3. August 2008 by admin.

Our company, Greener by Design, has had an upsurge in local calls for pricing on organic lawn care. Consequently, we have a price sheet similar to what chemical lawn care companies have pricing various programs in thousands of square feet per year. We are not unique in this, there is a national organic franchise offering services locally that operates similarly. Interestingly though, despite the growing concern for the environment, consumer preferences are still very price driven.

It is ironic that the same factor raises our concern for the environment and makes a more harmonious lifestyle seem too expense.  Specifically it is the price, and after effects of oil. Most of our environmental issues have to do with being a petrochemical industrial society. Carbon from oil production and usage accounts for a large percentage of our global warming issues. Plastic products and oil byproducts are the source for a good deal of our pollution. The fact that we are running out of oil has both made it (and our lives) more expensive and food prices are going up as more acreage is dedicated to growing alternatives. As a culture we are driven to alternatives that appear too expensive given how costly our lives have become, a “catch 22” situation.

The truth is however, that getting off of oil products like chemical fertilizers and pesticides is only expensive for the first year. Here is why; lawns and gardens that have chemical nitrogen and pest controls applied to them at the manufacturers recommended rates have dead soil. These chemicals basically kill all the biological agents in the soil that help plants digest organic material like leaves, and grass clippings for example. Chemical fertilizers feed plants directly, similar to if we were all to take food intravenously and kill off the symbiotic organisms in our intestines.

The result of killing the biological is that lawns can no longer digest mulched organic material like grass clipping and leaves and so develop “thatch” requiring additional services. Thatch is removed; leaves are blown and removed using more energy. Soil is further depleted and holds less water as it has less and less organic material, more water is needed to keep plant material alive as there is less organic material to hold moisture.

When you look at the cost as a whole, not even considering the carbon footprint left by chemical fertilizers, blowers, municipal trucks hauling leaves, etc, the chemical approach is more expensive in terms of labor, and water costs. Consumers tend to focus on the initial application cost alone and don’t see the increased water usage and the blower and leaf collection service cost (which is supplemented by municipal governments that collect and remove leaves with taxpayer dollars). 

To convert your lawn to organics from years of chemical use takes more than just putting some organic fertilizer down. Much like people who have had their intestines depleted by heavy antibiotic use are told to eat yogurt with live cultures in it to re-establish digestive agents in their intestines, it is necessary to restore the biological agents in the soil so that it is better able to digest the organic material. In addition to using chemical herbicides which are known to kill helpful biological agents in the soil, the national franchises miss this point as do many consumers. Consequently, the first year of organic lawn care can be more costly, but following years will be equal to or less than chemical applications. The reason is not the cost of the applications themselves by the way, but the fact that your lawn and garden is now a mulch eating machine. Grass clippings and leaves no longer need to be moved, but simply mulched into the lawn. Higher organic content means you use less water since the soil will retain moisture better. Live soil means deeper healthier roots and stronger more valuable plant material. Stronger plant material means less disease and insect infestations which in turn means lower mortality and replacement as well as little or no pesticide us. Less pesticide use and elimination of chemical fertilizers means stronger ecology and development of beneficial insects that prey on plan predators.

The punch line here is pay a little more in the first year to get your plants off of their chemical addiction and you will reap the benefits in healthier, stronger, more valuable plants in the years to come. You will reduce your water costs (which go up 6% a year), and eliminate the need for blowers on your property. You will be feeding the soil directly with the clippings and leaves that land on it and reducing the need to amend the soil and feed it as often as you did when you were chemically fertilizing, and you will turn your property in a carbon sequestering machine instead of increasing your carbon footprint by using chemical fertilizers and herbicides (6lbs of carbon released into the atmosphere to make 1 pound of chemical fertilizer).

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22. June 2008 by admin.

Hold off on cutting down those acclimated spring bulbs like narcissus for another week or two, and let them recharge their bulbs even if they are laying flat on the ground. 

Just like spring-flowering bulbs, lilies need their foliage to make food for next year’s flowers. Unlike spring bulbs, the flowers bloom on the same stems as the leaves. So when you cut lily flowers, don’t cut long stems and remove too many leaves.

Cut the shortest stems possible when cutting rose flowers because the more foliage you leave on the plant, the better for photosynthesis, and the faster it will rebloom. Experts now recommend cutting above a 3-leaflet leaf instead of lower down the stem at a 5-leaflet leaf.

