Recent Comments from Masters and Masters

  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on Exquisite table with a cache with your own hands (photo + drawings)Do-it-yourself hiding place in a leg We liked this idea. Moreover, it can be realized not only by making a new table, but also by replacing one (or even two) of the nearest legs of the existing one. You can even attach such a structure to the side support (usually made of chipboard) of a single-pedestal table. The body parts and the door in our case are made of thick plywood, and the rearrangeable shelves are made of three-layer plywood. The latter are inserted into cuts made in the side and rear walls using a circular saw or milling machine. To prevent the top layer of veneer from chipping during processing, cuts are made with a knife on both sides of each groove and adhesive tape is applied. Even if you don’t use it as a hiding place, this cabinet will be especially convenient for all kinds of little things: pencils, staples, tape, floppy disks. And it’s great that they have nowhere to hide here.
  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on Lamps on solar batteries - repair and improvement with their own handsThank! Everything is working
  • Yuri Yurkov, Moscow. on Mold in the bathroom - how to fight?There are many ways to get rid of fungus and mold growths in damp rooms. I will share my proven method of dealing with this scourge in the bathroom. Pour 5 tbsp into a container. soda ash. Pour in a little chlorine bleach of the “white” type, there should be enough of it so that after thorough mixing the slurry is homogeneous and not very thick (photo 1). Using a toothbrush, we evenly apply this powerful composition to the locations where the “uninvited guest” is located. After 10 minutes, wash off. Pour chlorine bleach into the same container, dip cotton pads in it and place them on the areas where the composition is applied (photo 2). Leave for 10 hours. During the day, it is advisable to wet the sponges so that they do not fall off. My result is clean, white and fresh (photo 3). Sometimes it’s not worth buying expensive products and poisoning the room with strong chemicals. Important After preparing and mixing this mixture! Be sure to thoroughly wash your cutlery! Bleach and soda ash are our best friends in the fight against all germs and fungi!
  • Sergey VOROPAEV, herbalist, Moscow on How to make coffee from chicoryNow chicory root tea has returned to our store shelves. This plant, which can be found everywhere in the wild, has medicinal properties. Studies have shown that chicory is beneficial for diabetes, helping to lower cholesterol and improve heart function. Preparations based on chicory dilate blood vessels and slow down the heart rate. For arrhythmia, the following recipe is indicated: 2 tbsp. chopped dry chicory roots pour 1 tbsp. boiling water, keep on low heat for 10 minutes, strain, drink 1 tbsp of decoction. 5-6 times a day for two to three weeks. Chicory preparations should be used with caution for varicose veins and hemorrhoids. Chicory is contraindicated for gallstones, sand in the bladder, exacerbations of gastritis, ulcers.
  • DIY on Apiary for beginners - or where to start beekeeping- Yes. Braulosis, that is, infestation of bees with lice, responds well to treatment with drugs against varroa. However, if this disease is detected, quarantine extends to an area within a radius of five kilometers from the apiary. The introduction of braulosis is possible by thieving bees or with swarms of others caught, when flying around the queen, as well as when buying bees from unverified sellers.
  • Svetlana Krasnova, Serpukhov on Apiary for beginners - or where to start beekeepingIs it true that braulosis can be treated with anti-varroatosis drugs?
  • DIY on Apiary for beginners - or where to start beekeeping— Freezing honeycombs is an unreliable disinfection method. Spores of infectious bee pathogens exhibit high viability and resistance to various factors. Thus, spores of Nosema and European foulbrood in honeycombs can remain alive for several years. American foulbrood spores are particularly resistant. Under normal conditions, they remain viable for 20 years! Even boiling wax does not always disinfect this product from the pathogen. Therefore, freezing is considered more of an auxiliary measure in combination with disease prevention. Experienced beekeepers treat honeycomb disinfection responsibly. First of all, mechanical cleaning of the wooden parts of the frames is carried out: adhered particles of wax and propolis are removed with a chisel or knife. After the hundred frames are treated with disinfectant solutions. A 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide with the addition of 0% acetic acid has proven itself well. Fill the honeycomb cells with this mixture using a sprayer and leave for 5-3 hours. During this time, peroxide completely breaks down into oxygen and water, without contaminating the honeycomb. After the solution is shaken out, the honeycombs are washed with clean water and dried. An environmentally friendly way to treat honeycombs and beekeeping equipment is ozonation. For this purpose, small-sized portable household ozonizers are purchased. Ozone gas is a natural substance that quickly breaks down into active oxygen atoms, which have a high disinfecting effect. Treatment of honeycomb storage facilities is carried out with an ozone concentration of 4 to 50 mg per 100 sq.m with an operating time of the device from 1 to 3 hours. Some beekeepers also use bactericidal lamps.
