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Spring Lawn and Landscape Prep
94 Plays1 year ago
Joins us as we dive into the essentials of spring lawn and landscape preparation. We will discuss topics like early lawn weed control, mowing, and grub control. We will also share some tips on preparing your landscape beds after the long cold months of winter.
Turf Care Calendar for Cool-Season Lawns in Kentucky
Tips and Recommendations for Maintaining Home Lawns
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome. It is sunny outside. I am a houseplant who is getting their vitamin D today and I'm drinking my water and I'm just a houseplant with feelings today. So welcome to my podcast.
Seasonal Scents: Spring and Summer
00:00:32
Speaker
But I also have some other great people here with me today. So how's everybody feeling?
00:00:37
Speaker
Pretty good. Like the sunshine. Yeah. At least at the point of recording, it's a beautiful day today in Kentucky. We don't know what it's going to look like in a couple of weeks when this actually airs, but today it's beautiful and we're in good moods. All the good moods. What is the, I feel like every season has like a smell that goes along with it that you're like, when you smell it, you're like, Oh, that is springtime. That is summer. What is your, what do you smell that says it's spring to you?
00:01:09
Speaker
Especially as you mentioned it, now I can't.
00:01:11
Speaker
stop imagining the smell of good grass. It's very powerful. Yeah. See that, that's my summer. Like that's my summer. My lawn's been mowed three times already in the back because it's real sunny. Wow. So there's only one spot around my raised beds that has a little bit of excess, you know, it gets sort of a trap area that captures like, you know, a little bit of extra fertility and it has adequate moisture and it's always 90% ahead of all the rest of my lawn that does not get that amount of nutrients and water. So yeah.
00:01:39
Speaker
What about you, Fred? Something used to be a garden. Yeah. We have some hyacinth out, and that smells nice and springy, but I would say that I associate that kind of manure-y mulch smell. You can see the landscaping crews and people out spreading mulch, and you actually love the smell of that. I also love the smell of fresh mulch. It smells like fertility, smells like...
00:02:08
Speaker
Fresh earth, just like. Harbinger of a future harvest. I don't know what it is. It's like baking bread. It's just like a human that's off something human in me.
00:02:18
Speaker
I there's something about that kind of, you know, and it's like kind of partially aged mulch or it's got like a little bit of like ammonia or whatever. Yeah. Even like acrid. I wanted to stink a little bit. My father worked at a sawmill and he always smelled like fresh mulch because for many, many years he worked at a at a small sawmill and he always, you know, was covered in shavings. But he always had the most distinctive smell. And every time I smell mulch, it's like my father walking through the door
00:02:48
Speaker
But it was a very similar smell. So it triggers me every single time. It's good stuff. And I love the smell of a good hardwood mulch and that's what I'm associating. Yeah. That's a good one. I love that. Yeah. I was going to say a high, like the same bread because I've got some high, I've been experimenting with getting some stem length on high since, and I had extras left over that I just like potted up. And so I wanted my one set in my office and one set at the kitchen at home. And it's just like you walk in and it's just spring to me. Like that is.
00:03:15
Speaker
Easter egg hunts, that is everything about that. But yeah, mulch. When I worked with Arboretum, all we did was mulch and I never got sick of the smell. There's something about it. Did you have any luck on the stem length hyacinth thing?
00:03:30
Speaker
They're coming up so far. We're looking promising, but I don't want to say it. I've had to put like flip trays, those, um, trays that just the plastic trays that are like a netted bottom. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? They're not like a solid bottom tray.
00:03:49
Speaker
They just kind of like X's on the bottom to hold. And they, I had to put some of those across my big crates for the hyacinths because the cat was laying in them because it's nice and warm in the greenhouse. So there's probably something that I've been smooshing or no good, but I don't know. It looks promising. I'm just now getting to starting to get flower buds and I've got some good, they're coming up tall. So we'll find out.
00:04:13
Speaker
Yeah. Ours are all, ours are all lowest sense, not very good. Lowest sense, not high sense. They're more vertically challenged. But they do smell really good. Yes, they do. Our neighbor, our neighbor was like, what's that good smell? And I was like, why are you sound so surprised that there's good smells coming from around our house? It's the Brea. Every time there's good food smells happening.
Lawns and Turf Management Overview
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, good food smells. If you guys turn over and do a leaf, it smells great over here.
00:04:43
Speaker
better than the sewage. Honestly, Ray and Josh would have gone last because they have a perfect segue into what we're talking about today, which is some turf and some perennial beds. If you're like, I don't care about my lawn, still listen to this episode because we've got some good stuff for you. We talked about prepping garden areas before. We're going to talk about how you're managing some of those perennial plantings, which includes turf. Unfortunately for me and Josh, you also hate turf.
00:05:13
Speaker
but we love that you love it and we're here for you. I'm going to just preemptively defend.
00:05:20
Speaker
My boy, Ray, and all the law, the representative, the turf lovers. I said we support you. Okay. Well, that's not what, that's not what goes on behind closed doors. You guys know what? Alexis is holding us all hostage. I'm blinking twice to let you know that she is threatening all this. I would just say, I love that for you.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I love that for you. That's what I'm saying. Like the other Alexis. Alexis Schitt. I know, Alexis. Whatever her name is. Schitt's Creek. Schitt's Creek. The show Schitt's Creek. That's not her name though. That's the state of the city. Rose. Alexis Rose. Rose. That's right. Close. I was like, excuse me. I didn't know where we were going with this show.
00:06:08
Speaker
I'm okay. I'm pulling us back here. So my, my, uh, my dad was always a big, he always had the most immaculate lawn in his neighborhood. And while we had different, different opinions on that, and obviously we, um, most of our lawn is not lawn anymore, but I do think, you know, a lot of, for a lot of folks out there that in the, when they think of landscaping and they think of ornamental management of plants around their house, the lawn is a big part of that.