Avoid pruning other woody plants after early July, as this will just stimulate new growth that may not harden properly before winter. Spring is the best time to prune most fruit trees and woody ornamental trees and shrubs. Likewise, avoid fertilizing these plants after early July.

Strawberry plants are in very active growth these days, and new runners will proliferate. Remove runners to keep plants spaced according to the method you’re using so plants will put their energy into producing future fruit instead of new runners. Left alone, a bed will turn into a mass of foliage and few berries.

Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, and other fresh, very perishable fruit should be kept refrigerated and not washed until serving time. Green vegetables, however, such as broccoli, peas, and beans, as well as beets and carrots, should be washed before storing in the refrigerator.

If you haven’t thinned beets and carrots yet, it’s time. Even if you’ve thinned once, take another look because these crops need space for their roots to fill out. If you have the space, sow seed for later crops, covering at least the carrot seed with fine-textured soil. Don’t let the soil dry out.

To help your tomato plants direct all their energy into growing the fruit that’s already set, prune off some of the vines that contain flowers but no young fruit. Pinch off suckers growing from where the branches connect to the main stem (the leaf axils). Keep moisture levels even to prevent blossom end rot. Renew mulch if necessary.

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26. May 2008 by admin.

   The idea of Mass production and centralized processing is a given in the

We mass produce and bag soils and fertilizers, than we transport them in, we remove leaves and lawn “waste”, and ship them out, and in our minds it all makes sense. It’s theoretically cheaper and easier to do things in large batches. Except that means transporting, storing, large machinery for processing. The larger the machine, the more frequently it has to be used for maximum efficiency and payback. After a while we are looking for ways to use our machines more efficiently and the machines drive us.

This piece is not a resurgence of Taylorism by a long shot, but rather a demand that we re-examine process. Toyota if not already the number one auto manufacturer in the world soon will be because they abandoned mass production as we know it post world war two.

Landcare, in order to be eco-friendly, must abandon mass production and do its best to mimic natural process. It means less specialization, minimal centralized production, more on site activities like mulching, composting, water recycling.

Property is a manmade idea, but is applicable in the sense that while we “own” a piece of land, we are the primary caregiver of this property and must strive as self sufficient as possible within it. This is how ecosystems work, cells within larger cells. The more diversity of interacting cells, the less reliance on any one particular system. The less reliance on a particular system, the stronger the eco-system.

The same is true for landcare practices. The less centralized and more site specific our practices, the stronger each individual property/system is and the less dependent on a larger system of care it becomes.

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18. May 2008 by admin.

 Should We Ever Use Chemical Fertilizers? Our basic stand on chemical fertilizers has two legs. The first is that chemically produced nitrogen comes from oil and has a tremendous carbon footprint-6.7 pounds of carbon go into the atmosphere for every pound manufactured. The second is that chemical fertilizers kill microbes that breakdown organic material in the soil, basically rendering topsoil dead and inert. Kind of like bypassing the human stomach and intestine  if people were chemically fed.

Those seem like two excellent reasons to never use chemically produced nitrogen, except when one considers potted plants. Potted plants are not really part of an ecosystem when you consider how they are used. Larger pots that contain trees and shrubs may be the exception, but generally potted plants are either plants adapted to interiors, or filled with annuals that wont survive the year.

In the case of interior plants, none of thee plants are grown organically to begin with. As seedlings they are raised and managed with chemicals in Florida, Hawaii, California, South America, and Africa. They are not even grown in soil as we know it, but instead are raised in “growing medium”, often mixes of mulch, pearlite, vermiculite, and some sand. Then they arrive eventually in our homes and or offices pumped up with fertilizer and pesticides. Converting them to organic fertilizers takes a year of intensive work and often means smelling up the home with fish emulsion, manure, and the like.

In the case of annuals, again, just like interior plants, these are chemically raised, fed, and maintained. Since they won’t last the year, is it worth it to convert them from chemical to organic soils? On the other hand, we will have no oil, and therefore no chemical fertilizers in the next forty years, so we better wrap our minds around this one. Now it is arguable, that one can keep a stock of live organic soil on hand at all times, particularly if one is composting, and convert these poor chemically addicted waifs over with intensive therapy. The question is, is there value in this approach?

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11. May 2008 by admin.

