Kansas City Landscaping and Lawn Care Ideas

Kansas City has had a record snow storm this week. Gary Lezak reports that most areas received between 10 and 14 inches in Kansas City. Although snow can be a hassle for traveling and moving around in, it is GREAT for plants.

Not only does the snow insulate the plants crowns from widely swinging temperature extremes, it also will add important winter moisture applied slowly and evenly.

You can even help your plants out with extra moisture by choosing where you toss the snow when shoveling your walks and driveways. By piling it on flower gardens and around trees you will be giving them extra moisture. However, if you used any kind of deicer or snow melting product, be very careful as concentrating these in one area could be harmful. Here is a great article on using deicers around your plants.

About the only time snow can be damaging is if it stays around for weeks and weeks without melting it can cause some disease issues. However, in Kansas City we rarely see snow stick around for longer than a week before it melts away.

So enjoy the snow and rest well knowing that your plants are well taken care of while you enjoy them from the outside.

Lawns all across Overland Park are suffering from a disease known as Brown Patch Rhizoctonia solani.

Brown Patch is a serious infection on Turf Type Tall Fescue lawns that often can be clearly identified by the large circular brown patches that quickly appear in a lawn.  Unfortunately – what often happens when homeowners ere these patches appear they assume drought stress – since brown patchy usually appears during the first very hot humid stretch of the year.  However, this usually will only help spread the disease further since Brown patch thrives in lawns that are moist for a prolonged amount of time when night time temps remain above 70 degrees.

The good news is that Brown patch rarely kills the entire plant and rather just causes leaf tissue damage and a thinning of the turf – which will recover once fall brings cooler temperatures and more vigorous grown back to Kansas City’s lawns.

Once Brown Patch is present follow these recommendations in order of importance:

• Stop all overhead watering except in the early morning hours.
• Bag grass clippings and dispose of them off site. 
• Use a fungicide such as Prostar, Bayleton of Daconil.  These are expensive and only somewhat useful as a curative.
• Once Brown Patch has stopped spreading – fertilize with a  light .25#/n dose of nitrogen from an  organic source such as Miloganite, Bradfield’s or Espoma. 

Stop worrying about your grass and start worrying about your dirt. As a professional turf grass manager, I am actually fairly uninterested in turf. I spend all of my time managing soil. I know that by creating fertile soil, my customers will have the nicest lawns in town.

Managing dirt is a complex task that even people with degrees in Soil Science will admit having more to learn. Volumes of books and scientific articles have been written on the subject and I would never be able to disclose everything you would need to know in this article. However, I do hope to reveal enough information to convey the importance of soil to you in growing quality turf.

There are three important factors to consider when evaluating your soil: Soil Texture, Nutrients and Chemistry. Each of these factors needs to be evaluated independently and actions taken to create the ideal growing environment for your turf.

SOIL TEXTURE

Soil is a mixture of sand, silt and clay. The percentage of each element determines the type of soil your lawn has. Ideal soil is composed of 40% sand, 40% clay and 20% silt. In Kansas City, the ideal soil texture is usually nothing but a dream as we have a much higher percentage of clay. However, this can be improved. First, you have to determine your soil makeup. This requires getting your hands dirty. Take a handful of dirt and roll the soil in your hand until it’s about the size of a golf ball. Then, gently squeeze the soil between your thumb and index finger. Sand feels gritty, silt feels more like talcum powder and clay feels slippery. Now squeeze the ball in your hand. If it crumbles, it has a well-balanced texture. If it holds its shape, it has a fair amount of clay. And if you can roll it into a snake, it has more clay than you want. This method can only act as an indicator. A soil test performed by a qualified laboratory will give you more accurate and scientific results. However, if your soil has too much clay, you will need to alleviate the problem with aeration and topdressing or completely renovating the area and adding organic matter.

NUTRIENTS

Soil holds nutrients which are then used by the turf to grow thick and lush. Evaluating the nutrient status of your soil is an important step in developing a quality turf. The best way to find out what your soil needs to nourish healthy turf is to have it tested by a professional laboratory. This can either be done by our local extension office or at a private lab.

