Propagating Roses

Propagating Roses by Adrian Kennelly

Rose plants for forcing purposes are generally grown from cuttings of the new wood made any time from November to February, but for most purposes the earlier date is preferable. The rule generally given for learning if the plants are in proper condition to be used for cuttings, i.e., when in bending a branch the wood snaps, does not hold for roses, as cuttings should not be made until the buds in the axils of the leaves have become firm and hard.

Some consider that the lower buds on a stem are in good condition when the flower buds are ready to be cut, while others believe that the best time for making the cuttings is when the buds begin to show colour. At any rate, the cuttings should be made before the leaf buds begin to swell.

The cuttings made as soon as the buds have formed and the wood has lost its succulent nature, will root quicker, and a much larger per cent of them will form roots, or "strike," as it is called. If the variety is a new and choice one, the blind shoots, or those that have not formed flower buds, are often used for making cuttings. While it may be done occasionally without marked injury, if persisted in the tendency will be to develop plants that form few flowering stems, and the results will not be satisfactory, so that the continued use of the blind shoots for cuttings is not to be recommended.

When the stems have long internodes, and particularly if it is a new sort, a cutting should be obtained from every good bud, but those at the lower part of the stem, and all at the upper portion that are to any extent soft and succulent, should be rejected.

The cuttings of American Beauty, and other varieties with short joints, should contain two or more buds. Cuttings should be from one and one-half to three inches long, with one bud near the top, at any rate, and with the lower end cut off smoothly at right angles, with a sharp knife. If the upper leaf is large, about one-half of it should be cut away, and the other leaves, if any, should be rubbed off.

The cuttings should be dropped into water to prevent their drying out, and as soon as possible should be placed in the propagating bed. This should contain about four inches of clean, sharp sand of medium fineness, and should have heating pipes beneath, to give bottom heat. Set the cuttings in rows, about two inches apart and three-fourths of an inch in the row, and press the sand firmly about them. At once wet them down thoroughly, and if the weather is clear and bright the beds should be shaded during the middle of the day for the first week.

The propagating house should be kept at a temperature, at night, of fifty-Height or sixty degrees, with about ten degrees more of bottom heat. During the day, it should be well ventilated to keep up the bottom heat and thus promote root development, and to admit fresh air, but a temperature ten degrees higher than at night is desirable.

In about three or four weeks, with proper care, every cutting should be rooted. The requirements for success, as noted above, are, good cuttings, clean, sharp sand, a proper temperature, shading when necessary, and an occasional wetting down of the bed, in order that the cuttings may not at any time become dry. If the house is inclined to dry out, or if the weather is bright, the cuttings as well as the walks should be sprinkled occasionally, and the ventilation should have careful attention. It is best to use fresh sand for each batch of cuttings.



This is an extract from Greenhouse Management

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Training People to Read

Training People to Read Ads by Adrian Kennelly

If every one who reads a newspaper read all of the advertisements carefully, the benefits of advertising would be multiplied many times. Unfortunately for the advertiser, this is not the case. Many readers give but scant attention to the advertising columns and others ignore them altogether. A great many ways have been devised by ingenious merchants to attract attention to their advertisements.

To accomplish this end, one merchant conceived the idea of marking his ads with a blue pencil. By arrangement with the publishers of the paper, he had a boy to encircle his ad with a blue pencil mark in each copy of the paper as it came from the press. The plan worked very well for the first few times as every one thought the advertisement was marked especially for him. Of course this scheme could not be used with a paper which has a large circulation nor could it be used a great number of times.

In the same way another advertiser had bright red posters stuck in a blank space in the middle of his ad. The brilliant spot of color caught the reader's eye immediately, but this scheme also would be found impracticable except with a paper of small circulation.

The weather indications printed regularly in an advertisement will influence many readers to turn to that particular ad and some merchants print the daily base ball scores, which answers the same purpose.

For a number of years an Eastern merchant drew attention to his advertisements in an unusual way. Each day there appeared at the top of his ad a humorous observation on some current event of national or local importance. These "squibs" were always bright and witty and after a while they came to be looked for regularly by almost every one who read the papers in which they appeared. They were written by a newspaper man who was probably paid a good price for them. It would be difficult to say whether the advertiser derived any real benefit from this scheme, but it is probable that he did. At any rate he got quite a bit of general advertising.

