Lawns Hub

Yes, it’s winter time, and many “lawners” are staying indoors and away from their lawns. Still, now’s a good time to get ready for spring, and since it’s also the time of year when you may be looking for a unique gift for a fellow lawn enthusiast, I thought it might be worth  mentioning the Ames Lawn Buddy:

This simple product, priced at under $50 is a huge success with lawn and garden owners. It’s not just a mobile storage area, it’s first and foremost a mobile seat, that allows you to sit down at just the right height to perform your gardening chores. Finished with one spot? easily glide onwards to the next.

And yes, the storage room is awesome too, with room for all your tools, and even for a cold drink! This no-rust, all plastic product is a total hit with owners providing raving reviews on Amazon. You can still get it in time for the Holidays – what a cool unique gift!

Click for more details and price

Setting up your own lawn care business is as easy as it sounds.  If you own a truck or even just a trailer for a car that could handle clippings, pruning, fertilizers, gas cans and tools, you too can join the trade. Many have done just that, in fact.  Another fact is, that is exactly how began my businesses, at first. It does not require a monster amount of money to begin, just an urge and the ability to starve a while and to work harder than heck to get it all going.
In fact, in no way would I go through it again…  What you learn in your first year is that so many things complicate matters it’s just not funny.  You can go to work on your new gig with your hopes high and a willingness to work just short of killing yourself in order to get it all going, but it can almost do just that.  Just the same, in answer to the question of whether or not it can be done, of course it can.

What is so often overlooked are things like the following:  Business licenses; licenses of all types including in some places contractor’s licenses; tax compliance forms and papers; insurances, business-wise and vehicular; medical issues and the all-important Workers Compensation issue if you hire anyone; gas and oil for hungry trucks and mowers; tools and their inevitable replacements; an office space and the papers and parts for that; somewhere to store tools safely; advertising issues; networking issues.  Tired yet?

And what about the trade-specific issues like plants health, lawn diseases, pruning techniques, fertilizers, aeration and dethatching issues? Have you had any experience at it?  Do you have a small bundle of work you can begin with? It is one thing, after all, to declare yourself and independent business man, yet another altogether to actually BE one. It takes jobs and the ability to get more.

Now, being in the field yields more work.  Lawn mowing firms are highly visible.  They get asked all the time for extra work from neighbors of projects.  It is entirely possible to make it work, doing just that – referring and getting referred.  But the end analysis means at least a little bit of starvation in my experience unless you can begin capitalized sufficiently.

So, yes, it is entirely possible and requires less to begin than almost any other trade.  The fact is, if you take pride in your work, you will find more, too.  That’s a no brainer. People who answer their telephones also rake in the clientele, simply by answering.

It’s a great thing to do.  Plenty of exercise in a great environment, the working conditions are what drew me to it. But bear all that other stuff in mind, please.  It will save the completely deflating discovery of their needs before you lose heart after investing all that sweat.

Seeding a lawn from scratch is not as intimidating as it might seem.  Like gardens, we get to experience a miracle of Nature as we see the initial sprout sticking up out of the ground, then watch in wonder as it thickens and grows into some green expanse we can be proud of. There are a few things to pay attention to, but I can tell you now, grass seed is a most reliable grower, so one can relax and enjoy after a few simple tasks are known and adhered to.

Make sure the surface is smooth enough to consider having a lawn on it, first. Final grading should reveal the surface dimensions and slopes you really do want.  Also, try and determine the soil is an adequate medium for your eventual busy and hungry little grass plants.  Grass requires a pretty constant diet of water and nutrients, either in the form of rainfall, in the case of water, or from bacteriological sources in the organic material beneath the surface. Make sure there is organic matter in the soil when preparing a lawn. Compost of some type should have been tilled in thoroughly, allowing a good bacteriological base. Once this is establishes, and the raking is done, then casting the seed is pretty much child’s play.  Make sure the seed is dispersed as uniformly as possible.

