Julian Cassell's DIY Blog

Garden tool kits do not need to include a huge selection of tools, but do need to contain the basics. Quality of tool is generally reflected in its price. It is always best to go for the most expensive you can afford. Cheaper tools can be useful for light work, or if you only use them infrequently. The selection of tools assembled below are what I consider to comprise a good gardening toolkit. The first group includes the essential hand tools for all gardens, large and small. Further down the page you will see how your gardening tool kit will need to expand as required. read more »

How to plant plants, shrubs, or even trees is a topic which can be simplified to a basic technique that can be applied to most planting situations in your garden. Fundamentally, you follow the same procedure whether you are dealing with a small bedding plant, or a much larger tree. If you are worried about the ground conditions, don’t be, as soil doesn’t need to be incredibly rich for the majority of plants to thrive, but it does need to be well drained, contain enough organic matter to stop it from drying out, and to encourage natural organisms. Below are my main considerations when deciding how to plant up a garden. read more »

Laying turf is the quick way of creating a lawn, and your next option if you don’t want to go down the lawn seeding route. Laying turf will be a more expensive option to seeding, but many people feel that is a price worth paying for such an instant result. Good preparation of the soil is still vital for laying turf and the sequence below picks out the main principles you should look to follow. read more »

Lawn care and maintenance is a subject that most of us start to think about in early spring, and the autumn, as these are the optimum times for seasonal work to be carried out on your lawn. The following post provides a number of points you need to take into account for some simple but effective lawn care. Maintaining a lawn really doesn’t need to be a full time occupation, so try following these few principles to make your lawn look better than ever. read more »

Standard, humble, masking tape………..just so many uses.

My top 10 uses for masking tape does include some ‘masking up’ to divide different painted surfaces, but not as many as you may think. Don’t get me wrong, masking tape is useful for defining precise paint edges, in some situations, but most of the time you are far better off painting edges without the aid of tape. Yes it is true that if you use top quality (and expensive) masking tape, and combine it with pin point perfect technique in application, you can get a good finish, but to be honest, in most situations you really don’t need it.

However, my aim to make people cut down on masking tape use in the situations described above shouldn’t worry manufacturers, as I still use tonnes of the stuff for many, many other jobs. My top 10 uses below are the areas I use masking tape most. And before you ask which type? I’m talking about the standard buff-coloured masking tapes rolls, nothing pricey, nothing coloured, nothing low tack, not the really cheap stuff, but the next grade up…..just standard, ‘classic’ masking tape. read more »