26. September 2009 by admin.
Soil Compaction, Over Seeding and Aeration
After a summer of kids and dogs pounding on the lawn and with temperatures dropping, fall is really the time to aerate and over seed the lawn.
Aeration is a process where holes are punched into the grass and ground allowing better gas exchange, loosening the soil and helping water floe to root zones. Though there are all kinds of gimmicky aeration devices, like the infamous clip on soles with 3” spikes coming out the bottom that you’re supposed to walk on your lawn with, only core aeration really is effective. Core aeration is a process where a cone like device pulls a soil core up and out of the ground as opposed to spiking the ground which has been proven far less effective in aerating root zones and dealing with compaction.
Compaction is a real issue in many lawns and an interesting, a piece in the New York Times on the lawns at Harvard showed that after a couple of years of compost tea applications, many compaction issues were relieved as microbial activity increased and broke down the elements contributing to compaction. A combination of aeration and compost tea are highly recommended for dealing with compaction issues.
While core aerating and turning up all that loose soil, over seeding at the same time will fill in those spaces made by the aerator, and the loose soil form the cores will help the seed to germinate. And sprout. Grass seed germinated and started out in the fall will come in much more strongly in the spring and be far less likely to fail in the heat of the summer than grass seeded in the spring.
If you have a particularly weedy lawn ( more than half your lawn is weeds) thanks to this year’s heavy moisture get rid of the weeds first either by hand removing or spot spraying weeds with a broadleaf herbicide. If the first application does not knock the weeds out, hit them again a week later. Wait at least one week after applying herbicides to aerate and over seed
By the way, herbicides are the antithesis of compost tea, they kill microbes in the soil contributing to compaction which favors weeds over grass. However, if you spot spray the weeds only you will minimize damage to the soil culture and by upping the compost tea, you can restart the microbial activity in these areas.
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20. September 2009 by admin.
Fall Pruning
I was “garden coaching” with a couple that are client/friends the other day. The area they wanted help with was fall pruning of trees and shrubs. This was a lovely experience with a terrific couple able to express differences and commonality while having fun together, a real lesson for those of us with overly sensitive egos! He likes to prune heavily while she is more cautious, which may be a Y chromosome issue as I tend to be heavy handed myself. Fortunately, pruning, shearing, and trimming require both qualities.
Distinguishing between what needs what is the first step. Generally, little leaf shrubs like privet, taxus, and perhaps even forsythia and burning bush can take a good shearing with a hedge clipper of some sort. Hemlocks would be the exception to that rule (there always seems to be one) requiring careful hand pruning. Larger leaf, slower growing plants like rhododendron, lilac, and hydrangea for example really prefer hand pruning as do almost all ornamental trees.
Shearing:
When shearing in the fall, a good rule of thumb is to remove no more than a quarter of the plant. Maybe a third if the plant has not been cut at all in some time. Remember that cutting a plant stimulates growth, which is OK in the Fall but you don’t want to over-stimulate, as the season is winding down and all plants are storing energy for their winter hibernation. If you want to really go at it, and completely reshape the fast growers, winter or very early spring shearing is advised, preferably before they leaf out much. The early you perform a hard cut, the more new foliage you will get to fill in the inevitable bald spots that will result from a hard cut.
Pruning:
When fall pruning, you are dealing with slower growers and want to be conservative. Feel free to remove deadwood of course, also “suckers” or “water sprouts”. These are little shoots coming out of the main branches inside the tree or shrub. Usually not much light reaches them and they almost use as much energy as they generate sapping the plant of energy it could be expending elsewhere. On trees, look for crossing branches. Crossing branches are branches that are touching and rub against each other when the wind blows, rubbing the bark off of the branch and making it more vulnerable to insects and disease. Remove the smaller branch whenever possible unless you feel the smaller branch is ornamentally more appropriate to the shape of the tree.
Posted in Trees | 1 Comment »
29. August 2009 by admin.
Coming Back to Weeds
It has been one of the coolest, wettest summers on record and the weeds are loving it! By the end of July, we all had clover and dandelions all over our lawns. This month, crabgrass is making a comeback along with sedge and plantains.
Before chemical weed control and fertilization, clover was considered desirable because it fixes nitrogen in the soil (which is good for grass) and generally has a symbiotic relationship with grass. In fact, folks used to buy grass seed mixes with clover seed mixed in on purpose (gasp). Unless it’s a particularly wet year, clover won’t outrun your grass and even then, if you let the grass get tall in the heat of summer, that will allow the grass to keep the clover to at bay.