  • Valery Sokolov on Apiary for beginners - or where to start beekeepingA beekeeper I know keeps honeycombs in the cold for a long time in the winter, they say, then all the causative agents of infectious diseases die. Is it so ? What methods of disinfecting honeycombs are more reliable?
  • DIY on Apiary for beginners - or where to start beekeeping— American foulbrood is one of the most dangerous infectious diseases of honey bees. Insects can be successfully cured only in the early stages of the disease. In advanced cases, colonies affected by foulbrood are immediately destroyed, and beekeeping equipment is thoroughly disinfected. Bees in doomed colonies are marinated. The procedure is carried out after collecting insects in the hive (usually in the evening). A small piece of colloidal sulfur or sulfur bomb, used for treating cellars and greenhouses, is thrown into a smoker on hot coals. Several puffs of smoke are released through the entrance. The gas from burning sulfur is poisonous, and insects lose their viability within 10-15 seconds. To avoid poisoning, the beekeeper himself needs to be extremely careful and not inhale the smoke released (you should work in a respirator!). It is necessary to take an old smoker for processing, since sulfur compounds increase metal corrosion. Subsequently, the dead insects, canvas, insulation, frames and the hive itself are burned. It is better to do this right away, since dead animals and equipment are sources of the spread of a destructive infection.
  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on Apiary for beginners - or where to start beekeepingIn order not to spread the disease, I decided to burn a bee colony infected with American foulbrood. Is it possible to save a hive that has sick bees? Victor Ivantsov, Bryansk region.
  • DIY on Do-it-yourself high flower beds made of semi-logs— The width of the paths between the raised beds should correspond to the dimensions of the garden wheelbarrow that you use. To maintain high beds, you will have to actively use a wheelbarrow to transport soil and organic fertilizers. Wide paths should not be built throughout the entire area, but on the main thoroughfares. Plan them so that you can drive up to any place in the garden with a wheelbarrow. My site is divided into three such “blocks”, and the paths between them are wide, as well as wide passages around greenhouses and other buildings. Be sure to provide unobstructed access to a well, well, or residential building. Make all other paths narrower - 35-40 cm will be enough to walk. To keep the passages always clean and dry, you can fill them with sawdust or cover them with straw. After 3-5 years, after they decompose, you can add rotted organic matter to the soil and add a new layer. I do not recommend sowing lawn grass on paths, because by constantly walking along them, you will damage the fragile lawn. During the period of turf formation (a year and a half), it is better not to walk on these paths. And if there are paths along which you will rarely walk, then meadow bluegrass and red fescue are perfect for laying a low-maintenance and low-growing lawn.
  • Anna Popova on Do-it-yourself high flower beds made of semi-logsThis year I want to make all the beds in wooden boxes, and sow the paths between them with lawn grass. What width should you choose for the paths to make it comfortable? What kind of lawn grass should I sow so that it is not trampled too much when caring for the beds?
  • Polina GOLOVANOVA on Collecting food waste from the kitchen = storing fertilizer for springAll year round I put washed eggshells in three-liter jars. In the summer I fill it right up to the top with water in jars. I leave it for 10 days, then dilute it with water 1:1. I water peppers and tomatoes several times a season. I use sunflower seed husks along with dried tea leaves and dried ground coffee as a soil loosening agent when planting seedlings (I add 1 part to 3 parts soil for seedlings). I add dry bean shells, onion and garlic peels to the holes when planting potatoes. This increases yield and reduces plant disease. I sprinkle the same mixture, along with sunflower husks, into the holes when planting tomato seedlings.
  • Tatyana Shishova, St. Petersburg on How to revive expired seeds?How to wake up seeds Since the quality of the seeds leaves much to be desired, you have to give them a boost. I recommend this method. Place the seeds in cotton pads and hold them in a bright pink solution of potassium permanganate for 30 minutes, rinse, and squeeze out the pads. The next stage is stimulation. Before doing this, keep the aloe leaves in the refrigerator for one week. Prepare a stimulant: squeeze the juice of 100-3 aloe leaves into 4 ml of water and add 1/4 teaspoon of honey. Pour the seed discs with this solution and leave for 12 hours. Squeeze out the discs, place in a container and cover with cling film to swell. Ventilate from time to time. Keep for 1-1,5 days. Make sure that no roots appear! The seeds are ready for sowing.
  • DIY on How to revive expired seeds?Dear Nina Alexandrovna! The best way is to place the seeds in a jar of water and circulate air with an aquarium compressor for a day. It's better than any stimulant. If the seeds are still alive, they will hatch immediately.