A grocer set apart a small space in one corner of his advertisement in which he published daily a cooking receipt. The receipts were carefully selected and were always seasonable. This would no doubt appeal to the housewife. Another advertiser published a conundrum daily with the answer in the following day. The conundrums were for the most part originated by himself or were old ones twisted about to suit his purpose. All of them were made in some way to apply to the store, and as most people are more or less interested in riddles, these furnished considerable amusement and talk. They probably served very well the purpose for which they were intended.

Another plan that has been used frequently is to offer a reward to the first person who discovers and reports a misspelled word or typographical error appearing in an advertisement. To add to the interest of this scheme, words are sometimes misspelled purposely. A scheme that is popular just now is to offer prizes for the best rhymes or jingles written about the store.

In fact there is no end to the variety of schemes employed to induce the attention of the reading public. On the other hand, many advertisers will have nothing to do with devices of this sort. They consider such methods as undignified and outside the pale of legitimate advertising. We are disinclined to agree with them in that respect.

Of course dignity in advertising is all well enough, but it can be easily overdone. Many advertisements which the writer fondly believes to be dignified are, as a matter of fact, most commonplace and prosy. Advertising is a matter of business, not of sentiment, and the best advertising is that which yields the best returns in dollars and cents. Any straightforward, honest scheme which serves to draw attention to an advertisement is legitimate and permissible.



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Safeguard Your Home Against Burglars

Safeguard Your Home Against Burglars by Adrian Kennelly

Our parents talk about times when burglaries were few and far between and hardly anyone locked their doors at night or when they left the house. Sadly, that is all in the past and today's householder must take very careful and active steps to secure his home against burglars.

Generally, your home and possessions are at risk from:

1) The professional thief who knows what he is after and can get it, quickly and with the minimum of damage or fuss.

2) The opportunist thief who sees something, like an empty house, and decides to strike there and then. He doesn't always know what he is after and he can create a great deal of mess and damage. He is also most likely to react dangerously in haste and might cause physical harm to others.

3) The thief who gets his thrill from causing the maximum disruption and damage to other people's lives and property.

The following tips will help you make their jobs harder.

Make It Difficult For Them

1) Be Careful.

Check everything is locked and properly secured before leaving your home unattended.

Do not leave windows open or ladders lying around for a thief to use to gain access. Keep tools - gardening and DIY - out of reach.

Don't leave valuable on view from outside your home. Make a point of walking round your home, at night, to get a feel for what a thief might see. Move valuables like videos and television sets to positions out of sight from the window.

Don't leave car doors open and never leave keys in the ignition. Do not leave bicycles outside unattended.

Always draw the curtains before you leave home for the evening and leave a light on somewhere in the house. Leaving a bedroom light makes it look like someone is home probably reading or watching television.

If your house will be unattended for any length of time, always cancel the milk and newspapers and ask a neighbour to keep an eye on things while you are away. Housesitters are a good idea, especially in outlying locations or where you have a lot of valuables at home.

For longer absences have your mail stopped or ask someone to collect it for you, from your home or the post office. Arrange to have your lawn cared for in your absence and for curtains to be opened and closed each day. Let a trusted neighbour know of your absence and ask him to keep an eye on things for you. But don't tell anyone else. Where you will be away for a very long or indeterminate period, let the police know how long you will be away and how you can be reached in emergencies. Tell them who is looking after your house for you and how a key may be obtained if necessary.

Call the police the moment you become suspicious about anything concerning the safety of your home, family or possessions.

Do not give telephone callers the impression you are alone. Do not let small children or elderly relatives answer the door.

Do not enter your home if there are signs of intrusion. Always call the police from a neighbour's house first.

A good barking dog is useful, especially for homes left unattended for long periods.

Have a good alarm fitted to your home and check regularly that the battery is working.

Neighbourhood watch schemes are a good idea and can reduce break-ins significantly. Insurance premiums can sometimes be lower where an effective neighbourhood watch scheme is in operation.

Ask a neighbour you can trust to keep an eye on your home for you while it is unattended. Offer to do the same for them.

2) Marking Your Valuables.

Always mark your valuables in some way to help police identify them if they are lost or stolen. UV highlighter pens are useful for marking cars, bicycles and other larger items.

For antiques, collectibles and items you do not want to mark, take photographs and keep the prints in some safe place, preferably outside of your home, like at your solicitors' office or in a bank safety deposit box.

Keep an up-to-date record of serial numbered property. Inscribe an identifying number, like your driving licence number or date of birth on appropriate valuables. Any number will do as long as you can remember what it is.