00:06:37
Speaker
You know, that there are the border edges that are maybe like the trim pieces in your house, but most of the walls that get painted in your house, the equivalent up there in the ground is the lawn. And so I think it is important to a lot of people. And I think while in the died in the wool,
00:06:53
Speaker
sustainable ag, horticulture community, lawns do not hold a lot of cachet. I think that they're a really important part of the American horticulture industry. And I think there are people who just legitimately enjoy them. And it's the same way there's people who are all about the hardwood floors in their house, and there's people who are all about carpets.
00:07:12
Speaker
Some people like to be able to go out there and walk around in the, uh, beautiful lawn or play with their dogs or play a big game of baseball with their kids or something. So I would like more devoted than me. Okay. I just, I am much, much lazier. I cannot use a bathroom that's not carpeted. I understand.
00:07:32
Speaker
That's bold. That's very bold. A very classic traditional take from the 70s. Anybody here is gagging right now in there with you. Just imagining. Felt, same, all of that. Yeah. Just a point of clarification here. I love the functionality of Alon, but I'm not one of those that puts a lot of input into it. I'm one of those. Ray's defending himself. No, I don't. I put a minimal amount of input in.
00:08:03
Speaker
I try to strategize and make every input count because lawns are one of those interesting things. And we're talking lawn and landscape today. We're talking about a variety of things because it's a good spring topic. Everything's waking up and beginning to grow. And that includes your lawn. Hopefully it's coming out of the wintertime. But like a lot of people, I like something green out there. I think a lot of people do. But for the most part in my County, when homeowners call,
00:08:30
Speaker
by far the vast majority of people that call into the office are people that that are on that minimal lawn maintenance schedule. In other words, they don't have irrigation. They don't have a really sophisticated, you know, herbicide schedule and they don't do top shelf maintenance. That's not most of the calls that I get into the local extension office.
00:08:52
Speaker
By volume, it's most of the people that, that just kind of want to know the basics and we do get a lot of weed calls and things like that. And this is dandelion season. This is when we'll, you know, herbicide questions and options. And that leads to other discussions on overall lawn health. But yeah, I think most people.
00:09:11
Speaker
they want it to look nice in front of their homes and usually nice equates itself to uniformity and some kind of green out there, whether it's the same type of grass or not, they really don't care as long as it's green when they mow it. That's fine. That's most of the types of people that I work with, but on the other end of that spectrum, you'll have like,
00:09:31
Speaker
athletic field managers that not only does it have to look nice, it has to be extremely functional and it has to be uniform from a safety standpoint. So there's, in the turf industry, you can come at it from so many different angles, but the volume of my calls is for homeowners that do the minimal maintenance. And that's kind of where I'm at
Low Input Lawn Care Strategies
00:09:49
Speaker
personally.
00:09:49
Speaker
on home lawns. As Brett pointed out, there is a very critical function to the lawn section. It's a permeable area water can infiltrate, so you're not getting runoff and things like that.
00:10:03
Speaker
as you would compared to some kind of gray infrastructure like concrete. It's soft. It can be walked upon and moved around and you can't walk through an oak tree or through a shrub, but you can have a garden party and that's going to be on a lawn. And it has that aesthetic. I mean, we like seeing green spaces that we can maneuver and it gives those kind of suburban lawns all aggregated together.
00:10:28
Speaker
gives kind of a little park-like aesthetic to our residential areas. Ray, if I'm at the lawn car wash and I have the Ray special, which is kind of minimal inputs, and then there's the works, how is that different? The top package of everything you could possibly throw at a lawn versus what you do, what are the things that you tend to do, and then what are some of the things that are available that you tend to not engage with as much?
00:10:56
Speaker
Usually when I talk to homeowners, I approach it from a low input angle, meaning we start with grass selection first, very, very important. For the most part, in most scenarios for homeowners, it really starts with grass selection. If you want to do the absolute least maintenance, in most scenario, and you want a green lawn year-round, there are some folks that have warm season, they don't mind a warm season lawn like Zoysia Grass or Bermuda.
00:11:25
Speaker
native Bermuda in Kentucky, and we have all the introduced turf type Bermuda's. But they stay dormant, you know, the half of the year round just about, but they have some very great attributes. But that's not the typical case in Kentucky. So I start with discussing with homeowners, I find out what type of lawn they have or what type of lawn that they want. And in most scenarios, it's a turf type fescue that I recommend because it has
00:11:50
Speaker
the least maintenance. It's not perfect, but it's very well developed varieties, very good varieties that have pretty good drought tolerance when compared to something like a bluegrass. It has pretty good wear resistance and it doesn't develop thatch nearly as bad because, and that's a pro anicon for turf type fescues, which were all derived from Kentucky 31 tall fescue, which I don't see much in lawns anymore because it clumps.
00:12:18
Speaker
But I guess that's the pro and the con for turf rescues is that they don't form a lot of thatch because they don't have this, you know, spreading mechanism, you know, rhizomes and stoloms like some of the other grasses do. But that's also a con because, you know, you have to fill in bare spots. But I'll start with a bread of discussion on, well, what's your lawn? What do you want it to do? What's the function of the lawn? How much traffic?
00:12:43
Speaker
Is it going to be irrigated? And nine times out of 10, we end up going with a turf type fescue. That's the first thing that you start with when discussing how much maintenance do you want to do? Because if you're talking about something like bluegrass, you may start thinking about irrigation. You may start thinking about when you get so many years down the road, a dethatching operation.
