From Flower Islands to Artificial Turf

The City of Hamilton used to put in a lot of traffic island flower gardens. The program started under Mayor Wade, I believe in the 1990's. Recent budget cutbacks have seen a number of them disappear in spite of the corporate sponsorship program. A couple of years ago, a few were filled with decorative gravel.

Earlier this summer someone from the Public Works department called to ask if there were any products that could be used on the traffic islands. This person said that the city had tried weed whacking the weeds. The hot water machine worked reasonably well, but the equipment was no longer usable.

Today while driving, I was struck by an island of green. Whoa, that's artificial turf!

Is this a new sponsorship deal? Or is this the new beautification program? No water, no fertilizer, no mowing, no weeds? Personally, my guess is that the weeds will eventually creep into the edges and seams, but who knows.

BUT, then, driving a little further down the street, another section of the road had another green facelift. Several islands that had been full of flowers earlier this year were not sprouting real grass.

Now the real grass looked fairly new. Not all of it has filled in. And it looked like it needed a trim. Maybe this was just a fall cover crop? Or is this the other side of the new traffic island program?

Really uneven and too long. A little lawn care is needed here.

What will they think of next? A lawn in the median will need some care, even if it is only to trim it once in a while.

I'm sure a few pounds of grass seed are a whole lot less expensive than growing petunias and begonias in the greenhouse and transplanting them into the traffic islands. Is this the new place for lawns?

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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Flowering Cabbage

Royal purples and pinks add to the autumn palette of colour.

Flowering cabbage (pictured above) and flowering kale are not really flowers. Perhaps the term "ornamental cabbage" or "ornamental kale" would be better names.

In either case, these fall classics can brighten up your fall landscape in intriguing ways. Not only do they add a bright spot in the garden, they will last long after a heavy frost has taken out most of the other annual flowers. Flowering kale and cabbage need full sun and do best in the cooler temperatures of fall.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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Portulcaria Bonsai- In Review

Portulacaria are easy to grow bonsais for beginners. Here are a few photos of my largest specimen over the last several years.

November 2009- as it is now

Brought this Portulacaria bonsai in about a month ago. Still growing in response to the warmer temperatures inside. Sometimes it will drop a lot of foliage due to the lower light levels indoors compared to on the patio during the summer.

Here is a shot of it about 5 years ago, (July 2004)  when I put it into a larger bonsai pot. This plant had been around for about15 years, just growing but cut back heavily.

Here it is in May 2007, just before being put outside in the sun. Notice that the foliage is sparse from the winter spent indoors.

By October 2007, the foliage has filled in a lot. Later on I lifted it up in the pot, and exposed some of the roots. The bottom area was cleaned up when I removed some of the "brush" at the base to make it more tree-like.

see other posts- care of portulacaria bonsai

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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Is it still Summer? Leave me Hanging.

Why do leaves turn colour in the autumn? Is it the cooler nights, the date on the calendar or what?

While some may think it is the cooler weather or just the changing seasons, it's really the "photoperiod."

The photoperiod is considered to be the environmental trigger that causes fall leaf colouring, senescence and leaf drop. The pigment phytochrome senses the photoperiod. Photoperiod is often thought to be the length of the daylight period.

In actuality it is not the length of the daylight time, but the length of the night.

 

Here in these photos, we can see a situation where a section of this tree have not received the longer nights needed to trigger fall colouring. The leaves of this maple that are near the street lamp have been fooled into believing that it is still summer. The light from the street lamp shining on these leaves has led them to think that the longer days and shorter nights of summer have not gone away.

Plants that respond to photoperiodism, do not measure the length of the daylight but rather the length of the dark period. For these maple leaves, their night has been shortened by the rays of the street lamp. I'm sure at some point they will respond as the rest of the tree has done. My speculation is that the other leaves will create enough of the hormones that trigger the autumn responses to eventually cause all the leaves to colour and fall.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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Thank You -Hamilton Spectator - Readers' Choice - Favourite Lawn Care

Hamilton, ON, - Turf King Hamilton, a professional lawn care firm serving Hamilton and area, was awarded the Gold Level in the local newspaper’s Reader Choice Award. Hamilton Spectator serves the metropolitan area of the City of Hamilton.

The awards local companies and individuals who go above and beyond the expectations of the readers of the Hamilton Spectator.

Turf King Hamilton embraces the use of high quality fertilization products to provide long lasting nutrients to the lawns of their clients. Every effort is made to use products and practices that keep lawns healthy and to also keep them safe for pets and children.

