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Garden destroyed?

Is your dog constantly messing up your backyard garden? Here are some tips from www.paw-rescue.org on how to help your garden blossom and how to help your pooch stay out of trouble:

Create a yard within a yard. To keep dogs out of garden beds and other special parts of your yard, create a separate place for dogs to play. Pick a shaded area. Delineate it with a decorative or plain fence of wood, iron or retaining blocks, cinder blocks or stone. If you use lumber, make sure it does not contain preservatives and is not treated with CCA, which has been linked with disease.

For the surface, use wood chips, bark chips, leaves, ground rubber tires or other type of mulch. You can fill it with a mix of sand and some soil. Digging dogs especially like sand. Beware of putting too much sand in the mix, or it will not provide the feel of cool dirt that the dog likes. When dry, the mixture will not cling to fur, but when the mixture gets damp, your dog will be wearing some.

If dog urine is leaving burn marks on your grass, douse the area with a hose to dilute the effect of the urine soon after the dog urinates. Urine is alkaline and contains salt that slightly alters the soil pH. Another strategy is to rake an inch of compost onto the area. The compost contains soil organisms that help balance the soil biology and chemistry. Depending on the grass species, new growth may come into the renovated area, but you can sow a little seed to get it going again.