Crab grass is easily controlled with proper watering. Crab grass likes light daily water, fescues and Kentucky blue grass like heavy water every three days. Control the water and you master the crab grass. Plantains prefer compacted soil that is alkaline, aerate your soil and mind your PH and there will be minimal plantain which used to be used in salad by the way. Dandelions, also once used in salad like, acid soil and lots of moisture, and again can be controlled with proper ph and water management.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that all this soil management is a big pain in the neck and you want to apply a chemical weed control to just wipe out all these plants because we like our lawns to be outdoor carpets. To be clear, I am not a big fan of a lawn that is more “weed” than grass myself, but I do think people can be a little extreme about having perfect lawns.
So you want to wipe out the weeds chemically. The bad news is that all herbacides only work well in dry weather. If the weeds are fat with water and happy, they don’t absorb the herbicide and it is far less effective. Most of us will think that the herbicide just needs to be a little stronger to work. This is a HUGE mistake. The label is the law and if you are applying the herbicide at a rate stronger than recommended, you are not only breaking the law but risking the herbicide running off into long island sound, hanging around in your soil, and poisoning the local fauna.
You will need to apply your herbicide several times AT THE RECOMMENDED APPLIED RATE to get rid of the weeds in a summer like this one. In wet weather, spray the weeds every week to ten days preferably NOT before precipitation is expected and not immediately after it rains. Give the weeds time to get thirsty so they absorb the herbicide, but don’t wait too long because if it rains immediately after your application it will all wash away and you will need to start all over again as well as risk interrupting the natural cycles of the ecosystem.
Remember that herbacides will also kill your soil culture. They will wipe out all the good microbes and fungi that help plants digest nutrients from the soil. Once you are “weed free”, if you want to minimize your ecological impact, get your soil tested, amend the ph, aerate, add composted materials to the soil, spray with compost tea, and overseed three or four times a year. Maybe go after those weeds by hand so they don’t get away from you again (a stitch in time will save nine and all that). Start using proper watering and cutting practices so you don’t get in a weedy bind again.
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26. July 2009 by admin.
Taking the Clutter Out
Generally, planting in July and August is discouraged, unless you are prepared to nurture new plantings with very regular watering until cooler months set in. This summer may be the exception given that July has been exceptionally cool and wet for our region. However, if you wish to err on the side of safety, there are other actins you can take in your garden that will prepare it for the fall planting season.
In many established communities, one of the biggest issues on properties besides water management is overgrown plantings. So many homes were planted ten, or even twenty years ago with spruce, pines, rhododendrons, arborvitaes, with the idea that they might provide screening at low cost (which they did). Unless these screening plants are kept well heeled, they inevitably grow in stature and lose their effectiveness as screen plants. They become spindly trees next to, or between homes that detract from the architecture of the home and diminish the surrounding landscape by creating shade where it is not needed.
Many of us plant lovers cannot bear to take these trees and shrubs down for a number of reasons such as reluctance to kill a living thing, cluelessness as to what might take its place, concern about the expense of making change, etc. Let’s not confuse this with the removal of old wood trees by the way. That is a separate issue altogether. We are talking about ornamental plantings whose original intent was to enhance the architecture and/or provide eye level screening of unwanted people, places, or things.
Gardens are a lot like computers, they have limited space and storage capacity that can only be enhanced so much. The pleasure one derives from either is determined by how much use one gets out of them and how well they flow. They both are dependent on function as well as form. When a computer has too many bulky, rarely used programs running in the background and it becomes difficult to use on a daily basis, your choices range from removing some programs you no longer, or rarely use, adding in some memory, and/or reformatting the machine, or dump the machine, for a new one. Garden space really is not so different. You can sell the house off for one with a better garden space, dig everything up and replant it, remove large bulky plants that no longer serve their function, or add in materials hoping it will work better.
The truth is that when you have a blue spruce growing next to your house that is basically as tall as your house and has little or no foliage on one side because of its proximity to your home, it should probably go. It’s no longer fulfilling its original intent, it is in less than optimal health because there is insufficient space for it, and it is taking up space that could be planted much more fruitfully from both an aesthetic and ecological perspective. The same is true of that fifteen foot rhododendron, the pine tree overshadowing your home, dropping perpetual needles into and clogging your gutters, and so on. Hot months are great months to invoke Kali, Goddess of destruction. Take down those plants that just are not working. Then go creative, add in composted topsoil, prepare the ground for some more fruitful plants. Plants that enhance your architecture and perhaps are native, nurturing local flora and fauna, and whose size can be better managed in the long run.