“I am honored to be selected for the Gold Level Award. Our goal is to provide the best Lawn Care in this area,” said Gerry Okimi, owner of Turf King Hamilton Lawn Care in Hamilton. “This award is recognition of our commitment to serving our customers with a  level of service that they can appreciate. “

“Turf King Hamilton would like to thank the community for voting them as the GOLD Readers' Choice winner in the Lawn Care Service Category. Your votes are truly appreciated. This is a great honour and we are grateful for your confidence in our services.

About Turf King Hamilton:

Turf King Hamilton Lawn Care is Hamilton’s leading full-service lawn care company. We are committed to the needs of our customers. For more information visit  http://www.hamiltonturfking.ca

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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Fall Colours

Fall colours on the landscape and lawn are a wonder to behold. The colours available take on a much larger dimension than the spring and summer colours. There are a few trees that give a mass of colourful blooms. None however, fill the eye's camera screen in the same way that the fall colours of trees can.

The sheer volume of colour in the leaves of a tree are overwhelming. And more so in the autumn. During the time the leaves are green, there is a lot more green around in the other plants, trees and lawns. In the fall, the other plants are less noticeable. Only the evergreens have a presence. The lawn is still green, but is often blanketed by the same palette of fall colours from the fallen leaves.

In some cases, the variation in the colours can create a stunning contrast- red, yellow, green.

The leaves of trees can be a detriment to the lawn in several ways. During the spring and summer, they restrict the amount of sunlight that reaches the lawn. This means we have to resort to special measure to be able to maintain a healthy lawn in the shade.

Once the leaves have decided to leave their lofty heights, they can also be a bit of a nuisance. If they are left on the lawn over the winter they will damage the lawn. That means the leaves must be dealt with somehow.  One way is to rake, rake rake.

Lawns can be an important visual component of a landscape. Maintaining their health is important to keep them looking their best and able to function as efficiently as possible.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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Low Maintenance Lawns

University of Texas researchers have been testing out grasses hoping to find one that’s easy to grow and less work to maintain. 


Although we don't grow these types of grasses here in Ontario, it's good to know that someone is working on grasses that will use less of our limited resources.


Story from Terri Gruca / KVUE News

Our recent rains have been a welcome relief to our yards. However the drought may have already destroyed some of our lawns.

It’s why for the last year and a half University of Texas researchers have been testing out grasses hoping to find one that’s easy to grow and less work to maintain.

It may make you wonder how homeowner Bobby Schreiber did it.

"Our lawn stayed green all through this drought, this brutal summer we've had here," he said.

Schreiber considers himself a self taught lawn expert. He says he learned his lesson after years of watching the St. Augustine grass struggle.

"With St. Augustine the biggest problem is probably the afternoon sun beating down on this," he said.

So this year he planted Zoysia grass. He said it’s more expensive but it still looks fabulous.

It turns out St. Augustine, which many homeowners have in their yard is actually more susceptible to pests and disease and like most lawns requires a lot of water.

"They use between 30 and 60 percent of the urban water around the country,” says UT researcher Mark Simmons.

It is why Simmons is so excited about the research he’s doing at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

“Being a Brit I love my lawn. I had to mow it once a month, so I’ve been thinking about this a long time,” said Simmons.

UT researchers received a two year grant from Wal-Mart to test seven native species of grass.

The idea is to find a lawn that requires less maintenance.

"With a native grass with these native grasses you can effectively let them go dormant, drought dormant," said Simmons.

So far that’s exactly what researchers have found. A lack of water won’t kill these native grasses. Like Bermuda grass they’re easy to grow, but they are less susceptible to weeds and require less mowing.          

"These were mowed two to three weeks ago,” Simmons said pointing to two plots of grass sitting side-by-side. “And you can already see the Bermuda grass is much higher now. It's coming up about twice the height of the native turf grasses."

And there’s another benefit to using native grasses.

"It's actually a much more pleasant texture to sit on and walk on," said Simmons.

 The research comes at a critical time. The drought provided the best real world test and these grasses appeared to pass with flying colors.

"If something like this means a reduction in gasoline from lawn mowers, reduction in pesticides, reduction in fertilizers, then we know we're doing the planet a favor," said Simmons.

The Best Grass

According to Simmons the native grasses so far seem to be a mixture of Buffalo grass, Blue Grama and Curly Mesquite grass. They are all currently commercially available, which means you can plant them in your own yard.

You can find more information about those grasses and the UT native lawn program here.

Grasses at the Shops

Rainy day last Friday, but my wife needed to run into the store. I drove around the parking lot to look at the various ornamental grass plants that had been incorporated into the landscape. Quite a popular item these days. They have a certain architectural quality. Vertical lines, with various shades of green. In the fall, the grasses often change to a golden colour that fits in with the seasonal colours. In a breeze, the grasses sway to and fro, creating movement and attracting the eye.
Some ornamental grasses like the ones in the first picture tend to stay in clumps, spreading a little bit each year.

