Work Diary　From Jungle to Paradise

From Zen Gardenig Services、 Keisuke

We did a big, big Garden Clean up for a house in Hope Island ,Gold Coast.
If gardens are untidy, this water front house ruins nice views.

At the owner’s request, we cut down many unwanted plants and trees,
plant some new hedges for the privacy and the mulch for stop weeding and drying out.

First, we do the front Yard.
We clean the palm and the surrounding plants.

Before

After

Next, Beside the drive way.
Clean up and thin out Golden Cane Palms.

Before

After

We’re now into the gate.　
We chop down everything here.

Before

Before

After We cut down most of it. It’s refreshing!

Then, we go to the backyard.
We chopp down Yakkas.
Hedges are growing…

Before

Before

After trimming overhangs It’s easy to walk on the path.

After We trimmed it square and it looks proper hedge now.

We go little bit further down and weed and clean up some leaves.

Before

Before

After

At the Last.

Oh! So many palm fronds to take away!
We trimmed these palms and plant new Murrayas as the hedge along the fence for the privacy.

Before

Before

After Now You can practice putting.

We had so much to clean and it was challenging but rewarding.
Now we enjoy the beautiful view!

Fertilizing Lawns in Gold Coast

Lawns require just as much care and nutrients as we humans do. So, it is recommended that you regularly fertilize your lawn in order to keep it from drying or going bad, and keep it green and lush for longer.

Chemical fertilizers tend to slowly make the lawn barren, so when thinking in the long-term it’s much better to use organic fertilizers.

You can find such fertilizers at home centers like Bunnings, just look out for “Organic Fertilizer for Lawns”.

The amount you should sprinkle on your lawn is written on the back of the package so be sure to spray on the right amount. If you use too much, your lawn will sustain fertilizer burn. Here in the Gold Coast, aim to spray your lawn once every 3 months.

For that perfect lush lawn that everyone wants, water, fertilizer and diligent lawn mowing is essential.
Please give it a try!

Keisuke
Zen Gardening Services

How to kill weeds in lawn

Weeds that grow in and around your lawn are
horrible to look at and also take the nutrients away from your lawn.
They aren’t good for your lawn’s look or it’s growth and need to be controlled. Frequent and diligent weeding is extremely important and simply the easiest way of getting rid of weeds in your lawn.

The fastest and most obvious way is to simply pull them up by hand, however for those more stubborn weeds, use a scoop to dig them up.
You might think “what a pain!”, but pulling the weeds up by hand really is the best way. It doesn’t require any chemicals which saves the surrounding lawn and plants too.

Doing it all in one go can be tough, so doing a little bit every day is key. Weeds are much easier to pull up after some rain as the soil is much more softer. Also make sure to get the weeds before they get too big as well.

There was a customer like this.
This customer lived in Acerage and his house was almost completely surrounded by a grass lawn.
The customer told me that they have a daily routine of weeding their lawn for 30 minutes every morning and after actually taking a walk on the lawn it was clear that there were hardly any weeds to be seen. I was really impressed considering this was in Acerage!

So as a first step to keeping your lawn in order, make sure not to ignore those weeds and make a habit of pulling them up whenever you can.

Keisuke
Zen Gardening Services

Here in the Gold Coast, the Summer is coming to an end and it’s becoming gradually
cooler, but it’s still hot and there is plenty of rain, so the lawn still grows very well.

So I’m going to talk about lawn mowing today.
Firstly, from my experience the ideal frequency you should be mowing your lawn is once
every 1 or 2 weeks in the Summer, and once every 2 or 3 weeks in the Winter.

Why so?
Well, at one of the households we are managing, we mow the lawn once every 2 weeks
and there are no weeds or excess, but for another household we manage where we
only mow once every 3 weeks, you can see after that time that weeds have started to come through and the lawn is getting out of hand. Just with only 1 weeks difference the
way the weeds grow through is completely different. The weed produces seeds that they drop into the lawn which then sprout during this time. Once weeds start to grow
they spread like wild fire and ruin the grass blades. However, more importantly
overgrown long grass has a sloppy bad appearance and can occasionally be a disturbance for your neighbours.
Growing the grass blades makes it hard to mow, and it cannot be cut short just with one mow. Even if you do mow it over once, the green leaf part of the grass will be gone, but the stem can be seen and there is the problem of it turning white, so I suggest you mow
more frequently and thoroughly.

For those who find lawn mowing a pain and never get around to doing it, or for those whose household is frequented with guests, why don’t you try our regulated management program? Decide the frequency you want us to come and we will turn up without fail to that schedule, allowing us to keep your lawn short, healthy and lush with
no fuss and no stress!

Zen Gardening Services
Keisuke

I’m so good at trimming that whilst in the middle of trimming the hedge of one particular hamburger store, a person passing by came up to me and said, “This trimming work is art!” Fixing up a wild looking tree into something nice really makes me happy.

So please, why don’t you touch up the tree in your garden to make it a beautiful symbol of your house?

ZEN GARDENING SERVICES
KEISUKE

Right now, there is an abundance of different health maintenance methods that are popular throughout the world. I myself am always trying to stick to a basic natural lifestyle by consuming pesticide free fruit and vegetables, no added preservatives, and fermented foods. In terms of healthy options, Australia is more advanced than Japan, where you can easily get pesticide free vegetables and most shopping centers have a healthy shop where you can buy supplements and protein as well as organic everyday items making it very easy to lead a natural lifestyle. However, it’s just as easy to lead a junky lifestyle too……

When I was living in Japan, I would eat rice balls from the convenience store without even thinking about it, and was one of those people who would say “So convenient and tasty!!” without reading the ingredients label! It’s cheap and convenient, but I never knew how much of a heavy price you pay in terms of your health.

I’m sure there are lots of other people who like myself have completely changed their lifestyle and diet since coming to Australia. I still haven’t managed to fully take out preservatives from my diet, but I’m going to continue trying to decrease the amount of unneeded aspects in my diet in the least stressful way I can. One of my joys at the moment is taking part in this meeting in Robina called “Revive the power of life”. I’m really looking forward to the talk about the natural healing power that humans originally have.

I’d like to introduce the micro vegetables (sprouts) that I’ve recently started. I found out that you can make cute Chia seeds sprout after just 7~10 days, a food that most people have already tried. Put the soaked seeds onto some kitchen paper and leave it in a corner of the kitchen where the sun can’t get at it, and all you have to do is change the water once every day, and that’s it! You can make this super nutritious topping that easily! The taste is a little bitter, but you can eat it up no problem! It adds a nice touch to make a delicious salad! Why don’t you try it once for yourself!

ZEN GARDENING SERVICES

Eriko

ZEN GARDENING SERVICES
ERIKO

Okra in Season in the Gold Coast.

Are you enjoying your home-made veggies? The 10 Okra plants we planted in Spring started blooming one by one allowing for lots of Okra to be harvested every day. The kids who had helped us from the planting process were talking proudly about how they made their own veggies, and despite not liking them at first, they now happily eat their home-made Okra too.

We will propose an effective Veggie Garden for even the smallest of gardens.

Recommended seed store: The Seed Collection (theseedcollection.com.au)

Lots of seeds for Burdock, Mitsuba and Mibu Greens that haven’t been genetically modified.

Zen Gardening Services

Eriko