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10. May 2009 by admin.
Deep Root Feeding
I was talking to folks at the Junior League’s “There’s No Place Like Pelham” evening event Friday night and was asked about deep root feeding for large, hardwood trees. By the way, this event was a lot of fun and hats off to the Junior league for all their hard work! For those of you who are unaware, deep root feeding is a process where nutrients are pumped directly into the root zone of large trees by means of a metal spike inserted in the ground. This can be done with a larger spike and mechanical pump, and there are also smaller, manual versions of this system available.
The question was is deep root feeding really necessary, particularly at the high rates that some tree companies charge for this service? To answer the question one needs to consider where these trees occur in nature. Generally large trees grow in forests which are enclosed eco-systems of their own. The soil is rich with live organisms and fungi that explicitly nurture these trees. The tree’s roots connect and touch. A forest is literally a community, and through their roots, they communicate with each other chemically, share moisture, and condition the soil to meet their particular needs, as well as support other plants that are beneficial to the community.
Trees in habituated areas lack the support of the forest. This can mean that they are not getting their nutrient and water needs met, particularly if they are surrounded by lawns which have very different needs than shrubs, perennials, and trees. Because many of our lawns are chemically cared for, often the soil around trees in our communities is dead and inert. Trees in these conditions will need supplemental nutrition of some kind, and if they have not been fed in some time, deep root fertilization may be just the thing.
However, in the long run, homeowners can feed their trees themselves and without deep root feeding. Two products I highly recommend are from Plant Health Care. These are PHC 27-9-9 and PHC 11-22-22. Like most fertilizers the numbers refer to Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium levels in the fertilizer. These two products are part of the new line of chemical/biological hybrid or bridge products that are on the market. They contain chemical fertilizers in low enough doses to support the biological agents that they deliver as well. The 27-9-9 product is high in nitrogen and for spring use, the 11-22-22 is much lower and for fall use. The key element in these products is mycorrhizael fungii. Mycorrhizae are beneficial fungi that help trees digest nutrients. By applying these products to your trees regularly, you can optimize the health of your trees and reduce or eliminate the need for deep root feeding. Many trees in suburban areas are struggling for nutrients so consider ways to feed these valuable assets today!
Posted in Trees | 1 Comment »
19. April 2009 by admin.
A Blueprint for Feeding Your Lawn and Garden:
Healthy gardens and lawns have one major component in common, that is healthy soil. Healthy soil is soil that breathes, and is alive. Healthy soil has twenty to forty percent organic content (composted material, peat moss, etc). Healthy soil is alive with fungi, microbes, and worms that feed on the organic material and convert it into a form that plant life can absorb. Healthy soil both absorbs moisture and drains once saturated. It is made up of inorganic materials of varying densities ranging from fine particles like clay and silt, to sand, and even some gravel/aggregate (but not too much, and not much denser than 1/8th of an inch.
Though you can engage in extensive and expensive testing to find out exactly what your soil is made up of, including live microbial activity for example, it is simpler to stick with basic soil testing (through the Cornell Co-Operative Extension) to find out how acid/alkaline your soil is and what the ratios of Phosphorous, Nitrogen, and potassium are. The results of this testing will tell you what special amendments you need to add to get the right nutrient balance which is your baseline.
Soil density, organic and microbial content should be amended regularly throughout the year. In a basic program, compost tea (a tea brewed using live compost as the base material) should be applied at least 3 times a year, in April, June, and August. Compost tea is rich in trace minerals, live microbes, and beneficial fungi and will help re-invigorate your soil. The soil should also be fed with corn gluten in March/April to both give it a nitrogen boost and inhibit weeds from germinating. In soil that needs more vigorous attention, compacted soil with low organic content, aeration and addition of composted material is highly recommended. In a lawn this is also an excellent time to over seed, making sure the seed is lightly covered with the composted material.
With the presence of certain weeds, diseases, and insects, it becomes evident that the soil may be low in calcium, or over acidic. Liquid kelp, and/or fish emulsion are very high in calcium and will nurture the soil and the lawn, as well as reduce the occurrence of certain infestations.
Stay away from chemical fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides whenever possible. Though these will yield short term results, in the long run, they kill every living organism in the soil and weaken the root systems of your lawn and plants.