00:13:03
Speaker
Um, it, uh, you know, involves different considerations for the different types of long grasses. So low maintenance is tall fescue for me in a lot of scenarios. It's not for every scenario, but most scenarios, it begins there, Brett, really for, you know, if you're like me and you want to kind of do minimal inputs. Yeah.
00:13:22
Speaker
And I mean, what's, what's your reasoning for doing the minimal inputs besides the, I mean, I know you mentioned some of them already, but I mean, and if people are interested in minimal inputs versus other types of things, is there, do they tend to emphasize certain things throughout that? Cause I mean, there's certain, there, you know, some people like doing this almost as like a hobby where it's like, I want it to be hands on. I don't want it to be.
00:13:45
Speaker
work with some homeowners that are super passionate and they do a higher level of inputs equal one thing to me and that's a higher level of uniformity. That's a lower level of weeds and other undesirable grasses and that's what it boils down to really what your objectives and we have to kind of fill our way through that as county extension agents finding out what folks is you know what their expectations are obviously the higher the expectations
00:14:12
Speaker
you know, the more input you're going to have to put into a lawn area. Now folks that are doing the, you know, the next thing I ask is, are you going to be working with other external companies or are you going to be doing this yourself? And if they're going to be doing it themselves and it's more like a hobby, then we discuss like, for example, in the fall, instead of doing one application, the best time to apply fertilizer to a cool season lawn grass in Kentucky is in the fall, September, October, you can make one application that's perfectly fine.
00:14:41
Speaker
But if you have like an irrigated lawn area and you're doing a high level of input, you can break that up into two, three, four applications and sort of micro dose the lawn to get a better effect and take advantage of inputs like the irrigation and have a really uniform, super thick lawn.
00:14:59
Speaker
but it's all about your expectations for the area. For me, my expectation is I have a 10 year old, so I want a nice area out back that stays green for him to play. Right now I'm experimenting with adding some clover back into the lawn. I know the wear resistance is not going to be great. He has friends over a lot and I'm just going to kind of see how it goes. But I have thin soils in the back of my lawn with a mixture of some cool season fescue.
00:15:27
Speaker
But I'm going to see how that goes to see how the clover holds up with six or seven, 10, 12, 13 year olds running around all summer back there and see if I can't make a go of that because it's something that I've been interested in trying. I know we've talked about that on other podcasts or touch bases briefly, but.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, lawns are one of those things, higher expectations and higher the inputs. And it also depends on things like neighborhood regulations and, you know, laws governing front lawn areas. Sometimes there's a baseline of expectation that you have to maintain as far as weeds go like dandelions and things like that. I understand that and that's important to find out too. But yeah, you can put a lot of money and time into lawns if it's your passion and it's your hobby. And if you're, especially if you're working with companies, but yeah,
00:16:15
Speaker
You don't have to do that. You can do just simple things like increase your mowing height, fertilizing in the fall, put no fertilizer down in the spring, which could lead to excess disease problems. You know, you could do some of those things that are pretty basic and have good results without a lot of additional inputs, depending on, you know, some other things.
00:16:34
Speaker
Ray, I know I use a lot for those people who've got questions or want our visual people. I like a good calendar. We have something, we'll put it in the show notes, a turf care calendar for cool season lawns in Kentucky. Those of you who are not in Kentucky, depending if you're in a similar zone as we are, you still might be able to look at this a little bit and go off of it.
00:17:01
Speaker
It gives you every month and just kind of like bars of saying like, when do you need to aerify if that's what you need to do? When do you need to spray? When do you need to put, you know, pre-emergent down, those types of things. And I really like that. And so it all stems kind of, you know, off of what we always talk about, which is like soil tests as far as, uh, you know, liming and things like that go. But it's, it's really helpful, I think, to just get a general idea of, okay, in May, I need to start thinking about this.
00:17:30
Speaker
And, you know, kind of, I don't know, I like that like grub control. Like I've had a lot of questions lately.
00:17:36
Speaker
people are having mole troubles. It's very normal in the springtime that you've got moles and everybody just shook their head like, you know, yes, who's listening that they've got moles. And so they immediately want to treat for grubs, which I always say, you only need to treat for grubs. If you can pull your turf up like a carpet, like if you can grab ahold of it and pull it up like an area rug, then you need to treat for grubs. Otherwise those moles are eating a lot of different things, earthworms, spiders, all kinds of stuff.
00:18:03
Speaker
a lot of people are wanting to treat for them now and actually that's something that you wait if you do need to have like a curative approach and you do that in like August and so a lot of people don't know that and that's what's great about this calendar so we'll link that in the show notes if you're interested in that. Yeah that's my favorite resource Alexis is that AGR 55 the turf care calendar it's graphical and it
00:18:30
Speaker
kind of distills down hundreds of pages of information into one little quick reference chart. And it's just an awesome place to start in Kentucky specifically. And if you're not in Kentucky, you can contact your local extension service. I know several other extension universities have a version of this, but I love the one that we have. It's been recently revised and it's very handy and you'll look on there. And if you're in Kentucky,
00:18:55
Speaker
you'll notice that there is certain things, I guess, Alexis, what does your chart say? I mean, there's certain things that you can be doing this time of year. It's actually the second best time of year to put down some seed. By far, the fall is the best, but when does that start, Alexis, according to your chart? So according to this chart for renovation and an establishment of seed, you're looking at mid-February through mid-April as the second best time to do that. We're kind of right in the middle of that.
00:19:24
Speaker
If you're a homeowner and, you know, that's probably the most common question I get this time of year. People have noticed that maybe it was dry last year and their lawn has thinned out some. Well, that tells me one thing automatically. If your lawn got thin like the previous year due to drought or whatever factors.
00:19:41
Speaker
Anytime sunlight hits the soil, something's going to grow there. And in most cases, it's undesirable species like crabgrass is the most common. Crabgrass is an annual that's going to grow. If your lawn gets thin, you're going to get things like crabgrass dandelion, stuff like that, that's going to grow.