I did a presentation on basic elements of eco-friendly garden design and maintenance at town hall the other day and after the presentation, a woman from Yonkers, NY came up to me and proudly introduced herself as the driving force behind the recent Yonkers leaf blower ban. I have said for years that I thought leaf blowers were over rated but upon being confronted with such passion, I did a little homework and here is what I found:

1) On leaf blower noise: A blower measuring 70-75 dB at 50 feet can reach 90-100 dB at the operator’s ear. OSHA requires hearing protection for noise over 85, and Deafness caused by noise is irreversible. According to the American Academy of Otolaryngology, half the wearers of hearing protectors do not get the expected benefit, due to improper fit or failure to wear them continuously. According to Dr. Alice Suter, in a 1994 report to the OSHA Standards Planning Committee, there is recent evidence “that high levels of noise and the resulting hearing losses contribute to industrial accidents” and “hearing protection devices…may actually impair work safety under certain conditions…In addition, there is growing evidence that noise adversely affects general health, and the cardiovascular system in particular.”

2) On air pollution contributed by leaf blowers: Emissions from the two-stroke combustion engine include PM as well as gaseous carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons (CO, NOx, and HC). Leaf blowers also raise (entrain) dust from the ground. Leaf blower motors are inordinately large emitters of CO, NOx, HC, and PM. Two-stroke engine fuel is a gasoline-oil mixture, thus especially toxic. Particles from combustion are virtually all smaller than PM2.5. According to the Lung Association, a leaf blower causes as much smog as 17 cars. Finally, there is the damage to the plants and the soil itself, leaf blowers generate wnd speeds in excess of 180 mph, ripping leaves from branches, new growth and developing flowers are damaged and precious topsoil is blown away. Nurseries and Extension Agents are receiving more plant samples from gardeners indicating a tornado or hurricane devastated their landscape plants. In most instances the winds are unnatural in origin. Leaf blowers are producing wind speeds with greater force than a hurricane. They are having devastating effects.

3) Blower winds stress plants causing dehydration, burned leaves, and the suspension of photosynthesis and other natural plant functions. Overall growth is slowed. Natural openings in the leaves that allow for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide are sealed shut. Disease spores laying dormant on the soil or fallen debris are blown back onto plants where a little moisture can renew their cycle of infestation and damage. The severity of damage corresponds to the training of leaf blower operators. Blowers effectively distribute disease spores, weed seeds and insect eggs throughout the landscape (as well as to neighboring landscapes). Blowers create a disposal problem for many landscape managers gathering up a tremendous amount of organic debris. Instead of utilizing it appropriately on site it is generally hauled away for disposal.

4) Another hidden cost of leaf blowers is that they deprive flowers, shrubs, and trees of life-giving mulch. Without this natural blanket, erosion, water evaporation and the spread of disease all become problems. Mulch, when not blown away, creates a favorable growing environment for plants and beneficial organisms both above and below ground while adding nutrients to the plants root zone. When mulch is removed to the compost and renewed annually many soil borne diseases are kept to a minimum.

In response to these issues, landscape professionals who use leaf blowers have stated that leaf blowers are great labor savers. However, several tests, including a public demonstration by Diane Wolfberg, a grandmother in her late fifties show otherwise

In three tests involving gas powered leaf blowers and battery powered leaf blowers, Diane cleaned the areas using rakes or brooms faster than any of the battery powered blowers and almost as fast as the gas powered leaf blowers and she did a better job in cleaning up the areas. For more information on leaf blower issues, the site where the bulk of the facts and some text on leaf blower risks was pulled from is:

http://www.nonoise.org/quietnet/cqs/leafblow.htm#6#6

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27. April 2008 by admin.

Hand watering, though very gratifying in the sense that one is directly nurturing the plants, is most likely the least efficient and reliable way to water plants. People love to water in full sun during the day, which leads to high evaporation rates. Also, in splashing what appears to be a large volume on top of the soil, folks often think they have really watered the plant, when in fact, soil can only absorb limited amounts of water at a time. In fact, if you come back to a hand watered area after the water has been absorbed, generally you will find there is water in the top inch or two of soil only.

    Irrigation is much more efficient than hand watering for a number of reasons. First, irrigation systems sprinkle or drip water over the soil emulating rain, and allowing the soil to absorb water a little bit at a time. Irrigation systems can be programmed to run at dawn or dusk, when there is far less evaporation. As a general rule, lawn irrigation spray heads for example, are eighty percent more efficient than hand watering.   The problem with spray heads of course, is they were developed for lawns, and not for perennial and flower beds.