Doors

Have outside doors fitted with five-lever mortise locks. Look for quality locks that can not be picked or opened with skeleton keys. It's a good idea to have two locks fitted. Avoid thin wood doors that are easy to break down or saw apart. Glass panels are not a good idea, unless fitted with laminated glass. Have a safety chain fitted that allows you to open the door to see visitors without allowing them access to the house. A spy-hole fitted to the door allows you to see visitors without them seeing you and without you having to open the door at all.

Windows

Have key-operated locks fitted to all windows. These are a major deterrent. Always keep the key out of sight, not on the window sill. Pay careful attention to small windows. There are thin thieves and fat ones, and others who use children to enter premises and open windows. Think about having security shutters or grilles fitted to most vulnerable windows. Never leave valuables beside an open window.

For French windows have heavy duty sliding bolts fitted to the top and bottom of each panel. Do not overlook basement windows which are frequently secured only with spring latches that are easy to open.

Skylights

Consider having grilles or shutters fitted and always use a mortise lock.

Porches

Have laminated glass fitted and do not leave your post or milk on view in the porch.

Exterior Lighting

It is a very good idea to have an outside light fitted to come on when someone approaches, especially at night. An all-night light on low power is another useful possibility.

Invest in a timer or photo-electric cell light that will turn on at dusk and off at dawn.

Outdoors

Keep fences in good condition and gates locked.

Trim shrubbery and hedges where thieves might lie in wait. Prune trees that may allow access to second story windows. Do not leave ladders lying around for thieves to use.

Do not leave a key in a secret place. Burglars know what secret places to look in.

Exterior Pipes

These can be painted with a special substance that makes them difficult or impossible to climb.

Garages, Greenhouses and Sheds

The building at the bottom of the garden is an easy proposition for most thieves and can contain much valuable equipment, like lawnmowers, bicycles, toys, even cars. Always have yours properly secured and have some form of alarm or special lighting system fitted to warn of intruders. Keep doors closed and locked at all times. Make sure doors and locks are fitted and kept in good repair.

Further Advice

Ask your local police station to advise you on all aspects of home security.

UV Pens and property marking kits can identify and help safeguard your valuables. Ask at stationers and DIY stores.

If you are hard of hearing ask about special alarm systems and smoke detectors.



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Easy Steps to Get Your Article Rejected

Easy Steps to Get Your Article Rejected by Adrian Kennelly

Article marketing can be a great way to promote your site and product. Unfortunately, many articles these days are written solely for the links they have in their resource box, and are poorly written for actual reading. The content may be fine, but it's not really readable. Here are some steps you can take if you want to improve the chances of your article being approved by the article directories.

Poorly Formatted Text

There are a number of ways an article could be poorly formatted, and will likely cause rejection.

The first is the use of hard breaks. This is where, at the end of every line, the return key is pressed instead of allowing the text to naturally wrap around onto the next line. As, in many cases, your article will be viewed at a variable width, depending on the resolution of the viewers monitor, this casues the article to look very poor.

For example:
This text has had the return key
pressed at the end of every line
which causes it to look poor and be
difficult to read.

Pre-formatted text. This is where the article text is posted between

tags, which means the style and font of the text does not match the rest of the site. In addition, pre-formatted text doesn't not wrap around on a viewers monitor, which requires the reader to scroll from side to side to be able to actually read the article.

No paragraphs. Here, the text is not broken up into paragraphs for the readers benefit. Instead, there is just a solid mass of text from the start to the finish of the article. This is unpleasant to try and read. Make sure paragraphs are seperated by a blank line between them. Just use one blank line, using more tends to make the article look disjointed.

Overuse/Inappropriate Use of Keywords

These are articles written solely for search engines, not for anyone to actually read.

Overuse and inappropriate use of keywords is where keywords are added that have no real relevance to the article. For example, you have an article called Advantages of Dedicated Webhosting, but instead, it is called Advantages of Dedicated Webhosting Texas. Why? What possible relevance does Texas have to do with the article? It's not discussing web hosts situated in Texas, instead it's a general article on webhosting that has added a keyword added to the title for the benefit of search engines.

An extreme version of this is where the keyword is added to a phrase throughout the article. For example, an article on Hair Extensions is called Pittsburgh Hair Extensions, and everywhere the phrase hair extension is used throughout the article, Pittsburgh is added in front of it. This makes the article pretty unreadable, and is also likely to get it rejected.

Adverts, or Self-Promotional Articles

I call these the "I'm good, me" article.