00:19:58
Speaker
But you'll look at a chart like this and you can see that you can see this time of year. If you can get your hands on one, my number one recommendation is to use a lawn slit seeder. And it looks like it's basically a small no-till drill for lawns. They're 18 to 24 inches wide. They're heavy because they have a motor on them. They cut little slits and drop the seed very precisely.
00:20:22
Speaker
into your lawn and you can use those to great effect this time of year. In fact, it's the number one thing you can do to thicken your lawn if it's just a thin lawn. Because if you thicken your lawn, and now's a good time to do that, to use a slit seeder specifically. If you thicken your lawn, that's going to really reduce your need later on down the road, years down the road to do weed control. Because if you have a thick lawn, it's going to shade the soil, it's going to cool the soil.
00:20:46
Speaker
and you're not going to get weed seeds germinating at the rate that you otherwise would. So number one thing this time of year is thicken your lawn. If you're very fortunate, you can get your hands on a lawn slit seeder. And if you can't get your hands on that, if it's a small area, you can use a hard rake, scruff up the soil an inch or two deep.
00:21:05
Speaker
Throw down your lawn seed and then walk or roll that in so that you have good seed to soil contact. And if it's a pretty good size little area, you can even straw it or mulch it to make sure that there's some moisture there for the grass seed to germinate. But that's one of the common things going on right now is lawn patching, lawn renovating. Slit seeders are being used. Typically, we don't fertilize in a low maintenance schedule. We're not fertilizing this time of year because that can cause
00:21:32
Speaker
some issues going forward. Usually I find that you have weeds have a greater response this time of year than does your lawn grass and weeds should not be allowed. I mean, I guess they're, I think they're good in like Southern areas, but in our areas, give me the weed, but not the feed, highly discouraged weed and feed in Kentucky. Yeah. So like.
00:21:55
Speaker
Don't, don't be doing that. If you're, if you're in a lawn that has a high maintenance schedule, which is not typical of the people that I work with, there are some cases you can make for fertilizing this time of year lightly, but I usually don't recommend it for, like I said, over 95% of the folks that's just doing a low input lawn care kind of maintenance schedule because you're going to cause issues like brown patch, which is one of the only diseases that really affect turf type fescues that we worry about in Kentucky.
00:22:23
Speaker
It's going to cause issues down the road, you know, such as that you're going to have lush growth, you're going to have to mow more often. And that goes against sort of the low input, you know, kind of trying to reduce your time and inputs that kind of goes against that if you're fertilizing this time of year. So resist the urge to do that. It's by far to do that, better to do that in the fall. But there are some things that you're doing, such as the seeding, like I said, that's pretty important this time of year. Not only that, but if you've had trouble,
00:22:51
Speaker
with thin lawn and crabgrass in the past. Crabgrass is an annual, and if it went to seed, you're going to have it again this year. I think Alexa said, isn't on that revised chart. It's right about now you can start to put down pre-emergent crabgrass controls. Yes, yeah. That should be on that chart. It is on
Crabgrass Control Techniques
00:23:09
Speaker
this chart. I will say that this is applicable to, I think, landscape beds, whatever you're dealing with.
00:23:17
Speaker
Charts are great because they remind you to be looking for things. We have chart spray guides for apples. We have all these different guides. And they tell you what to look for. But the way our climate has been changing, our spring is really early in this area this year. Looking at your local soil temperatures or your local indicator plants are going to be, I would say, more important. So use these guides as references to be like, oh, I need to be checking for this.
00:23:46
Speaker
But they're not going to be perfect because you may have an early spring or a late spring. So for crabgrass, I've always heard when the Forsythia are blooming, right? Is that something that you've experienced? That's still a pretty good rule of thumb. Crabgrass controls for homeowners. It used to be only for commercial operators, but Josh mentioned like polymer coatings. We were having a discussion earlier.
00:24:08
Speaker
that has now trickled down to homeowners in that most of the pre-emergent crabgrass controls, if you get them on now, it's better to get on a little early than a little late. The polymer coatings are so good that there's a high tolerance they'll lay there and then they'll do their job for weeks at a time. So if you had to err on the side of caution, do that early rather than wait too late, but I always use the Forsythia as an indicator. Yeah, Alexis.
00:24:37
Speaker
I talked about that today on the radio, but looking at, you know, we have these local Mesonet stations where every county
00:24:45
Speaker
You can look at the soil temperature for the top, you know, inch or the top five inches or eight inches. And that sounds crazy, but you know, if you're going to spend a lot of time and money on putting down seed or applying a pre-emergent or something like that, don't waste it. You know, look at, okay, soil temperature is 53 degrees. It's time for me to put this down. And that's just a quick thing you can pull up. I think there's an app now as well.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those one of the features of those kind of slow release polymerized, you know, products is that they release. The release rate is kind of contingent on temperature. It starts releasing quicker as it warms up. So it kind of scales with you. It's basically biological, like that. The biology is breaking it down when it's when it's warming up. So it kind of works kind of like Osmocote. Yeah. Well, if you apply it a little quote unquote early and it stays cool, it's going to stay there and be ready as it warms up.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, but there's things like that in the home lawns that you can do now. You can start to mow as the daytime temperatures get consistently above 50 degrees.