    As mentioned earlier, many of the perennials, shrubs, and ornamentals commonly available, evolved in different environments, so why would you deliver the same amount of water to them? With the exception of water plants, all plants need varied levels of moisture for stronger roots. Trees for example, generally appreciate deep heavy watering with a week r so to absorb moisture allowing roots to grow and reach for more. Shrubs similarly will want water twice a week, and smaller perennials perhaps three times a week. These generalities regarding timing will not apply to drought loving plants of course, or soils that are more saturated with moisture because they are located near a body of water, but they illustrate that watering a bed of mixed trees, shrubs, and perennials with a broadcast spray head is unlikely to deliver the needs of all the plants in the bed.  Instead, look for ways to deliver plant specific watering.

    Drip irrigation is the simplest means to deliver plant specific watering. Drip irrigation is also sixty to eighty percent more efficient than spray head watering. Drip systems were invented by the Israelies for growing fruits in the desert with minimal water. Israely farmers found that if they slowly dripped water directly to the roots zone of the plants, the plants absorbed a higher ratio of the water, reducing evaporation and creating the most efficient watering system on the planet.

   Drip systems come in several forms; the original form is a thin spaghetti like tube with an emitter on the end that literally drips water into the root zone of the plant. Emitters come at different drip ratios so that when watering trees, you can deliver much more water per an hour than lets say a flower pot whose roots are closer to the surface and requires less volume of water to saturate the roots. The next step up is drip pipe, plastic pipe with the emitters built in. These come with different spacing and can be used when watering a bed of plants that have similar water needs. Drip pipe can also be used to circle larger trees, and for subsoil irrigation of lawns.

  Finally there are micro spray heads, and low volume spray heads. These are spray heads that need less pressure and volume than lawn sprinklers and can be calibrated to be area and/or plant specific. We like to use these on greenroofs where water is only needed for the first year, or in other beds of groundcover.

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21. April 2008 by admin.

Cheap labor?

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21. April 2008 by admin.

The war of the dog poop has been going on for more than a decade in our home. No one wants to walk the dogs so they tend to go in the yard. Though easy on the walker, we all know the problem with dogs in the yard, someone has to clean it up and indeed, whole businesses have sprung up around this need.

We won a strategic victory four years ago when we refused to let them go on the lawn and instead released them in the rear yard. However, this was a short lived victory as  they then proceeded to kill our shrubs and pachysandra (I didn’t think anything could kill pachysandra). After four years of watching the rear “garden” die, we finally had it. Either the kids were going to walk the dogs (and clean up after them) or something  would have to be done.

Anyone with children knows how well the “kid solution” works. Generally this solution has very limited applications….maybe once a day if you are lucky. If we were ever to regain our rear yard, something had to be done. A Google  search of .33 seconds turned up  “Pet Waste Composting”  at http://www.cityfarmer.org/petwaste.html. This site,  sponsored by the Canadian office of Urban Agriculture, had step by step, photo illustrated instructions on how to install a dog septic system. Basically, you dig a hole, take an old garbage can and drill holes in the bottom and sides, and bury it in the hole with the top exposed. Then you just scoop your dog waste, throw it in, add a handful of leaves, and add Septo-Bac, an enzyme-active biological compound formulated to increase the digestion rate of sewage. The dog waste decomposes and escapes through the holes where trees and shrubs feed on the processed waste. The site claims that the composter takes about six years to fill up and when it does, you can bury  the composted remains in ornamental beds. It also stresses to never use composted dog waste in  food crops.

We Googled Septo bac and ordered up a couple of months worth, and with the help of our five year old, we built two composters in our back yard and will fence off this area and mulch it  so that we have a dedicated dog run that will be scooped regularly. The dog run will limit how much yard the dogs get and having it be plant free will make it easier to spot and scoop. There are smaller commercially distributed dog septic systems available. One is the “Doggie Dooley” which you can find at http://store.lionscopetproducts.com/servlet/-strse-170/Doggie-Dooley-2000-Dog/Detail and also at Amazon.com.

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13. April 2008 by admin.

I grew up in New York City, the heart land of waste removal and disposal. You put your garbage outside your back door and it goes away. Your home is as cluttered or uncluttered as your ability to put things out the door. The other side of this was that if there was a garbage strike, which inevitably occurred in the heat of the summer, garbage would pile up on the sidewalk stinking to high heaven. All associations with “waste” on this level are as something not to be handled and to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible. It is no wonder that there is so little composting in American society.