  • Nina Aleksandrovna, Ostashkov, Tver region. on How to revive expired seeds?The expired seeds have been lying around for several years. Cucumbers and zucchini were good until 2019, dill, coriander, basil even earlier. I want to plant What is the best way to prepare such expired seeds for sowing as seedlings?
  • DIY on Sawdust with birch tar from moles - an effective remedyDear Igor! I have been fighting molehills for 50 years and have not seen any effect from any method. The moles have defeated me, I have come to terms with the losses, I am simply growing crops over a larger area.
  • Igor, Dolgoprudny, Moscow region. on Sawdust with birch tar from moles - an effective remedyEvery spring we come to the site. and he is covered in molehills. I wonder how people fought moles before? Maybe these methods will help better than all modern measures?
  • DIY on Cherry pruning and shaping + slowing its growth (Voronezh)— Cherry trees are quite vigorous. Thus, wild cherries at the age of 20 years can reach a height of 20 m or even more. But. As a rule, the trees of most modern varieties of garden cherries have an average growth force - the height of adult plants when pruned is maintained at 5-6 m. Adult trees on dwarf rootstocks have a height of at least 4 m. You can get a more stocky crown by growing certain varieties of cherries. Yantarnaya and Syubarovskaya are characterized by spreading and drooping crowns. Their branches grow at an obtuse angle, sometimes bending to the ground, and the fruits themselves are hidden under the foliage and are not immediately visible to the eye. The height of the tree can be limited by spring pruning by removing the central conductor. Moreover, it is cut out above a strong lateral skeletal branch, without leaving a stump. As a result, the shape of the tree crown with the central conductor removed resembles a bowl. Since the cherry tree has little branching, the trees become very bare with age. To avoid this, annual pruning is necessary. A mandatory technique for young trees is to shorten annual growths, the length of which can reach 1 m. How to shorten? If it is necessary to activate growth processes (cherries are developing poorly), shorten half of the growth. If the growth is powerful - no more than a third of the shoot.
  • Alla Smirnova, Nizhny Tagil on Cherry pruning and shaping + slowing its growth (Voronezh)Do young cherry trees need to be pruned?
  • Nikolay SELEZNEV, Tomsk on The subtleties of autumn garden pruning – what to thin out and what not to thin out?When pruning branches, when the ladder is placed close to the tree, a large load is placed on its top step. Because of this, the bark is often damaged. Especially if the ladder is moved from side to side, and this cannot be avoided when pruning. Sergei Petrovich, our neighbor, came up with this. He removed the top cross bar and in its place threaded hemp rope through the holes. I didn’t pull it too tight so that it lay softer on the bark. And the outer ends, passing through the vertical supports of the stairs, were tied in a knot and secured with nails. Now the ladder doesn’t even hurt the bark, and it rests more firmly on the tree. Following his example, I made such a soft step from a synthetic cord (I didn’t have anything else at hand). To be sure, I passed it through the holes twice. But the cord turned out to be a bit stiff, so I wrapped a piece of an old blanket around it on top. Brilliant solution!
  • Evgenia VASIKOVA, Kolomna, Moscow region. on How to properly and how to carry out foliar feeding at the end of summerComplex feeding for the garden I feed the garden with potassium and phosphorus fertilizers in the fall, and nitrogen fertilizers in the spring. But if for some reason I don’t have time to go to the autumn garden, I also carry out comprehensive tree feeding in the spring. At the end of March, I scatter nitroammophoska directly on the snow: one handful at a time in the trunk circles of shrubs and young trees, two or three handfuls at a time under mature trees. When the snow melts, I apply complex fertilizer (20 g of urea, 30 g of superphosphate and 15 g of potassium chloride per 1 sq.m.), deepening it with a shovel to 10-12 cm over the entire tree trunk area. Then I feed it with organic matter - I scatter a mixture of last year’s manure, rotted sawdust, leaves and straw around the trees and shrubs in a layer of about 10-12 cm around the entire trunk circle. This mulching also retains moisture in the soil and inhibits the growth of weeds.
  • DIY on So that the root collar does not get warm and freeze— Since you planted the plant a year ago, there won’t be any special problems. But it’s not worth leaving everything like that. Lightly dig up the seedling, carefully move a powerful stake under the root system, loosen it a little and, raising the plant to the desired level, pour soil into the resulting voids. Then water and compact. And don’t forget to tie up the tree: new roots have formed over the year, but when digging, you damaged them. The roots will have to recover, so reliable support will come in handy.
  • Ivan Roshchin, Tambov region. on So that the root collar does not get warm and freezeWhat threatens the seedling if, a year after planting, the grafting site turns out to be buried 5-6 cm?