Posted in Organics | No Comments »
5. April 2009 by admin.
Landscape Services in the “New Economy”
Its spring and all of us are shopping for lower prices and better value in the new economy. The question is, in any service you are shopping out, if the price is lower, are you getting better value? Many of us in know approximately what we are paying for landscape services, but are a little fuzzy on what we are receiving.
The bad news about the new economy is money is much tighter than it was not too long ago. The good news is there is a lot more competition. Companies that emphasized service, knowledge, and reliability at a higher price are willing to be much more competitive. Look at any commoditized industry, like automobiles for proof of this, you can get much better value and financing on any car today than you did a year ago. This is certainly true in landscape services as well. The question is are you comparing apples to apples? In a commoditized industry, this is often easier to measure than in a service industry. You can drive an Infinity, for example, and feel the difference between it and another car immediately. In services like landscape, it can be more difficult because a good deal of the experience happens over time.
Here are a few things to look at right off the bat. How easy is it to get a hold of the company and how responsive are they to your needs? When you call during business hours, do you get a person or do you get voicemail? How fast is your call returned and do you feel the people you are talking to really care about your landscape and your needs, or are they gruff and defensive with you? Do they have an office you can walk into and meet with them if need be? When folks come to your property to meet with you, do you feel they are really educated about plants, soil, and ecology? Are they willing to adjust their price to be competitive? If not, are they delivering higher service and/or quality, and can they work with you somewhere else? Are they honest with you about the condition of your property or will they say anything to close the deal? What do their current clients say about them? Is there anything that distinguishes them from the pack in terms of expertise? Do they have training programs and/or certified professionals on staff or do they use day labor of questionable legality? Are they insured and registered with the county? How long have they been in business?
When you are comparing the cost of services, make sure you are comparing the same things. For example, basic services are: soil testing (this is vital) and soil development or fertilization (plants need healthy soil to help nurture them), lawn cutting, edging beds and walkways, aeration of lawns, over seeding, weed and insect management, tree, shrub, and perennial care, mulching and weeding, and water management. Additional services may be important to you like landscape design, landscape planting and construction, irrigation and lighting expertise, gutter cleaning and snow removal for example. You may also want to consider the environmental impact of the services you are receiving as well.
It is never too late to reconsider your landscape services and the current economy is ideal for either getting the services you have for a lower price or getting environmentally superior services at a similar or lower price than you have been paying. Even though this is a great time to shop around, remember the adage “you get what you pay for”, meaning make sure you know what you will get for your dollar and be willing to negotiate for what you want whether it be better services or lower prices.
Posted in Service Providers | No Comments »
8. March 2009 by admin.
The Basis of Organic Garden Care
Many Westchester county residents are turning away from chemicals in their daily landscape care as concerns about continued exposure to children and animals, as well as issues regarding chemical run off into local bodies of water come to the fore. However, stopping the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides alone will not gain you healthier happy plants and grass. Local soils need to be rejuvenated and brought back to life for the health of the garden to revive.
In a natural setting with little or no human intervention, soil processes organic material and turns it into a form that plants can digest. Soil acts as the intestines of the plant world, and very much like human intestines, does this with microbial activity. Most soil in populated areas has less “live stuff” in it than one would find in a forest for example, due to stripping of topsoil in construction etc. If the soil has been treated repeatedly with chemical fertilizer and other chemicals, there is probably little or nothing left in the soil that will aid in the digestion of organics since chemical fertilizer, used at the recommended rates, feeds plants directly at the expense of killing microbial activity in the soil.
In order to create or lawn or garden that can digest organic material more effectively, it is necessary to re-introduce microbial activity. One sure fire way to do this is through regular addition of composted material, and compost tea.
Partially composted material will draw nitrogen from the soil and briefly drain plant material of nutrients so beware. Composted materials, like leaves, mulch, and green waste from the kitchen, must be composted down to the point where you can’t tell where it came from. At this point it is rich in nutrients and microbial activity. Compost tea is made from fully composted material. Basically, as the name implies, a tea is brewed from mixing composted material with water. This tea can be applied to the soil to re-introduce active microbes into it as well as nutrients and trace minerals. Gradually, the ability of the soil to process organic material will increase and plants will be healthier and deeper rooted as long as organic material and active microbes are added to it, very much like eating yogurt adds active enzymes to the human intestines.
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15. February 2009 by admin.
Poison ivy, oak and sumac can be very hard to get rid of. The three choices are mechanical remove (by hand), use of an herbicide, or suffocation .