00:25:50
Speaker
You are one that feel like that you need to use a broadleaf herbicide. You'll notice that dandelions are active now, very active in Kentucky. You have lots that we were just talking about. I mean, clover may or may not be desirable to you, depending on your specific situation. So a lot of the spring weeds that we're seeing now are actively growing. And any time there's adequate moisture and the weeds are actively growing, it's not a bad time that if you're choosing to do a broadleaf chemical control to go ahead and spray as long as the temperature is consistently
00:26:20
Speaker
That's the two conditions that need to be met is adequate moisture and the weeds are actively growing. That's usually a good time to spray those. So some of that can, you can even, you know, now's a good time to start some of those controls if you feel like you need to do that. So yeah, that's what's going on in lawns, but lawns are all about expectations. And it's interesting that over time, I have worked with more people that are interested in things like mixed clover lawns or alternative lawns or
00:26:48
Speaker
low growing lawns. Just lawns are starting to change a little bit, a little bit more interest in warm season grasses. One of you guys mentioned that because we have these, you know, extended dry periods, hot periods in the summer, or maybe extended wet period in some cases, but the hotter, drier summers in some cases have led people to be more interested in the warm season grasses, more of the Bermuda type, which you can mow those low. They're completely different. They do their best growing in the hot summer months.
00:27:19
Speaker
You can mow those low and they have extreme wear tolerance. And they're great. They're soft. Yeah. I was just going to say for reference, like you would mow optimally tall fescue at two and a half to four inches, but Bermuda is one to one and a half. So it's like a kind of tighter lawn.
00:27:37
Speaker
And like Ray said, it came from farther south, the Bermuda area. That's like the big grass where I come from is Bermuda. Oh, yeah. Bermuda is, I mean, like is so dense and so thick. It feels like a carpet. It's sometimes hard to tell just glancing at if it's artificial or if it's real. It's that uniform and it spreads. It feels in, you know, because the way that it actually spreads, it's just the opposite of fescue.
00:28:02
Speaker
and that it does fill in holes very well. And zoysia grass is a little bit different. It's more coarse and open, but still it has the same warm season qualities. But for the most part, for most of you guys listening, if you're in Kentucky, you probably have a cool season grass lawn. Some of you guys may have an older lawn that is bluegrass and that's treated a little bit
Lawn Expectations and Alternatives
00:28:20
Speaker
differently. As I mentioned before, it's just a little bit different on the bluegrass end, but I still run into folks that do have lawns either seeded or sodded.
00:28:30
Speaker
into bluegrass and there's options there for working with those. But it all boils down to once again expectations and how that lawn area is being used because it has to be functional to me.
00:28:41
Speaker
In some areas down next to my garden, as long as it's green and I can walk on it without getting mud on my shoes, guess what? A hen bit is a desirable species to me down there dead net on a hen bit because it keeps my shoes from getting muddy because that's my expectations of that area. And I love to watch the bees work, you know, the clover and the hen bit on down there and there's violets and all sorts of things that I don't mind being down next to my garden. So yeah, all about expectations.
00:29:09
Speaker
was I think one of the common things that we see is that people will often have like a big
00:29:18
Speaker
area of lawn and then around the edges, there's some sort of landscaping. Um, our lawn actually is kind of the opposite. We actually use the lawn as the edging around so that there's like, that's a neat effect. That's a really cool effect. Yeah. And you can maneuver around those spaces so much better. Yeah. And you can clean up the edges really easily by just running a lawnmower through it as opposed to the kind of the opposite where it's like, Oh, my lawn is cut, but then I have to go in through and weed. And so anyway,
00:29:48
Speaker
But I think that's another component as I think about like the landscapes around homes and around our built environments. We have the lawn as part of it, but the other part of it is the
00:30:03
Speaker
those perennialized and or maybe some annual and bold beds mixed in. And this is now it's also a time of year that we can do some interventions there as far as planning and keeping things fresh or maybe adding mulch. And so maybe we talk about that for just a little bit too.
Perennial Bed Maintenance
00:30:20
Speaker
Totally. Yeah. Yeah, there's lots going on. I'm dealing with that. I was actually just talking to a specialist about
00:30:28
Speaker
I've got perennial rows that I've mulched and try and we've talked about how the weeds kill me because I was in converted pasture and because I didn't take my time to make sure I prepped that area well, so I'm dealing with the consequences now.
00:30:46
Speaker
But I've got some clover that, you know, naturally clover often comes in after you terminate past your area. And even though I've been mulching for a couple of years now, I swear overnight it happens. And now I know why those clients come in. And so they're like, I just happened and never even realized. And I, you know, judge them silently because I'm like, you, you should have been paying attention.
00:31:09
Speaker
happened to me and I've got this clover that's creeping in and my broadleaf perennials and it's like what am I gonna do because at this point it's much too large.
00:31:19
Speaker
of an area to like just dig up by hand, which is usually what I recommend. So talking with a specialist on what my options are there, they're not good. So there's that. So prep your area good the first time. But yeah, getting mulched down and smelling all those good smells early is huge.
00:31:39
Speaker
Do you guys have any beds? I know it's a big operation. It's not done every year, but any of you guys ever exchanged the old mulch with new mulch and like completely pulled out the old mulch? I mean, I don't do that. I don't do that very often at all, but sometimes I do to keep it from stacking up too tall, the mulch around plants.
00:31:59
Speaker
I only ever really remember adding and I mean usually in the landscape kind of areas it was like we were adding that already kind of aged mulch and so yeah it kind of was already like it essentially feels like soil at that point yeah adding on top of that to give it like
00:32:14
Speaker
you know, like that dark age, I'm thinking in terms of like, I was, you know, helping prepare for this, like society garden tour and that dark backdrop, you know, makes everything that's going to come up really amazing. Yeah. But, uh, you know, the only time I've ever had to pull stuff and I guess trying to think back why I would have done that. And I think it's like the Cyprus or the pine bark nuggets that really don't break down that they start to just break down enough and leach out of color that they don't look good.