With the exception of human waste (urine and Feces) composting was the pre-industrial way to handle waste in many cultures,. Human waste is generally too toxic to compost like most carnivorous animal waste, and generally was run back into bodies of water to the chagrin of downstream neighbors, or was buried. Any non carnivorous animal organic waste (vegetables, leaves, cow manure, horse manure) was put into a compost pile. I first learned this visiting a farm as an adolescent and my first reaction was “ewwww”. The farmer chuckled and showed myself and my class the whole process from beginning to end, leftover food and cow poop goes in, it is digested and “cooked” by microbes, composted humus comes out. The most shocking thing was, it smelled right, you intuitively knew this was a good and natural process.

Waste disposal is hugely expensive for any municipality. Environmental News Network reports that in 2003, nearly a quarter of all municipal trash in the United States crossed state lines for disposal, according to the Congressional Research Service. Ten states imported at least 1 million tons of trash that year, up from only two states in 2001. At issue for many importing states is the smell and the threat to the environment if the garbage is handled improperly — reasons that more urban trash is winding up in rural communities where political resistance is likely to be minimal.
For instance, my home city of New York now transports more than 1,300 tons of garbage each day to Fox Township, Pa., located in hilly hunting country 130 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Not only is the cost of transporting waste huge financially, but it is also tremendous environmentally.

Composting is the way to give back to the land. It builds soil culture by adding organics and active microbes to the soil. It helps plants digest organics through maintaining a vital and alive soil culture, and it eliminates chemically produced nitrogen which is an oil product and as such has a large carbon footprint. A return to home composting of organic waste will not only help cut costs for municipalities, but reduce oil usage, your carbon footprint, and be beneficial to the landscape.

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7. April 2008 by admin.

      I converted my lawn from chemicals to organics by making it go “cold turkey”. I stopped applying pesticides and fertilizers  and  kept my fingers crossed. Anyone who has tried this knows exactly what happened, the lawn deteriorated steadily over a year and by the following spring I had a terrific lawn of crab and onion grass. It took me another full year to get it looking better and two years to have something my wife was proud of.

    The lawn, like any garden space, has to be fed, and weeds dealt with. Presumably if the root system is strong in any plant from tree to sod, than insect infestations will be minimal and manageable without pesticides, but going cold turkey simply weakens the plants and invites disease , weeds and insects. Whether it be a lawn or a perennial bed, the conversion from chemical care to organic means there will be a decline of some kind, but you can limit and shorten this decline by taking action.

    Chemical fertilizers  aside from having a huge carbon footprint, kill topsoil and the microbes that help topsoil, or humus, convert organic material into a form that plant root systems can absorb. Therefore the first action to take (besides stopping chemical feeding) is to restore organic content and begin to establish microbial activity. The most effective way to do this is with active compost of course, but let’s face it, if you have been chemically feeding your garden, you probably don’t have any compost.

There are a number of active products on the market that can help jump start your soil culture. Many folks recommend compost tea, this is tea made form live compost. It is also used for controlling some diseases in the garden, though there is much debate on the effectiveness of compost teas for this purpose.   Though some may question compost tea as a means of controlling disease, there is no doubt that saturating your soil with compost tea will help re-introduce active microbes into your soil.

 Another good product is plant healthcares bio-pack which also re-introduces live organisms into the soil. Basically, you will want to work with products that contain active Mycorrhizae

What are Mychorizae? 
Mycorrhizae are symbiotic associations that form between the roots of most plant species and fungi. This symbiotic relationship is characterized by the equitable movement of sugars to the fungus and inorganic nutrients fixed by the fungi move into the plant, thereby providing a critical linkage between the plant root and soil. The fungal hyphae take up nutrients from soil solution and transport them to the root. By this mechanism, mycorrhizae increase the effective absorptive surface area of the plant. In nutrient-poor or moisture-deficient soils, nutrients taken up by the extramatrical hyphae (hyphea existing within soil matrix) can lead to improved plant growth and reproduction. As a result, mycorrhizal plants are often more competitive and better able to tolerate environmental stresses than nonmycorrhizal plants.

Remember also to incorporate organic material into your soil. Orgnisms like mycorrhizae need organic material. Bagged compost, though sterilized, is rich in organic content. Products like peat moss however, tend to be acid based and should be used in limited quantities. Many environmentalists argue that peat moss is harvested much faster than it can produce and therefore is not a sustainable source for organic material. Also look for organic fertilizers. The kind of fertilizer you should use really depends so much on what type of soil you have. A great site for working out additives is the  extremely green gardening company site: http://www.extremelygreen.com/fertilizerguide.cfm.

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