Once the seed is spread, I like to either cover it with a small sheen of compost but this purpose can be arrived at by passing the back of a spring rake over all the seed, thus surrounding the small seed pods with something that will insulate a bit and retain water. It also can protect from the beating sun or even from frost.  I like also to run a half filled or less lawn roller over the seeds to further insure some insulation and press them deeper into the soil.  After this, water adequately but no too much and watch it grow.

I received more questions about dog urine and lawns following the last post, so here goes.

Yes, it is true, dog urine burns lawn grasses all the time. Everyone knows about it, it can be a frustrating experience seeing little burn spots pocking the landscape like bomb damage.  It is indeed an unfortunate event, but knowing why it does this is a probable help in dealing with it. The current urban myth says that female dogs have an innate chemical which is especially detrimental, but it is simply not true.  Male dogs tend to spread their urine out, busily marking shrubs and fire hydrants with all due diligence, thereby spreading their urine for functional effect. Meanwhile, while female dogs also “mark: certain things in a territorial way, they generally just unload their wastes in more decisive amounts, thus the myth of the Female Urine Problem.

The problem is in the nitrogen.  Waste products include high concentrations of nitrogen as byproducts of digestion.  What happens is almost as if you were “overfeeding” with a nitrogen fertilizer.  In many cases, studies have shown that by watering within 8 hours of a dog urinating on your lawn, you can reduce the damage substantially.  While no one is going to sit and hold a hose all day for owners who let their dogs pee in your grass, it is helpful to know that some consistent watering reduces the effects of dog urine enormously.  Indeed, if you own a female dog, or a male, for that matter who trashes some poor shrub daily, just water those sots they most frequent and you might avoid the worst of the damaging effects of all that compressed nitrogen. The burnt out spots always have a ring of intensely green grass around them, which should give us our best clue.  Water liberally if you spot it happening and avoid at least one of the spots  Knowledge is forewarning.  Using some common sense techniques to limiting the passage of dogs on your lots should be first and foremost in any prevention scheme..

Ok, enough of plastic. Even if you’re not happy with your live lawn, here’s some advice on how to fix some problems.

Sometimes stuff happens. A car misses the driveway and scores a nice 6 foot divot in your nice green lawn.  A dog who used your lawn as an outdoor latrine has damaged it to an uncommon extent, making it look like a bombing run. You had a gas spill.  You overfertilized and scorched a huge patch.  What to do?

Generally, the essential rule of thumb is to “treat” any areas with a few essential principles:

Any contaminates, such as gasoline or diesel spills, weed killer accidents, dog urine spots and the like can go in two directions.  The less obnoxious, such as dog urine spots can simply be “leached” by applying a good amount of water to allow the nitrogen to percolate further own into the soil.  Other spots, like the gas or diesel spills may even require the removal of the contaminated soil.  In this, once a certain amount of soil is taken away, I still recommend a leaching process.  Diesel is “clingy”, greasy and has a tendency to stick to the small particles of earth and silt in the soil. It also leaches out slower than, say, gas or alcohol.  Likewise for weed killer combinations. Just the same, some leaching is good.

Once leached and the soil replaced, apply seed in the same manner you would a new lawn.  For small areas, the fact is, not a lot of work is actually required.  Remove a bit of dirt, grab some known clean dirt, pack it in and apply seed.

When replacing lawns grasses which died due to drought or to under watering from a once-defective irrigation system, toss down some rye grass, or Bermuda, depending in your climate, along with some basic structural grass and let it rip.

Plastic turf is an entirely new and actually promising technology, used for many more purposes than for merely erecting a lawn that doesn’t need mowing.  All the current “field turfs” which are all the rage in colleges, high schools and even pro sport stadiums are turning to this new technology with all its built in advantages. Having laid quite a few I can vouch for the fact that it is at least superior to the “:Astroturf” of old, with its unbelievably hard and injurious surface. Getting tackled on Astroturf was no picnic.

This topic in fact is worth an entire article, it has grown so much as an option. Nor are football and soccer fields the only places they can be installed. I installed a golf green for a local university a few years back which they still practice on.  And that was not the only “green” I installed, either.  We did a few for home owners as well.  It’s the same process as field turf which, ironically, is the same process as installing interlocking brick pavers, at least at its bottom.  A good base here is everything, just like all roads and driveways.