Some like these pictured above are very vigorous and grow underground stems very prolifically. When they start to spread, they can leave the confines of the grass "bed" and escape into the lawn. Here they can become a weed. Left unchallenged they will infiltrate the green lawn and "discolour" the turf.

An unwanted grass in the "grass" can be a harder than normal pest to remove. In the case of this particular grass, it would have been best to have some kind of edging to prevent the spread of the roots.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

Turf King Home

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November garden calendar of chores

The weeds have stopped growing, the annuals no longer need deadheading and the bulbs likely have been planted. Soon, the holidays will envelop us completely, but before they do, bundle up for a few more end-of-season chores.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

Turf King Home

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Weeds on Stones

Weeds have the ability to grow in some unlikely spots. We don't want weeds to grow in our lawns and we go to great lengths to keep them out and away from our tidy green patches of "our turf."

With the new Cosmetic Pesticide Ban now in place in Ontario, people are looking for ways to control weeds not only in their lawns but in other places as well. The shelves of the garden centres and hardware stores had to be empty of any of the banned pesticides by April 22, 2009.

Soon after the ban, I went into one national retailer to see what was on the shelf. No lawn weed killers but a rack with a couple hundred bottles of Roundup which contains glyphosate. Now in Ontario, glyphosate is the only active ingredient that is allowed to be used for "proscribed" uses. This includes uses such as controlling poison ivy, since this would be for health and safety and not cosmetic reasons.

I bought a bottle just to see if anyone would stop to tell me that the only place I could use the Roundup was on poison ivy. Using it to kill weeds on my driveway or on my patio would be illegal. (you wouldn't want to use glyphosate on your lawn as it is non-selective and will kill both weeds and lawn grasses.) No one stopped me or cared that I was buying Roundup. It wasn't until I left that store that I looked at my cash register tape, and there was a small note telling me to go to the provincial website to find out where this product could be used. Fine time to tell me after I bought the product.

You can buy vinegar type products in the stores now. They are basically acetic acids of varying strengths. The ready to use product is about 6% acetic acid, the household vinegar that you buy for your pickling is 5%. The packaged products may also include some citric acid to help with the weed control.

I have tried both vinegar and the packaged eco products. Both work quickly when it is sunny. Acetic acid will quickly blacken the leaves of your plants by removing the protective waxy coating on the leaves. The plant is more likely to have the leaves destroyed on a sunny day.

Acetic acid treatments work very quickly on the top part of the plant. Although grasses are less likely to be damaged, they will turn yellow and the tops will die. Fortunately, the grass will recover in about 2 weeks, 3 at the most.

Unfortunately, the weed roots are rarely destroyed, and many will regrow from the roots.

Similarly, you can use other household products to give similar effects. Household ammonia, another acid, will brown clover leaves, at least temporarily, while the lawn will recover. Baking soda is alkaline, and will create condition in the soil that make it harder to grow plants. Here the lawn is also affected.

In areas where no plants are desired such as along the driveway, a solution of water and salt will also kill off the top of the plants.

Any products that are used in these situations should be used with care and caution. Preparing, storing, and using homemade pesticides could pose risks to your health and the environment.

Please read Health Canada's article on Homemade pesticides.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

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,

Why Follow the Crowd?

It's that time of year for the Annual Hamilton Mum Show. And it's a time when many people add some fall colours to their homes and placed of business. Chrysanthemums are the queens of fall flowers. They are bushy compact plants bursting with colourful blossoms, spilling out over porches and walkways. They brighten your invitation to enter this home, "Welcome to our Home." ( in Spanish is "Bienvenidos a nuestra casa".)

Noticed a beautiful Fall Chrysanthemum at Heritage Green Nursing Home the other day. A brilliant yellow mum, at the peak of bloom.

But then as I looked closer, I saw a lonely bronze flower. Just one odd blossom in a sea of waving yellow blooms.

I remember from my classes in botany or horticulture at the University of Guelph, where we learned about chimeras. Here is this mum plant, there are 2 different genetic make-ups. One part with yellow flowers, one part with bronze flowers.

How did this happen? Most likely there was a mutation in a few cells that changed the colour from yellow to bronze. The stem of that flower somehow got its DNA coding mixed up.

I see something similar on many of the variegated euonymus plants. On a plant with green and gold leaves, you may find a branch or 2 that has reverted back to the plain green foliage. The variegated foliage is a sport or variety that somehow mutated in the first place. The green foliage twig has reverted back to the original genetic coding. Often the green section is more vigorous than the variegated part and if allowed to grow may overtake and overpower the variegated portion. Be sure to prune out the green foliage as soon as possible (assuming you wish to keep the plant as a variegated foliage plant.)

