Summer Lawn Care Tips

Summer is just around the corner, and your lawn could probably use a little maintenance before the summer season of backyard BBQs and swimming in the pool. So what are you doing now to get your lawn ready? Lawn care is often feared as a difficult and time intensive process, but with a few guidelines and tips, you can easily have a healthy green lawn in time for the first backyard party of the season.

First of all, if you can spare a minute of your time, dont hire a lawn care specialist or professional landscaper. Buying your own lawn care products is cheap and easy, with hundreds of vendors offering products online and in Do-It-Yourself stores. A wide variety of products such as weed controllers to fertilizers can be found online, and usually can be found at reasonable prices, especially when you do a little online coupon searching.

Starting off on the right foot is important to reviving your lawn after winter. Fertilizer is the key to ensuring strong healthy growth of the grass in your yard. Fertilizing the grass does more than just make it green. Of course it will make it grow too, but lot's of things happen when you fertilize. Fertilizer makes the seed germinate faster, and get started out of the ground. After the grass has a good start fertilizer will make the grass get thicker and send off beneficial chemicals like Rhizomes, Stolons, and Tillers all making the grass thicker and healthier.

What most people want to know about fertilizing is - how much and when? Typically, you want to fertilize 4 times each season, spread 60 days apart. Start in early spring approximately 30 days before the growing season begins in your area, continuing through the growing season until fall. Spring fertilizing gets the grass off to a fast start giving you that rich green color everyone wants. A word of warning though, don't use too much fertilizer, follow the listed guidelines on the bag.

Mowing is the most misunderstood part of lawn care, and the most often incorrectly performed part of lawn care. Far too many people will set their mowers too low or "scalp" the lawn. How many times have you spent time mowing your grass in hopes of a beautiful result only to end up with brown spots? Cutting too much off the top leads to thinned out grass, and shallow root systems.

Now once you have achieved the perfect lawn, you must do regular maintenance to prevent it from going back to being a pasture. Spend a little time and money and keep it watered and you will keep the lush grass you spent your hard earned money and time on. The ideal way to water your lawn is with an Automatic Underground Sprinkler System. This way the watering is done every day that it needs it, you don't have to drag hoses, you don't waste water from over watering, and you get all of the lawn watered, not just where you happen to set the sprinkler. If you implement this type of sprinkler system, make sure to water shrubbery and annuals separate from the lawn. If you applied the same amount of water on your landscape as gets put on the lawn you would surely kill some plants from over watering.

Now that youre ready to care for your lawn, youll need to get your supplies. Lawn care products can be found at many local gardening centers, or through many online merchants. Buying gardening supplies online is growing in popularity, and made even more economical by online coupons and discounts. For coupons on everything from fertilizers to lawn tools and equipment, check out www.CouponChief.com and easily save yourself some big bucks. Spend the extra cash on your first big BBQ of the summer and invite all your neighbors over to drool over your well manicured, lush green lawn.

Knowing Me, Knowing You: Why ID Protection Plans Are Flawed For Fraud

ID theft is a major consumer concern, though there is apparently much confusion about proactive protection initiatives and apparently safe and unsafe spending behaviour. For example, many consumers remain reluctant about shopping online, but they may still give out personal details over the phone in a cold call, or they may have redundant or dormant accounts and financial products which are susceptible to fraud.

If reducing fraud vulnerability wasnt sufficiently difficult already, consumers are now being offered anti-ID theft services and ID protection insurance by banks, insurance companies and credit reference agencies. There is also considerable debate around such policies however, as they do not offer full financial compensation. In The Observer last week, Richard Brown, Chief Executive of consumer finance site moneynet ( http://www.moneynet.co.uk/ ) stated that:

Few, if any, of them appear to offer insurance protection against actual financial loss in the event that a credit company, for example, refuses to cover the loss and this is what consumers really need. While ID protection services may have a degree of value, they shouldnt be used as a reason to take an otherwise uncompetitive product.

Brown continued that consumers could actually take out simple, cost effective measures against ID theft such as buying a shredder and checking credit reports regularly. The National Consumer Council ( http://www.ncc.org.uk/ ) takes a similar approach, advising consumers to avoid becoming a victim of credit card and identity fraud by:

• Not giving personal information away too easily
• When passing details over the phone, do ensure its to a legitimate business. Ask friends and family for recommendations
• Shred all documents with sensitive personal data
• Choose your bank security details carefully and avoid obvious passwords
• Avoid carrying around details of your address with your credit cards
• Close any accounts you no longer need
• Check your credit file at the credit reference agencies on an annual basis

Callcredit states warning signs of identity theft and identity fraud could include:

• Bank or credit card statements start disappearing or fail to appear in the first place
• Some of your mail goes missing
• Items on your credit card bill which you did not purchase
• A debt collection agency contacts you about goods you did not order or even an account you did not open
• You receive phone calls for accounts you know nothing about
• Royal Mail writes to your address about a mail redirection order you did not request

However, by just incorporating some of the measures above and keeping a regular check on your finances (e.g. dont activate that second credit card and then put in a box for a year!), a great deal of financial protection is already set in place and you dont have to pay a penny.

Examples of standard protection within English law encompass:

• Protection from forged signatures on cheques
• Protection from forged signatures in documents which enforce an action (the prosecution has to prove that you made the signature, rather than you prove that you didnt)

If your credit card is stolen (or lost), you should be fully protected providing you report the missing credit card within 24 hours of the loss or theft.

If you have never had your credit record checked why not give it a go?

• Callcredit offers a service from http://www.mycallcredit.com/home.asp starting from 7.50
• Experian offers a service from https://www.creditexpert.co.uk/ with a membership fee of 49.99
• Equifax provides a credit report for 9.95 from https://www.econsumer.equifax.co.uk/