00:32:44
Speaker
and they just want to pile up and they get too thick and then it causes some unsavory conditions with like you know the roots wanting to grow up into there but hardwood mulch I can't remember a time having pulled hardwood mulch completely out because like you said Brett it's sort of calm or I think you said Josh it sort of compost itself because it's fine enough and microbes can act on it but it's the things that have all of the compounds in it that doesn't let it break down
00:33:09
Speaker
That's why I like those types of mulch. But then again, they just hang around forever and they finally bleach out. They don't look good enough to pull them out and then exchange that. So I guess cleaning out beds and stuff this time of year. How about like removing like plant parts and stuff? You guys doing anything about. Yeah, I mean, it is a good time to prune after it's freezing, you know, like kind of late winter, early spring, you can prune. And I mean, I.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, that to me is one of the nice things about spring is some of these things where you can get outdoors. It's not, you know, seating flats inside or making a plan inside. It's like, hey, the weather's starting to get nice. What can I actually physically do outside? And I would say
Spring Pruning and Plant Care Tips
00:33:51
Speaker
with that cleaning up, just like think about where you're cleaning up and we recently
00:33:55
Speaker
recently have an episode coming out or has come out already about, uh, like pollinator gardens and butterfly garden. And so a lot of them are still kind of asleep at this point. And so they're just starting to emerge if you've got things with hollow stems, especially. And so leaving those in until about, you know, the beginning of April mid March to April.
00:34:16
Speaker
will give them time to kind of emerge and get through that some things that if they're you know really solid stems and you're just kind of cutting it back to you know eight inches or foot tall or something you're not gonna bother anything you can get you know any of that damaged dead wood out of the way and usually by now all of your seed heads are gone but just something to think about where we like sanitizing as far as getting things cleaned up and looking nice
00:34:42
Speaker
but if your goal is pollinator habitat to kind of keep that in mind. And if it's not, that's totally fine.
00:34:50
Speaker
You're going to supply a lot of nectar and great things throughout the season. So I don't want to say this wrong. I always have to think about it, even though, you know, we've said it for years and taught it for years. The rule of thumb for based on bloom period with pruning, if it blooms early, I forget the publication that comes from, but if it blooms really early prune, what is it after blooming? And if it's a late bloomer, you can prune early. The main thing is no.
00:35:17
Speaker
Don't prune out your flower buds. Yes. And it's based on timing, whether it's a really early bloom or a later season bloom. If you doubt, give us a call and we can give you a list of plants that's pretty typical in landscapes. Hydrangeas are like the thing that people mess up the most and it's because they're difficult and there are so many kinds of them. So if you mess this up, no judgment. I cannot keep them straight. I have a table that I pull up.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, I do too. Maybe we'll put a link in there, but if you've had trouble getting your hydrangea to bloom, so let's say the plant is beautiful, you protected it during the frost, things like that, and you prune it, and it's not blooming or you only get one or two blooms, it could be because you're pruning at the wrong time and you're just literally removing those flower buds. It's probably the old fashioned hydrangeas. I love the new ones because
00:36:09
Speaker
I've cut those back. They bloom on new and old wood. Yeah, new and old. And there's almost, I mean, they're much more bulletproof than the old ones were so easy with winter kill and improper pruning to really miss entire bloom seasons. But the new ones, when they get unwieldy, I'll just prune those to 15 to 18 inches if they were otherwise healthy and they've been established four or five years.
00:36:30
Speaker
I'll prune them back and they'll, they'll just grow right back and have the most beautiful blooms the same year. You know, the PGs and I have a friend who has these big, I think they're macro fillers. So big tall hydrangeas, like, I mean, like 12 foot tall, like essentially like many trees now.
00:36:46
Speaker
And she hacked them back and they're, they're covered in our windows and she has a lot of indoor plants. So it's really killing her. And so she had, you know, cut them back, tried to thin them out and eventually she was just mad and she, and they're probably 10 to 15 year old mini trees at this point, large shrubs. And she took a chainsaw and cut those suckers back to about, I don't know, three foot tall. If that those things sprang up, they were beautiful the next year, but they had a really established root system.
00:37:17
Speaker
It's not the answer to everything but man they were they were stunning this year and she was like I thought I killed him and I was kind of glad. The point is make sure that you know what type of hydrangea you have before you do that because the newer tops, ever blooming tops I guess is a common term for that. Yeah. Make sure it's an ever blooming because some of the old-fashioned tops will not come back like that.
00:37:40
Speaker
The same, or if they do come back, it's going to take two years cycle of the first year. They're going to regrow vegetatively second year. They'll bloom if nothing else happens to the plant, but it's a good time to do some of that, that pruning.
00:37:53
Speaker
You can also move things, right? You can transplant. Basically before you get new growth, but after the growth. Dormancy. Yeah. One, that was actually something that came up. If you have an area that, when I was talking to the specialist about like, I don't know what to do, I got this bad clover and I don't want to kill all my other, all my good plants or all my on purpose plants, I should say.
00:38:20
Speaker
And it was, well, do you have another area? You can move them. A lot of the time your plants need divided anyways to stay healthy.
00:38:27
Speaker
You can max, you know, double the amount of plants you have or, or more, or you can give them away to friends and you can have a little plant, plant mini plant sale or plant giveaway trade thing going on. So that, you know, has a community aspect to it. But if you could move those and you can renovate that old area without risking that. And it was like, duh. And that just seems, I think first, in some cases, if, you know, if it got away from you, there's always that option. And I think that's really a cool idea.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, I would say a couple other things that maybe, you know, just in case you've forgotten to removing any kind of winter protection or any of those things that are still out there. It's also, I think, recommended to remove staking on young trees to give them the opportunity to kind of wobble around and grow without girdling them. Makes stronger trees if they have room to kind of naturally blow in the breeze, literally stronger fibers in the
00:39:26
Speaker
in the tree itself. I remember learning that in an arborism class about how critical it was for trees to be able to kind of be blown around by the wind and when they're really hardcore staked down or guy-ing I believe is one of the terms, that it doesn't give them that opportunity and they don't develop as strong as kind of trees that get to wiggle. It'll lay down that wood.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of trees, I guess it's also a good time to remove tree wrap. That's very important in skin trees like maples, uh, but you may have put wrap on the, yeah, cherries, all of those that you may have wanted to provide some winter protection for.