Interestingly, these plants are native plants, and therefore considered desirable by many environmentalists. By native, I mean they and the local ecosystem are very well adapted to each other and support each other. Removing these plants altogether from the region would actually disturb the ecosystem and limit bio-diversity! (more on this on the Garden Web forum: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/natives/msg051448464442.html )That said, I myself am highly allergic to all three of these plants and will not tolerate them around my property (1/3 of an acre). Let them have the woods, but please not in my back yard.
Though highly allergic, I will physically remove poison ivy in the winter and summer when it is least virulent. Of course, covering yourself with long pants, long sleeve shirt, elbow length gloves, and possible a bandanna over your nose and mouth help a lot as well if you are allergic. Remembering to immediately removal all these accoutrements (wash them), and wash your arms and face thoroughly with Tech-Nu (a great product for preventing allergic reaction to these plants) limits the chance of an outbreak thereafter. These plants are at their strongest in higher growth periods like spring and fall, so avoid them completely in these seasons. You can hire one of the non-allergic elite to do this for you, but studies show that repeated exposure will lead to the development of the allergy over time.
Though most herbicides are designed and proven to break down within 24 hours of exposure to light and air, they not only kill plants, but also kill live soil bacteria. However, if applied selectively, on a plant by plant basis, the environmental damage is minimal as long as you avoid getting the herbicide on the soil or surrounding plants (more on this at http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/HO-218.pdf). This is a trade off of course, some folks are plain anti-chemical (except when it comes to termites, roaches and rodents). Other folks will stretch it to poisonous plants. For myself, I believe that careful, selective use of herbicides is a tolerable risk. In my mind, herbacides which kill the plant through the root zone, are more reliable than mechanical removal wherein if you don’t get all the roots, the plant comes back and one may have risked another rash for nothing. If the plant comes back, hit it again until it does not. As long as you are working composted material into your soil on a regular basis, you will counteract any damage that a very limited quantity of “round-up” or “brush be gone” might have done.
Last of all is the pond liner solution. This works for any plant by the way. Get some heavy epdm pond liner and put it on top of the plant for three to four weeks in active seasons, or as much as seven weeks in the winter. This will suffocate the plant and anything else under the pond liner. It also suffocates the soil with the same repercussions to topsoil as herbicides.
Note: NEVER BURN THESE PLANTS. Inhaling the fumes will cause outbreak in unimaginable places!
Posted in Pesky plants | 2 Comments »
1. February 2009 by admin.
Managing Snow:
There are three types of snow people in the world; those who shovel, those who use a snow thrower, and those who just pay others because its easier and they don’t like the cold much.
Myself, I am a shoveler. There is a Zen to shoveling snow if you like to use your body and you like being outside. There are four basic tools in my arsenal. A chipper for ice, a square headed garden shovel for wet, icy, heavy snow, a plastic headed plow shovel with which I can push the snow off my walk or driveway, and an ergonomic snow shovel for lifting and tossing snow. I can clear snow as fast as a snow thrower, burn some calories, and work out some of those problems that always float around in the back of the brain while I’m at it. However, I have to confess that as I age, becoming a convert to the snow thrower looks more and more attractive. So here is what I have learned as I consider the prospect of purchasing a snow thrower:
There are a lot of different kinds of snow throwers or blowers and they are suited to different situations. In order to select the right machine, an assessment of needs must be performed first. How long is your driveway? How much snow do you anticipate receiving each year? How heavy is the snow? How wide a space does your snow removal needs cover?
Most urban and sub-urban dwellers, have just a driveway and a sidewalk to clear off. A single stage gas blower will do the trick for this sized job. These types of snow blowers will touch the ground, so be aware of the area you are clearing. Most single stage gas snow blowers retail for $300 to $900. However, if you find that you get a lot of snow, or have a larger area to clear, a two stage gas blower will save you time and help avoid further back aches. These types of snow blowers have wide augers to clear off larger areas, while throwing the snow further. Depending on the type of two stage gas snow blower you are looking at, prices can range from $600 to over $2000 according to Consumer Reports.
If you have a gravel driveway, you’ll want to ensure that the auger doesn’t touch the ground (thus picking up rocks which can be hard on the snowblower, and cause harm if to items near the path of the blowing snow. Most two stage blowers are perfect for gravel driveways. If you find that you only get a few inches per snowfall, or have a relatively small area to clear, you may find that a single stage electric blower will take care of your needs. Electric snow throwers range between $100 and $300 and will clear an area of about 11-18inches.
Posted in Winter Gardening | No Comments »