The Holiday season has quietly slipped out the back door and it's back to the ongoing task of preparing for the next lawn care season. Even though the grass is covered with a white woolly blanket of snow, it time to prepare for getting ready for next year, (sorry strike that out, it is next year).
Southern Ontario has had a fair sprinkling of fresh snow in the last few days. And although they are predicting a couple of days of extremely cold nights, the forecast is also calling for temperatures to rise to 10 degrees early next week.
The old body is trying to keep healthy in spite of the ups and downs of the thermometer, the wind chill factors and the depth of the snow. And the snow shovel goes up and down or maybe back and forth. The old ticker's heart rate also goes up when the shovelling is tough and slows down when the arms need to rest. All this exertion can lead to seasonal colds and flu's which in turn often turns into coughing and sneezing.
Some of our competitors will be on the phone soon, calling and bothering homeowners about their lawns. Turf King Hamilton does not telemarket the general public. Your privacy and respect are important to us. We want to treat you as we would like to be treated- and we don't like to be called by telemarketers at suppertime.
Last month the CRTC announced that Bell will administer the Do-Not-Call list for Canada. While this list was announced a while ago, the wheels of bureaucracy are slowly turning and things should be in place by next fall.
In the meantime, if someone does call you, and you want a second opinion on your lawn, please give us a call.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Lawn Care Sneezin'
Monday, December 24, 2007
White Christmas
Looks like we are going to have a White Christmas after all. Beautiful snowfall! Light, fluffy flakes on the tree branches creating a winter wonderland.
Merry Christmas to All!
Thursday, December 13, 2007
New Dandelion Control- Made in Canada
In 1999, we reported “Researchers are working on a fungus that will kill dandelions. Much more research is needed before this product will be on the market. It is hoped that it will be available by 2002.”
Well, now it is 2007, and more testing and work has been done. Much of it has been done at McGill University by Dr. Alan Watson. Now, the product is getting closer to being available, possibly 2009 or 2010.
This new organic herbicide product has been named Sarritor. (Sarritor was a minor Roman god of agriculture, god of hoeing and weeding.) Sarritor has the potential to provide an alternatiive weed control to 2,4-D the most commonly used weed killer used right now for the ubiquitous dandelion.
According the website at sarritor.ca , this product will eliminate dandelions and other broadleaf weeds in 5-7 days. Once the weeds have died, the fungus will also die and there will be no residual. The product does not pose a risk to human health or the environment and is compatible with normal lawn maintenance operations such as mowing, fertilization, and irrigation.
The active ingredient in Sarritor is a strain of Sclerotinia minor, a naturally occurring fungus in Canada that infects susceptible dandelion plants and destroys dandelion plant tissues above ground.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Damaged Lawns
Can anything be done in the middle of November? Sod may still be available so the lawn could be repaired. I would first suggest checking the lawn for grubs. These 2 lawns pictured don't look like grub problems. But, it is worthwhile checking. If there are grubs and you sod over them, the grubs aren't likely to do too much damage to the sod. Raccoons and skunks, however, may think, "hey these grubs are easy to find, and the grass was really easy to lift up!"
If you're not in the mood to sod right now, I would suggest waiting until spring to do any seeding. It is unlikely that grass seed will do too much at this time of year.
If it makes you feel better, you could purchase a small amount of grass seed and throw it over the bare spots. It may come up next spring and it may not. A little bit of grass seed is relatively inexpensive way to salve your conscience. The only problem is that by the time the ideal time to seed and repair comes around next spring, the grass seed you threw down now won't have come up so you will have to start from scratch.
So I guess the only reason to put some grass seed down now is if you are the type that only has a 50-50 chance of getting around to doing any repairs and seeding at the correct time next spring.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Winter Fertilizer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Rake, Rake, Rake
Is the autumn season called "fall" because of the leaves? Fall does mean leaves will fall. And leaves fallen on lawn shouldn't leave the lawn in worse shape than they would be if you can see that the leaves aren't left on the lawn. Whew!
Once the leaves end up on the lawn, they should be removed. Large flat leaves like those from maples, can easily lie on the lawn and smother the grass. When you do rake them into leaf piles, don't leave the piles sitting on the lawn too long. I have come to lawns in the spring where you could see the leaf piles in several places in the melting snow. Inevitably the lawn under those leaf piles has died from the lack of light and air.
If the leaf drop is not too severe, you may be lucky enough to run the lawn mower over the leaves and chop them up fine enough to allow them to compost right on the lawn. If that's not an option, you can use your mower and lawn mower bag to gather the leaves.
If you do need to rake, make sure to use a leaf rake to rake leaves. The tines of leaf rakes are flexible enough that they will not damage the lawn.
Once you have the leaves all gathered together- why not compost them? Fall leaves are a valuable resource because they keep garden soil productive. This way these nutrients can be recycled back into your garden.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Grub Control Comparison
One of our technicians had some white grubs at the apartments where he lives. We tried an experiment to see how well Sevin stacked up against nematodes.
We also applied Merit- even though we knew it was too late to be effective. This was done mid October.
Here's what we found 2 weeks later:
Merit did nothing- as expected
Neem Oil - did not perform
Sevin - reduced the population by about two-thirds.
Nematodes -Worked better than the Sevin. Almost all the grubs were dead.
Nematodes work best when the soil is saturated. Nematodes need the moisture to move around in the soil to get to the grubs. The lawn was watered well the night before.
see our website at www.hamiltonturfking.ca or call us at 905.318.6677
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Grasses
Although being "The Lawn Experts" means we know a fair amount about grasses. Here are a couple of photos of grasses that we don't find on lawns. This first one is a Miscanthus grass. There are quite a few varieties of Miscanthus that range in height from 3-4 feet all the way up to 8-9 feet tall. This particular one has yellow striping. Not vertically as one might expect but horizontally. The seed heads are at their peak right now.