00:40:04
Speaker
go ahead and pull off, especially the close wraps that are on there. You don't need to leave those on in the summer. And if you're doing any kind of maintenance pruning on trees like maple trees, and we get this number one question with tree pruning is they're like, but what if the tree bleeds? And generally, if the sap is coming up this time of year, the days are getting longer and warmer, you're going to get, you know, some sap production out of trees that you
00:40:25
Speaker
If you have to do a little maintenance pruning, that's perfectly fine. Just don't park your car under there. That'll lead to a less than desirable situation. But you can do, I love to prune like maintenance pruning on trees this time of year, because the limbs, you can actually look up into the canopy of the tree. The weather's nicer. It's not in full leaf. So you can actually see the structure of the tree to prune, to do the pruning that you need to do.
00:40:49
Speaker
If it's maintenance pruning not not deadheading when I'm gonna get into that or hat racking or we're not talking about that just general maintenance pruning on say a maple tree great time of year to do that and the limbs are so much Lighter in weight due to them not having the leaves on there So it's a good time of year to do some of those operations in your landscape If you have a tree with an errant limb go ahead and get that done before full leaf
00:41:13
Speaker
I had never heard that term hat-racking before, but I looked it up and it doesn't seem like it's something you're supposed to do. But it makes the tree look like a hat-rack. If I saw a tree like that, I'd be like, man, somebody butchered that thing. Okay, cool.
00:41:30
Speaker
Hat racking is the precursor to what we just call tree topping now. And that's a very undesirable situation that we'll have a total podcast on sometime and we'll just get into that. The first thing I hit was like a publication from the government of Glendale, California. And it says hat racking is not an acceptable pruning practice.
00:41:52
Speaker
No, it's an older term, but it's still one that's very appropriate. Yeah. Last year, I pruned a little more aggressively on a couple of the old dogwoods we have and they bled.
00:42:10
Speaker
And he says with the light. You say that with intrepidator. I'm scared a little bit. No, I didn't. I didn't enjoy it. It made me it made I wept as it wept. But I also I got that like secondary fungus thing, the orange stuff that sometimes is called deer, deer barf or deer vomit.
00:42:34
Speaker
Cause that's like mythologically, like, I guess that people thought a deer barfed on the tree or something. So you had a lot of dog vomit fungus, but it grows on the ground. Yeah. This one was like on the, on the open bleeding wound. So yeah, but you can't, there, there are, you know, opportunities to prune, do some maintenance pruning on trees, you know, especially established trees, kind of all year round. You don't need to do it right before they go into dormancy, but
00:43:10
Speaker
And so that's just another thing to, if you're, if you're trying to prune something, you know, and space it out and not take, taking too much out all at once, there's another kind of principle, but you might've mentioned that. It looks stressful. I guess another thing to really mention is that when you are pruning a rule of thumb for your cuts is they should be very clean across the board. Yeah. There's all kinds of other principles with pruning. Oh yeah. The bonds, you know,
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so especially species like I think like dogwoods and maples tend to bleed.
00:43:39
Speaker
It's like I want to have a printing podcast but it's also really hard because you need to be able to show the photos of like this is what you know a branch collar looks like and you know this is the structure that you might want to look for in a peach tree and that kind of stuff so call your extension office. One of the things to just keep in mind with plants and I'm going to simplify this a lot of biological principles kind of distilled down into kind of a couple simple statements but
00:44:07
Speaker
The more you prune, the more response from that plant you're going to have. Just keep that in mind. And the way that you prune could cause trouble down the road, especially if you're just indiscriminately heading back limbs to a non-growing point, you're going to have a lot of death, you know, down to growing points. Not only that, but if you're the, if you're pruning more, I don't know, it's called the rule of thirds, but if you're pruning a lot on a plant, it's going to want to, it's sensing danger.
00:44:36
Speaker
And it's going to want to make more limbs, which are essentially energy factories. And where you pruned out one limb, if you're not careful, you're going to have five next year in some cases. So you're going to make more, actually more work for yourself. So the answer to that is to use proper pruning, you know, kind of cuts, first of all. Yeah.
00:44:55
Speaker
But the second thing is to prune incrementally that if you're, for instance, if you're trying to bring an old apple tree back into production, you don't do that all at once. You do it over the course of three to five years in stages so that you don't set off this trigger within the plant to produce a bunch of excess limbs. Yeah, I like that. I like that rule of three or, you know, not taking a third more. And it's important. I've always understood it to mean that
00:45:22
Speaker
the third that you're talking about taking has to do with the surface area of the leaves. So not so much the volume of the wood itself, but like where is the energy coming from and don't take more than a third of the solar panels away.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah. Cause then you get this response that the plant goes into emergency mode, basically. Yeah. There's been significant physiological changes to the plant and the plant's like, oh, oh, panic, panic, panic. Water sprouts, water sprouts everywhere. Yes. Water sprouts. That's exactly it, Josh. Yeah. Uh, what else is going on? I'm trying to think of the things, uh, Alexis, what are you dividing in your, around your home or are you moving anything this type of year and this time of year? Have you already done that?