Any fertilizing done by a homeowner or professional without a soil test is a shot in the dark at best. Short term results can be gained. However, you will not get the long term results desired by most homeowners. Additionally, you will be wasting nutrients as you dump excess nutrients on your lawn just to assure all your bases are covered. A soil test will cost you less than $20 and will give you benefits many times that. A good soil test will give you quantities of Organic Matter, Available Phosphorus, Exchangeable Potassium, Magnesium, Calcium, Iron and Soluble Salts. Based on these results, a knowledgeable professional will be able to create a nutrition program for your lawn.

SOIL CHEMISTRY

In addition to soil nutrition and texture, a good soil test will also provide you with information about the chemistry of your soil. The process of transferring the nutrients into soil requires a complex chain of chemical reactions that can only happen if several elements are in balance. The most important of these is pH. In Kansas City, our soils tend to be alkaline and need to be amended with Lime to provide an ideal growing environment. How lime and other chemicals react with the soil requires knowledge of cation exchange sites, particle attractions and base saturations. All of these come into play just to grow the grass you like to look at from your window.

This month, when you see your neighbors playing in the dirt making muddy snakes and dirty golf balls, you will know they are on their way to having a beautiful lawn.

Kansas City’s Lawns and Landscapes will benefit dramatically if you know how to properly water them. There is no other homeowner controlled aspect of caring for your plants more critical than proper irrigation. It is also the number one mistake I see Kansas City homeowners doing

It is essential to first understand what your plants want in an ideal world. Most of our lawns and landscapes in Kansas City will thrive on 1.5” of water per week. This can come from either rainfall or irrigation. Ideally 1.5 inches would be applied in one long and slow watering. However, in Kansas City, our clay based soils have a hard time absorbing more than ½ inch of water per hour before water begins to run off the surface so we have to water very slowly – hard for sprinklers to do – or water on multiple days in smaller amounts. Counter intuitively, we want these watering cycles to be on successive days, not spread evenly through out the week since our goal is to water deep into the ground and not to keep the surface moist.

Knowing how much water we need is the first step – the next step is knowing how to apply that water and for how long. Most homeowners will either be applying water by manual sprinklers or an automatic irrigation system. Both require you to know how much water is applied in a given amount of time by your system.

To measure the output of your sprinkler heads…

1. Set a container with straight sides (I use a butter dish) in the middle of the sprinklers path. a Turn on the sprinkler and monitor the amount of water in the container.
2. Turn off the sprinkler when the amount of water in the can has reached one inch (measure with a ruler – it can be deceiving)
3. This is how much water that sprinkler system puts out in one hour.

Now, I know most of you will not take the time to accurately measure out your sprinklers output – despite its importance. So here are some rules of thumb for determining your sprinklers output. For automatic irrigation systems – spray heads (the ones that pop up and don’t move) typically need about 45 mins to put down 1” of water and rotors (the ones that sweep back and forth) need about 2 hours. So a generic program that I suggest for my customers is designed to put down 1.5” of water spread between 3 separate watering cycles. I set it so that the lawn gets watered Monday, Tuesday and Friday. This is a good compromise of watering deeply but also making sure that the water does not run off.. I set zones with spray heads to come on for 30 mins and zones with rotors to come on for 60 mins. This is adjusted if the soil is unable to absorb this amount of water. Also, all watering should be done to supplement mother nature. If she gives us ½” of rain then you can reduce watering by that amount.

For those of us unlucky souls who do not have automatic irrigation it takes a much longer to water our lawns. Most of the typical impact sprinklers used if set on full circle put out about 1/3 of an inch per hour. Since they water slower they can be left on longer. I usually suggest you water twice a week for 2 hours before moving the sprinkler. If you are only using the sprinkler in a half circle then you can cut that in half

It is time for Kansas City Landscapers to prepare for the heat.  Weather forecasts are showing that Kansas City will soon be hitting 90 degrees for the first time this year.  This tends to be a  tipping point for the lawns and landscapes.