In business, some companies like to fit in and follow the rest of the world. Others prefer to do things differently.

Turf King Hamilton is geared to providing our customers with value and quality. We could provide the same fertilizer as the other companies. But the way we look at it, it takes the same amount of time to fertilize your lawn whether we apply a mediocre blend or whether we apply a custom blended high quality fertilizer. Any one can use mediocre blends or even cheap blends. They can offer to match the price of any competitor. I don't know if I have seen anyone offer to match the quality of any of their competitors. You will see some retailers who sell brand name products offering to match prices but here you are comparing apples to apples (at least for the product itself).

With lawn care, there is so much more than just a product. While we can be match by a competitor who may decide to offer a fertilizer with similar qualities, they also have to match our quality service. Here it becomes harder to define and harder to compare. And even harder to match.

Quality service starts with the attitude of wanting to serve your customers. They are not there to be taken advantage of. If we meet their needs, they will want our services. Granted, our quality of service is not for everyone. Some people want the cheapest price. Quality is of value only when it is appreciated. Our customers are looking for value.

And we do provide that value in many ways.

From having knowledge and expertise available to the technicians who care, and who are willing to spend extra time if and when needed, Turf King Hamilton strives to give each customer just what it needs.

Because every customer has different needs, we do offer a whole range of options to our lawn programs. Some companies have 3 programs, Good-Better-Best or Bronze-Silver-Gold. Whatever the name, pick one of these 3 programs. At Turf King Hamilton we have lawn care packages that can be customized in a multitude of ways. With or without crabgrass reduction fertilizer. With or without core aeration. With or without chinch bug protection. And so on.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

Turf King Home

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Carbon foot prints

From Lawn & Landscape (see the full article here)

Trees + Turf = Carbon Storage
Plants grow by removing carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis and incorporating the carbon into above and below ground tissues. In the eastern and northwestern regions of the U.S., trees often are a major component of the urban landscape and the most obvious potential reservoirs for carbon storage. It has been estimated by the journal Oecologia that healthy trees store about 3,200 pounds of carbon per acre annually, or about 7.4 pounds per 100 square feet of space.

It has just recently been recognized that turfgrasses also play an important role in carbon sequestration. In many urban settings, turfgrasses are the major part of the landscape, particularly when recreation areas are considered. It is estimated that turfgrasses occupy about 165,000 square kilometers in the continental U.S, according to the Agronomy Journal and Environmental Management. Healthy turfgrass can store almost 800 pounds of carbon per acre below ground in soil each year, the Agronomy Journal also reports, which equates to almost 1.85 pounds per 100 square feet of lawn or about one-quarter the rate for trees.

Keeping plants in a healthy state is essential for carbon storage to occur, though. Photosynthesis and growth are the carbon generators. To operate at high efficiencies, they require plants to have minimal problems with diseases and have adequate fertility. With turfgrass, for example, maximal productivity has been linked with regular mowing and leaving clippings in place, reports J. Environ Quality. At the same time, it’s important to manage fungal diseases and insect pests because they can negatively impact the potential of turfgrass to sequester carbon. While less is currently known about the ability of horticultural landscape plants to store carbon, one can safely assume they too will contribute to the carbon storage pool but must be kept in a healthy condition.

Homeowner Help
Healthy, growing landscape plants can offset some of the carbon being generated by individual homeowners. Here is a hypothetical example: A typical gas-powered automobile driven 12,500 miles annually might be expected to release about 2,500 pounds of carbon a year, according to Environmental Protection Agency Emission Facts. A half-acre residence with roughly 50 percent covered in trees could store about 800 pounds of carbon a year. If the remainder of the landscape were turfgrass, it would store another 200 pounds. So, this hypothetical homeowner could offset 1,000 pounds of carbon – 40 percent of their automobile footprint – just by maintaining a healthy landscape.

A common question being posed about green spaces is whether the release of carbon dioxide during maintenance will negate the carbon storage advantages gained with landscapes. With turfgrasses, for example, would gas-powered mowers generate substantial amounts of carbon dioxide and compromise below ground carbon storage? Estimates of carbon use by the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute indicate about 50 pounds of carbon dioxide would be released with frequent mowing over the span of a year. That is a quarter of the carbon being stored in the turfgrass, and a fifth of the total 1,000 pounds of carbon sequestered in the hypothetical lawn cited previously. Bottom line, the system stays positive on balance.

• By: Thomas Rufty and Nick Hamon