Now, articles are a form of advertising, this is true. However, they are also supposed to be informative. Certainly, write how something can benefit an individual, but generalize it. Don't specify throughout the body of the article how your company can provide a benefit because it uses a certain process. Instead, write how the process/product/service is of benefit, then, in the Resource Box, state how your company uses/supplies it to others for their benefit. If you're writing about, for example, outsourcing, don't say "Our company name outsourcing can provide benefits for businesses". Just say "Outsourcing can provide benefite for businesses" and leave the promotional blurb for the resource box. That's why it's there after all.

Insuffienct Content

At a minimum, your article wants to be at least 500 words long. That's not really that long an article to write, so it won't be that painful to do. A sentence or two does not an article make.

One way of ensuring that your articles will be accepted more often than they are rejected is by using such services as Article Marketer or iSnare. Yes, you will need to pay for them, but your article will be checked over before distribution, and you can simply copy the approved text for use anywhere else you wish.

In summary, write your article as if a human is going to read it. They may do, and even if they don't, search engine algorithms are getting better, so poor content is increasingly unlikely to get good listings.



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Get Free PC Game Trials For Your Computer

Get Free PC Game Trials For Your Computer by Adrian Kennelly

A surprisingly large set of websites are offering free PC games with immediate, easy access, vis-a-vis free downloads. These zero-cost, free PC games are especially interesting to creative, driven people, and the prospect of free downloads entices novices to wet their fingertips (I hope you caught that!) in the PC gaming environment.

There's no need for a CD-ROM or packaged mail delivery of the game itself. All you need is an internet connection to download the game. Contrary to public perception, expensive commercial games, some as high as $60 to $70, are not the best way to jump into PC games.

Free PC games are an efficient, no-cost alternative to the money, trouble, and time of store-bought PC games. Additionally, variety is paramount because you can sample hundreds or thousands of free PC games without any cost.

A succinct tour of the highlights of the free PC gaming environment online will delight the tastes of the wise and appease the frugal. Before we start, you may need to download a few plug-ins, Java and flash, necessary tools for playing online games. Both plug-ins are safe to download and available from Adobe and Sun MicroSystems, respectively.

Moving to business; anyone interested in free PC games should first check out Liberated Games. Liberated Games is a beacon of light, and it summarily bills itself as a free service showcasing "free, legal games for download."

Liberated Games is committed to indexing and distributing commercial games that have been made free in a playable form to the public. John Falcon has assembled a list of high-octane games in his article on Gratis Games. Gratis is a word that can be substituted for "costing nothing." A screenshot and short review are displayed clearly for each free PC game. For the nostalgic element in all of us check out a list of old freeware games.

Freeoldies is another beneficiary of nostalgia. GameHippo is a focused, amazing site that offers 1000's of freeware games for download. Reviews, ratings, PC requirements, and tips accompany each game listing. UGOPlayer is an awesome site with hundreds of flash games. GamesCraze is another catalog of free flash games.

Free PC games can be silly, serious, puzzling, whimsical, thought-provoking, or downright absurd. Some are simple, others complex. Some take you on a journey through several dazzling levels and environments while others leave you to accomplish a single task.

Games are geared toward all ages depending on the subject matter and difficulty. For instance, game called 50 states will tickle adults' sense of humor and engage children.

AGD Interactive, on the other hand, is dedicated to creating rich environments for characters to interact, live, and discover in. Even Microsoft has a free game network, MSN Games. MSN categorizes their games into 2 broad groups; one is free online games and the other is free PC games for download. If you're interested in exploring an RPG that borrows from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, get Angband.

If you want to get involved in free PC games, online PC games, and/or commercial PC games, begin by joining the 3D Gamers Community Forum. Introduce yourself, ask questions, and, above all, try out the bevy of free, online PC games.

You can also download trial games at many sites these days. It's super easy to find the kind of game you're interested in; wacky titles like Super Granny Winter Wonderland and City Life are just a few of the huge assortment available there for 100% free trial.

Get 30 minutes of uninterrupted play with full features and access. Thereafter, if you'd like to continue, pay the price of $10 to $20 for the game, and own the game for life. It's an excellent way to showcase games because most people will find these games to be too tantalizing and interactive to stop playing.

Compare that to paying $60 to $70 for a difficult and demanding game that you have to order on Amazon or through a local retailer. Free game trials are a kind of middle testing area for smart people that know what they want out of a PC game.



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