Archive for January, 2012

Valentines Day Poetry at Tree2mydoor win £100 of Trees

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Hello Everyone!

The Tree2mydoor Valentines Day Poetry Competition

Good news, The annual Tree2mydoor Valentines Day Poetry competition is back once again :) so hope you are all ready with your wit and wisdom to try and write a wonderful Valentines poem to be entered for a chance to win £100 Tree2mydoor gift voucher.

Tree2mydoor Valentines Competition at a glance:  All you have to do is write your very own Valentines poem for your Valentine and send it to us. We publish all the submissions on our website and pick our very favourite to win £100 in Tree2mydoor gift vouchers. Woooop. And what’s more, there great runner up prizes up for grabs also.

What type of Valentines Poetry?

If you are looking for a little inspiration, then why not check out some previous valentines poetry entries from last year to whet your appetite. We are sure it will help you get in the right mood for penning a valentines day classic and bag you £100 in Tree Gift vouchers in the process. Just remember your Valentines Day poem can be soppy, romantic, funny or silly, whatever floats your boat.

Who can enter?

The 2012 Valentines Poems Competition is open for entries now, so you can get scribbling or typing as soon as possible. Please note that the competition is only open to residents of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Entrants from other countries can still have their poems published on our website, but will not eligible to win a prize in the competition. This is because we only currently send out trees to the UK and Republic of Ireland.

How to enter the Valentines Day Poetry Comp

You can enter our 2012 Valentines Day poetry competition by typing up your own poem and e-mailing it to us or by making your own poetry video and sending it to us via our Grow Your Love Youtube channel.

Published January 30th, 2012 in News2 Comments

Pruning Roses – How to cut back Rose Bushes

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Pruning roses

Roses for sale at Tree2mydoor.

Pruning roses is an essential task if you want to make sure your roses do really well the following season. Read on and find out about pruning roses especially if you have one of our fantastic rose bushes.

Why prune roses?

 

Pruning helps to speed up the growth of young healthy shoots, by removing the older weaker ones. Pruning roses is also essential if you want to maintain an attractive shape to your rose bush and sometimes if you just leave your rose bush to grow it can get a bit top heavy in places and be susceptible to wind damage and so on. You also should know that if you don’t prune, your rose flowers will grow on the new shoots and so get higher and higher every year. So there are plenty of good reasons to get those pruning shears out and do a job on your roses.

Here’s what you will need.


Remember to wear gardening gloves when pruning roses.

Pruning roses isn’t difficult so you won’t need lots of equipment. All you need is:

 

· Good Secateurs, sharp ones really make your job a lot easier and cleaner.

 

· Some gardening gloves; to protect you from the thorns when you are holding those roses back.

 

· A good gardening sack or similar to carry away the left over branches.

 

When to prune ?

 

Mid-winter is the best time to prune your rose bushes. They will dormant at the moment, so it is great to get in there and do a bit of pruning before new growth starts occurring. Early spring is also a time when you can prune, at this time the rose bushes will still be dormant or at least semi dormant.

 

How to prune?


Trim the roses slightly above the bud.

· You can afford to be fairly harsh when pruning. Remove all unproductive growth to between 8-10 inches in height (or around knee height). Keep taking a step back and looking at your rose bush so you can keep an attractive shape.

 

· When cutting, make sure you make a clean (where the sharp secatuers come in) cut about a quarter of an inch above an outward facing bud. Be careful not to cut to close or this will dry out the stem.

 

· If there are any dead shoots or ones that look very thin and weedy it is a good idea to trim these right back, because it will encourage lots of strong and healthy new growth.

 

· When you are done you should be left with a small rose bush with all stems facing outward, with an open centre.

Published January 24th, 2012 in FeaturesNo Comments

Tree of the Month Lime Tree – January 2012

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Tree of the month January 2012 – Lime tree

Lime Tree

Lime Trees; great for cocktails and they make great gifts too.

Hello everyone, hope the new year is treating you well and you are not getting too down with the cold weather and dark days. Hopefully you checked out our blog post on gifts to end January blues and got some good ideas on perky tree gifts to cheer everyone up.

Anyway now’s time for a look at our favourite tree gift for this month: January.

Lime Tree Gift:

The lime tree is a fabulous tree, part of our citrus tree range and a firm favourite with us at Tree2mydoor and customers also.

Limes are some of our favourite trees here at tree2mydoor, because as with other citrus trees like the Lemon tree and the Orange tree, because they fruit so frequently. So for example, even in the middle of winter, citrus trees can fruit and are boxed and sent out with fruit already on them. This makes them ideal gifts for really special occasions, like as anniversary gifts or birthday presents or even just to send to a lime loving friend.

One of the other benefits to having your own fab lime tree is that you get to enjoy the fruit it produces right from the tree. So whether you are a cocktail fan, looking for fresh lime for your gin and tonic or an oriental foodie enthusiast searching for some zest for one of your special creations, a lime tree would be an excellent gift to send or receive.

Care advice for Lime trees:

Lime trees, as with all our other citruses, are classed as ‘indoor plants or trees’, however this doesn’t mean they are best kept directly inside the house, but rather in a porch, airy hallway or in a conservatory. Citruses don’t like to be in very hot places, like nest to radiators for example.

Citrus trees also prefer to dry out totally before being watered. If they are watered continually the roots get damp and can rot, so it’s best to keep and eye on them.

Citrus feed can really help your plant grow. We have winter citrus feed and summer Citrus feed available especially formulated to help your tree develop.

 

 

Published January 17th, 2012 in Tree of the MonthNo Comments

Love filled Tree Gifts to end Blue Monday

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Send some love with Tree Gifts to end Blue Monday

Blue Monday is known as the saddest day of the entire year and usually falls on the 3rd Monday in January (this year it will be on 16th of January). Was the 16th of January really the saddest day of the year, what do you guys think?