00:46:06
Speaker
I'm not really moving things unless I have to. Like I said, I might move those things where I really need to renovate bed areas, but other than that, if you're not doing that, getting some of those weeds out. One thing I have convinced myself of is if you are stressed about the henbit and dead nettle and some of these cool season weeds, chickweed,
00:46:30
Speaker
Are they the worst thing? Because I have settled into no. And here's my reason why. They're usually dead and they're dormant. They're gone by the time most of my, that crop, uh, is blooming. So they're going to be, you know, more summer bloomers, fall bloomers. So that hen bit, that chickweed is already done and.
00:46:51
Speaker
Are they almost acting like a living mulch to prevent some of those worst summer weeds that are more competing? A lot of the time these weeds are shallow rooted. So I think pick and choose your battles and sometimes you have to when you're doing large scale. But even if you're a homeowner, you're probably working, you got a bunch of other stuff to do.
00:47:09
Speaker
So pick and choose your battles. Yes, get out some of those perennial weeds that really can affect and seal nutrients and water from your plants, like clover in your beds. And this is the time clover is bad. Dandelions have a big tap root. They're not necessarily ideal. I can have them in my lawn for me, but I don't necessarily fight that battle anymore. I feel like there's more important ones sometimes.
00:47:36
Speaker
Just, I want to give everybody like permission, not that you need my permission, but maybe it will be helpful if from here, hear it from me and give yourself some permission to like let some things be okay. Right. And think of them as something that's benefiting, you know, maybe you or at least benefiting some of the pollinators or something in your area.
00:47:58
Speaker
Well, you bring up something that maybe we should kind of define or make sure to admit like what is the horticultural definition of a weed, right? Any plant in a place it's not supposed to be. Right. And that is defined by the person kind of managing that space. And I think one of the benefits of that kind of
00:48:18
Speaker
understanding or maybe even ecological training is that, you know, you can not do something to a place. And as long as you can interpret it as intentional, then it makes sense. You know, it's not part of it's a deeply ecological practice.
00:48:34
Speaker
Right, I'm on like a 100 year plan for my lawn. This is what it looks like. I saw this funny meme cartoon thing and it was like a person and they were pointing towards their garden and how it hadn't been cut back and maintained and she's like, I'm leaving this for the pollinators. And then there's the dandelions in the yard and she's like, I'm leaving these for the pollinators, right? And everybody's good. And then there's the flashes to her inside with the laundry and it's like,
00:49:04
Speaker
She's like, I'm leaving this for the pollinators. And I feel like that is me in a nutshell. Right, right. One of our turf specialists had this shirt and he loves showing the graphic too. So I thought the lawn and the lawn won. I guess that's being in a situation where expectations don't meet reality. So it's whatever your expectations are. It's working with nature, you know? Yeah, you can spend a lot of time. Any final thoughts?
Podcast Anniversary and Reflections
00:49:30
Speaker
Because I have something I want to share with you all really quick.
00:49:32
Speaker
You should share. Yeah. So I was just looking at our schedule and I realized we've done over at this point, we didn't recognize it when it happened, but over 52 episodes, which means that we've been podcasting for a year.
00:49:49
Speaker
So happy birthday. Congratulations. We've made it this far. I feel like that's a celebratory thing. It is. I was told there would be cake. Where is there not cupcakes? Okay, but there, I mean, actually there are cupcakes here, but they're pink. They're for you. We're already riding mode.
00:50:08
Speaker
Just for listeners, let me clarify something. We are remote for most of these episodes, so Alexis is having all the cupcakes for herself. Yes. B-Y-O-C-C. Yeah. Your own cupcakes. But yeah, so if you've been with us since the beginning, thank you for being here with us. We have certainly enjoyed our time, and I know when I have this scheduled in my calendar, even though I'm not in person with these wonderful gentlemen,
00:50:36
Speaker
It brightens my day and it makes sometimes when you're having a hard day, it's nice to have a good laugh with them. So thank you all for doing this with me. And thank you listeners that have not been with us since the beginning. We hope that you go back and you find that we were just as funny a year ago as we are now. But totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Any other any other thoughts before we wrap this baby up?
00:51:02
Speaker
No, everybody's shaking their head. No, no thoughts. No good vibes. I expected them from Brett because he's our, he's the heart of this. I would say, you know, think hard about what brings you joy and in their spaces around you with the plants and if that's grass or if that's
00:51:20
Speaker
some perennials or if that's some fruit trees or something else then do that and Do it in a way that that makes you happy and makes the people around you happy the number of people who comment on our bulbs and other things that we have out front makes me really people just walking by walking their dogs or whatever next-door neighbor saying that
00:51:39
Speaker
That smells nice. Um, I don't know. I just think that that's part of what it's all about. And so it's a community. Yeah. Do what you, what you, what, what makes you happy. And, uh, we're here to support that as much as we can.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yes, and if you want a turf lawn, you can absolutely contact me and I will absolutely help you to do whatever makes you happy. I will try and convince you about other things. I'm just, but I will help you. No, just kidding. But anyways, thank you guys for being here with us today and enjoying it.
Listener Engagement and Feedback
00:52:08
Speaker
You can follow us on Instagram at Hort Culture. If you wanted to send us a message on there about good episodes that you would like to hear, feel free to do that. You can also shoot us an email. You can find that in the show notes.
00:52:21
Speaker
And we all receive that email at the exact same time. And so we usually try and share, you know, one of us will respond to you and let you know, but we have all seen it and we are mutually saying, wow, what a great idea. We will add that to the list. So thank you all for those. We hope that you will.
00:52:37
Speaker
Leave us a review if you are enjoying this feel free to put your You know what you want to hear in there as well after you give us those that five star review Because you love us so much and go back and listen to any of those episodes over the past year Plus at this point and yeah, so we hope that as we grow this podcast You will grow with us and that you will join us next time. Thanks y'all