Homemade Lawn Aerator Using a Garden Rake

Spike aeration works through pricking or poking holes beneath the surface of a lawn. This creates space for air to be more easily absorbed into the soil. More importantly, it allows easy absorption of water into the soil.

However, spike aeration does not reduce thatch as well as core aeration, and needs to be performed each year for optimal effectiveness. If your lawn isn't too big, then spike aeration would suffice.

Garden Hose Kinks - How to Fix

A kink is defined as "a sharp bend in a line produced when a line having a loop is pulled tight". For a garden hose in use, this happens when a hose gets pulled tightly from a loop and results in the cutting off of the water supply. The way to "unkink" the hose when watering the garden is to approach the kink and straighten it, at least temporarily. This can be annoying if the garden hose is long and you need to constantly "unkink" it.

Shown below is a garden hose kink visible because of its shape and its faded color, meaning, the kink has been there for some time.

How to Paint Garden Stepping Stones

Right after we had our house built, a garden landscaper was contracted by the architect-builder to do some landscaping on our front yard. As we wanted some lawn grass in front, the garden landscaper dug up holes along a path and poured concrete on these holes. These would be the faux garden stepping stones on the lawn. Garden stepping stones are a great alternative to concrete paving to minimize lawn damage due to foot traffic.

The concrete garden stepping stones looked very nice at first. With the neutral grayish color of concrete, they looked like natural rock. Over time though, dirt and stains discolored the garden stepping stones. The photo below shows one of them.