  • DIY on Do-it-yourself raspberry tree - Sobolev pruning scheme- Yes. A mandatory technique when growing raspberries (both remontant and summer) is chasing - cutting off the top of the shoot at a height of, for example, 1,8 m. This procedure will provoke the laying of more powerful side branches and will allow the berries to ripen better. At the tops, branches with berries are laid much later, and they ripen later, or even do not ripen at all.
  • Irina Krasnova, Bryansk on Do-it-yourself raspberry tree - Sobolev pruning schemeRaspberries of the Krasa Rossii variety grow very tall (2,5 m). Is it possible to trim it?
  • DIY on How to make sure that the pear begins to produce harvests as early as possible?— The pear is a flexible and tenacious plant, so you can reduce the crown even in several stages. The main condition: it is necessary to cut off the top above the side branch as horizontally as possible. This significantly stops the growth of the pear and provokes the formation of new flower buds.
  • Elizaveta Ivantsova on How to make sure that the pear begins to produce harvests as early as possible?The pear has grown very tall. I want to cut the top off. Will the plant be harmed?
  • Yuri KUCHEROV, Irkutsk on Planting seedlings in an area with high groundwater - my schemeGarden on groundwater About 15 years ago I planted an apple tree. In the third year it bore its first fruits. In the fourth year I received twice as much, in the fifth I already collected one and a half buckets. However, while removing the apples, I noticed that the tree had withered a little. In the winter it died, only a few scion buds survived at the bottom of the trunk, which produced new branches in the spring. He cut down the dead parts, healed the wounds, and formed a kind of bush from the regrown branches. The apple tree recovered and began to bear fruit again. But, as in the first five-year plan, the crown of the tree died again and only the buds of the scion survived. The process repeated itself, but I can’t understand why. The reason was simple, as the local agronomist later explained. The fact is that my summer cottage (and, accordingly, the garden) is located in a place where groundwater lies close. In the fifth year, the roots reached the water, became wet and died, and the crown died off. But since the upper tier of roots remained alive, the apple tree was reborn from the surviving buds. The tree had to be uprooted, and before planting new seedlings, the specialist advised raising the soil level - bringing in peat, compost and soil. Since then I have had no problems with the harvest.
  • Antonina MEDVEDEVA on 6 ways to water the garden: hose, sprinkler, aerosol, dry subsoil and dripA barrel was placed in the garden to water the plants with warm water. But often such a container begins to rust. Then we first painted it. Secondly, they laid bricks on the ground, installed a wooden grate on them and placed the barrel on it. Now our water pump stands firmly and does not rust from wet soil.
  • SOKOLKINA, Smolensk on How to deal with moss on the site - the means and methodsI have a low spot in the northern part of my garden and moss grows there. I use this moss to decorate the soil around roses, thujas and perennial flowers. It looks very beautiful! I also have a secret method - decorating flower pots with moss. I use clay containers, without a glossy coating. At the end of summer I collect green moss and grind it in a blender with kefir (1 tbsp. kefir for 2-3 handfuls of moss). Using a brush, I apply the resulting slurry onto the pot. Then I wrap the container in plastic wrap and place it in the sun. After 2 weeks, the pot begins to “bloom”: it turns green and is covered with an excellent thin layer of moss. It turns out to be a real masterpiece! If you smear stones with this mixture, for example, on an alpine hill, they will also become covered with attractive moss. Elena
  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on How to properly cut the bushes (ornamental)Trim ornamental shrubs. Remove the branches lying on the ground from heavily overgrown bushes of lilac, deutzia, weigela, and forsythia. Old plants with many poorly leafed and weakly flowering branches and shoots will benefit from strong anti-aging pruning.
  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on Snow on the site - how to use it profitably?To speed up the melting of snow in those areas where you are going to sow the seeds of early crops, sprinkle the beds with wood ash and cover the top with black film.
  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on Application of eggshell in the garden, in the country and in the gardenCollect and dry eggshells. onion peels, bread crusts: in the spring they will be useful when planting seedlings. Save up your tea too. The tea leaves can be used as a universal leavening agent - add it to the soil for seedlings, as well as to the beds in the holes when planting vegetables that love loose soil (cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, pumpkins).
  • Guest of the site "With Your Own Hands" on Preparation of greenhouses for planting season and their disinfection - expert adviceWhen the snow melts, clean up the greenhouses - wash the inside with a preparation diluted according to the instructions (for example, Fitosporin-M). If last season the plants in the greenhouse were very sick, dissolve 2 ml of Fitolavin in 4 liters of water and rinse all structural parts and covering material. After two weeks, repeat the treatment with any EM preparation (according to the instructions)