread of botrytis. If you have any courgettes, pull dead flowers off them as they can damage the fruit under the damp leaf canopy. If the weather is dry, to water your pumpkins just so you get the last of them before harvesting.

Now that the sun is no longer heating your garden, tomatoes are prone to fungal attacks. Pick them daily so that the unripe ones get a chance to ripen up. Another trick is to make sure to remove at least half the foliage on the plants. This allows good airflow and as much sun to fall on the fruit as possible. Towards the end of the month you can remove complete trusses and ripen the fruit on the vine, on the greenhouse staging, or on a sunny windowsill.

Plants can rust, especially zonal pelargoniums. To avoid this, move them from damp areas to ones that are brighter and more warmer. Spray any rust affected plants with a systematic fungicide. To keep up general hygiene I will also remove and dispose of any foliage that has fallen into the pots, and re-pot every year to avoid any build-up of the spores in the ground.

If you took any cuttings over the July/August period, these should have rooted nicely by the start of autumn. Prioritise any new cuttings before it gets too cold by using a loam-based compost with the addition of perlite to keep the soil free-draining and leaving them in an airy cold frame. Water on the light side to avoid rot.

With autumn moisture, the time could not be better for growing lawns and meadows. Rake weed-free topsoil into any bare patches after scarifying a scruffy lawn, and over-sow now to green up areas that are looking tatty before winter.

…And In With The New
By preparing for spring in autumn, you avoid your garden looking tatty for those first few weeks of spring. Sowing a number of plants in Autumn and scattering them throughout the garden will bring some lovely colour in early spring and the plants, because they were sown early, gow bigger and more robust with brighter flowers and a longer lifespan. Autumn seeds germinate before winter and so, when going into semi-hibernation and above ground growth halts, growth under the soil continues, giving long roots.
We recommend certain plants for your Autumn sowing, but don’t be afraid if you have a preference:

• Ammi majus (flowering mid-may)
• Indian Prince (early may)
• Eschscholzia californica (mid may, re-sows itself)
• Purpurascens (the whole of spring)
• Centaurea cyanus (mid may)
• Euphorbia oblongata (April, then throughout the year)
• Orlaya grandiflora (mid may)
• Salvia viridis (May to September)
• Scabiosa atropurpurea (May to December)

3 Seater Chelsea Teak Bench

3 Seater Chelsea Teak Bench, a photo by alfresia.co.uk on Flickr.

Minky Steamflow Ironing Board

On our website, Alfresia stocks a variety of homeware goods, from kitchen utensils to laundry products. We have recently massively extended our range of laundry products - we offer triple the number of ironing boards for example. The premier model among these is the Minky Steamflow Ironing Board.

The major advantage of  this board is that it gives you completely professional results in a much shorter time than it should normal take to iron properly, and with a lot less effort too. A major design feature of Steamflow Ironing Board is that it incorporates "Triple Action Steam Flow". This feature operates by directing steam right to the very centre of your piece of ironing. The steam is pulled deep into the fabric and this relaxes the fibres. This means that creases simply disappear.



Another critical design feature is "the reverse airflow system" which creates an air cushion on the board. This allows delicate fabrics, like satin or silk, to float on the board. The advantage of this is that steam is able to breathe through the fabric, removing creases from it without even being touched by the iron.

Completing this top of the range board is an onboard power socket (for convinience), wheels (for mobility), an adjustable iron rest and infinite height adjustment (with twin locks for added saftey).So, if this state of the art technology appeals to you, order your board today on Alfresia.

Alfresia is an online retailer of garden furniture.