Anyway, January definitely can be a bit of a slog some years definitely, so in light of this we have come up with some Blue Monday busting natural gift ideas for this month.

Top ways to beat the January blues by sending wonderful natural gifts.

Love in a bag: get rid of someone’s January blues by letting them know how much you love them and what better way than send one of our fantastic ‘Love in a Bag’ gift bags? Our ‘Love in a Bag’ wildflower seed gifts contain a lovely mix of red wildflower seeds that can be sown and then enjoyed year upon year, a great alternative to cut flowers and a wonderful way to remind someone of a love you share.

Love in a bag seed gift

Send some love with our 'Love in a Bag' seed gifts

 

Sunshine in a bag: Spread some sunshine and with our fantastic ‘sunshine in a bag’ seed gift. Like the ‘Love in a bag’ our sunshine gifts can be sown and will come back year on year, a great alternative to sending cut flowers and a more eco-friendly one too. Our sunshine seed bags give you lovely golden/yellow colouring.

Citrus Trees: Citrus trees are just fantastic! They fruit up to four times per year (in December/Jan too), have a gorgeous smell to them and are great in cooking/cocktails. The citrus fruits also have lots of lovely Vit C to help with colds in January.

Garden fruit trees: Most fruit trees are dormant at the moment, so it’s a perfect time for them to be planted out in the garden, ready to bring years and years of fruit enjoyment. A lovely idea to send as a gift to cheer someone up this January.

Published January 16th, 2012 in FeaturesNo Comments

Natural cold and flu remedies to help you this January

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Natural cold and flu remedies to help you detox this January

January is always a time when people are thinking about getting on with New Year’s resolutions and perhaps cleansing the body after too much Christmas excess.  Since health is a thing on the tip of nearly everyone’s tongue at this time of year we thought it would be a nice idea to do a light-hearted blog based on natural cold and flue remedies to combat some of the common January ailments.

Remedies for colds and flu’s

Eurgh… nothing worse than a cold in January, you’ve made it through Christmas and New Years at least, but still none could be more annoying. Everyone knows that oranges contain loads of vitamin C but so do all citrus fruits.

Get yourself some vitamins to fight the colds and flu’s hanging around at this time of year. Our Lemon trees, Orange trees and Lime trees grow delicious fruits and are all great and at this time of year should still be fruiting.

Remedies for coughs and tickles

Scratchy, annoying and usually the first signs of getting a cold, soothe your tender throat by making yourself a wonderful hot honey and lemon and ginger drink.

Natural remedies for cold and flu

Lovely hot cup of organic honey and lemon to soothe your cough this January

How to make a soothing honey and lemon drink for a cough:

  • Boil up a cup amount of water
  • Add in a desert spoon of organic honey
  • Cut 2-3 slices of a lemon, picked straight from your own lemon tree ;-)
  • Add 2-3 thin slices of root ginger
  • Stir well and start sipping!

Help your headaches

Sort out your headaches with Bay Leaf Tea. Apparently Bay leaves have certain properties in them that have made them useful as a natural remedy for headaches for thousands of years.

How to make Bay leaf tea:

  • Pick 8-10 bay leaves from your bay tree
  • Add them to a pan of water and bring to the boil
  • Once the water turns a light pinkish colour it is ready
  • Add sugar to taste if you wish
  • Pour the water through a sieve into a cup
  • Start sipping and loose that headache.

Alternatively you can use dried bay leaves in a strainer to make a headache remedy.

If you are interested, check out our bay trees and grow your own bay leaves.

Published January 10th, 2012 in FeaturesNo Comments

January Gardening Jobs – Take care of your trees

Monday, January 9th, 2012

January gardening jobs

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years everyone, plenty of food and fun with the family and all that business. Now it is 2012 and we can’t wait to start a new year of tree growth and life. January is not a month where there is much to do (lucky with the cold weather, I hear you say!) and you’d be right aswell, the weather has been really terrible recently and that in part is why we are doing a little January gardening blog post.

Rather than give an exhaustive list of all the gardening jobs that could be done, we thought we’d just outline a few ones that will help you take care of your trees.

Gardening jobs for January

The weather has been particularly bad recently in the UK and we have been experiencing lots of wind (lots!!!) and particularly strong winds at that. Young trees are particularly susceptible to getting damaged in these conditions, if they get split now it can affect their growth later. So the best advice possible is to get your trees tied back to a fence or strong post if possible, to reduce the amount of effect that the wind has.

Leaf drop

Leaf drop is a common problem that a lot of citrus trees can get at this time of year, especially if they experience sudden dramatic changes in temperature. Have a look at our how to deal with leaf drop blog post.

Lemon leaf close

Young trees

Young trees are particularly prone to damage with the frosts. Evergreens in particular can suffer, so give them a helping hand by placing them nearer the house to give them a little extra protection from the elements. Frosts aren’t good for plants like the Olive Tree so giving them a little covering if we do get bad frosts would be a good idea.

Bay Tree Leaves

Bay trees and olives can be treated harshly by the frosts.

 

Deciduous trees

Deciduous trees and most native trees, like most in our tree sapling range will be absolutely fine at this time of year. They are dormant at the moment and so won’t be affected by the temperature. If you have received a sapling then they can be stored in a cool dark place for a couple of weeks before you get the chance to go out in the garden and plant it.

Holly Trees

Holly trees are really thirsty trees, so if you haven’t had a chance to pot out your tree into the garden and your holly tree is still in the pot it came in, make sure it receives plenty of water so it doesn’t dry out.

Holly berry

Berries on holly trees looking great at this time of year

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Published January 9th, 2012 in FeaturesNo Comments