The greens plastic grass were sort of fascinating to make.  We would add sand at minute increments to effect the speed of the green.  Add a bit of sand, say an eigth or a quarter inch, suddenly it gets a bit faster.  The utility of such a thing is really effective in Portland, where I live, owing to the rains which are pretty constant during Winter.  Not a problem with the plastic turf!  Just grab a rain suit or an umbrella and putt away.

Anyway, knowing the options, including putting greens is a smart way to go for anyone considering plastic grass.

In case you were wondering why all the latest focus on organic, let’s talk some about lawn care products and the pollution they cause.

Lawn care products pollution includes an unfortunately vast number of things.  I often hesitate to list them owing to the numbers, but what I can do is provide some cautionary tales about being better with what we do use. In many ways, it also depends on where we live as to the effects we have on our fellow man.  Noise pollution, for example, is not an issue out on the farm or in remoter suburban areas.  Since we have now identified just about everything in the world we can think of as to how we contaminate our friends and enemies alike, sigh, I guess it is only fair to list 2 of them, to be fair and to give us things to consider.

The aforementioned “noise pollution” is a prime example.  It occurs in reality when we live packed together as we now do in so many cities and towns. There a few options at the moment that are currently popular for alternatives to lawns in the landscape and, in truth, I would hope that stays the case.  We can, however, mitigate it by choosing the correct times and days for the chore. Weekends, with the kids out playing a human noise fairly rampant, is a great time. Mornings, after allowing a civil wakeup time is good as well.  In the end, we want most to not offend.  This rule as a social construct is a civilized way to approach it all.

Another overlooked method of polluting is with our forced air blowers. These handy items allow us to clean up rapidly and throughly without the hand work of using brooms.  But we overuse them.  Also, there are electric alternatives which mitigate the use of gas powered ones, as well.  These run quieter and sometimes without the unnecessary force of many of the gas powered varieties. One of the most unfortunate byproducts of using blowers, and especially the powerful ones, is in the spread and pulverization of dust.  We blow micro organisms all over the place with these monster power blowers, including allergenic bacteria and unwanted seeds.  A good rule of thumb in using blowers is to use the minimal amount of power as is necessary.

Sorry about keeping you guys waiting with the posts. Busy summer here with lawn care issues…

Soil and soil Ph ratings are hugely vital to be familiar with with any lawn.  The ideal soil Ph reading for grasses is around 6.5.  The grass itself causes an increase in acidity as time goes on, what with the clippings deteriorating and the biological events occurring underneath, including worms and castings.  When the soil reaches 7.5 or above, what happens is things like dandelions, which love the acidity, can flourish and the grass will have a hard time competing. And, in the end, a dense and healthy stand of happy grass is the best possible deterrence for weeds of all kinds. One can effect a good Ph by adding lime when the Ph goes above 7.5, thus reducing the weed growth and promoting the grass growth..

Soil is another issue. When we order or mix in soil, we need to differentiate the difference between “dirt” and soil. Good soil had compost able elements, woods or bit of organic materials that can break down and supply the necessary nutrients for a long-lasting effect. 18 inches or more of composted and highly bacterial soil would be optimal. I have a friend that has soil this deep. While everyone else waters dozens of times or more over the summer, she waters just once or twice. She uses no fertilizer or pesticides. She has thick, dark green, weed-free grass which requires frequent mowing. Her lawn is about as “no-brainer” as you could get. This gives the lunatic fringe view on just what is so vital about soil, seeing as how hers is so ideal. Her grass roots and her choice of seed (Tall Fescue) determine much of this. The deeper-rooted the grass, the fewer times it needs watering.  And even those waterings are infrequent but very deep.

If your soil depth is bad, it can be aided by applications of yet more soil, sometimes even over the top of a lawn.  Granted, it will take a bit of time for the grass to completely thicken, but it is an adequate “lazy man’s method” of dealing with it.  Other great methods include aerating and raking new soil into the holes just produced. A good lawn, given the right ingredients for growth and health can be an utterly “green” lawn in the ecological sense easier than many think.