You can help your landscaper and lawn care service by taking care of your lawns watering needs.

New Trees or Plants

Water new trees or plants when the top 3″ of the soil dries out completely.  Water the plants slowly and deeply allowing the entire root system to become soaked.  larger plants take more time.

This is very important.  You cannot give a time to water because every soil will absorb water at a different rate.  The goal is to water the plants entire root system and then let the entire roots ystem dry out just before adding new water.

Lawns

Lawns should be water with 1″ of water per week.  This is best done with one long slow watering if your soil will absorb that much water.  Most Kansas City lawns will do just fine with one long irrigation.  Depending on the type of sprinkler being used — This may require up to 1 hour of watering.  It is best to measure the water rather than guessing.  I use a straight sided margarine tub placed int he middle of the sprinklers path to tell.

Watering is an essential part of maintaining your landscapes.   It does not have to be difficult but it does have to be consistent and done correctly.  If you have any watering questions feel free to leave a comment to this post and I would be happy o help you out.

It’s early spring and we are all biting at the bit to get outside. If you are like me, you are grasping at anything that even remotely looks like its green or growing. This is no doubt why you so anxiously picked up this magazine – looking for spring.

One important thing with which you can busy yourself right now is deciding how you are going to care for your lawn.

1) Mow and fertilize by yourself.

2) Mow yourself and have your lawn professionally fertilized.

3) Have your lawn professionally mowed and fertilized.

The right option for you is determined by many variables and each option should be considered to decide which would allow you to most enjoy your lawn.

1) Mow and Fertilize yourself. This option is great if you are a tinkerer, one who likes to be out in your lawn several days a week and to be in complete control of each detail. This option allows you the freedom needed to attend to each detail of your lawn. If you have the time and the expertise, this can lead to a wonderful lawn. This option is the cheapest, if you consider your time very cheap. However, even if you consider your free time at a modest amount of $15-20/hr, this option can easily end up being the most expensive of all the options when you consider the time involved. Additionally, the resources available to you are much more limited and expensive than to a professional.

2) Mow yourself and have your lawn professionally fertilized. This option is best for the homeowner who enjoys spending some time in their lawn, but does not have the time available to research and study proper fertilization and the science behind turfgrass maintenance. However, by mowing the lawn on a regular basis you can still take pride in providing the primary care of your lawn. This allows somebody who specializes in turfgrass to do the work that requires the expertise and allows the homeowner to do the hard “work” of mowing.

4) Have your lawn professionally mowed and fertilized. This option is ideal for the person who values their free time very highly. There are several reasons someone might choose to have their lawn professionally maintained. The primary reason is that they work hard at something at which they are experts and would rather spend a small portion of their time doing extra work for which they get paid and pay a lawn care expert to work in their lawn. For instance, one of my customers is a nurse. By simply working two extra hours a week she was able to pay me to take care of all her lawn and flowerbed needs. Yard work usually took her 4 or 5 hours a week, so she gained 3 hours of leisure time a week and her yard looked better than ever thanks to my helpful touch!

It is important to consider the pros and cons for each of these options when you plan how to care for your lawn. The value of time, money and expertise all play into what’s best for you.

If you decide that mowing or fertilizing yourself is the best plan for you, make sure to do your research. There are a multitude of products from which to choose in regards to both fertilizers and weed controls. When you buy fertilizers, you have to be careful and look past the advertising. I have found that when shopping at the big box stores, the more expensive fertilizers tend to have the cheapest products inside. Oftentimes, you are paying more for the ink on the outside of the bags than the product on the inside. However, if you do your research and know what to look for on the labels you can find quality products.

Research is also necessary when selecting a lawn care company. Just like bags of fertilizer, you have to look past the flashy advertising and see what is offered. A high quality lawn service starts and ends with the person doing the applications. The person needs to have a large well of knowledge in order to be able to diagnose and pamper your lawn’s every need. They should be fully licensed and insured and they should readily provide you with references of satisfied customers.

The signs of spring are there – let them help lead you to the best way to enjoy your lawn!