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Kansas City Lawns will soon be subjected to the ideal conditions for lawn diseases such as brown patch in tall fescue and summer patch in bluegrass lawns. The moist ground combined with 80 degrees plus will be like throwing a match on disease wildfire all across Kansas City’s grass.
If you are interested I have already wrote written an article on how to identify and deal with lawn diseases
If you need any help diagnosing or treating a lawn disease that shows up in your lawn I will be happy to come out and decide on the next best step.
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Kansas City Landscapes need to have Ornamental Grasses trimmed back once per year!
Ornamental grasses are a favorite in Kansas City’s Landscapes…and for good reason. They provide beauty throughout the year with relatively little maintenance. The one "chore” required in order to keep them looking their best is that they need to be cut back each Spring so that the new growth can grow and the old stuff can be composted. If you leave the old leaves and stems – The grasses will still grow and the old leaves will slowly fall off and spread themselves around your yard!
This video shows a few hints when you are cutting down the grasses in your yard.
There are a few things I wish I would have shown more clearly on the video. First – what the grasses looked like once they were cut down. I like to cut them about 6” off the ground. They should look like this.
Any other questions – let me know how I can help.
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Knock Outs are almost Maintenance Free
Taking care of Knock-outs in Kansas City gardens is a little like parenting a very well behaved child. Most of the time they are darling and beautiful and very well behaved. However, occasionally you need to show them some tough love. The tough love is not fun, can be a little prickly, and may even draw some blood. However, your tough love will be rewarded with continued beauty and good behavior. Put off your tough love – and it only gets harder.
The tough love that Kansas City gardeners need to show their roses is a good hard pruning in early Spring. By hard I mean almost tot he ground. We call this rejuvenation pruning. In most situations I suggest doing this every year. You might get away with skipping the first year after you plant them. However, after that – they do best if pruned every year. I think my parenting analogy still could apply here, don’t you?
The nice thing about this hard pruning is that you really don’t need any special training – if you can cut with a pair of scissors you can prune knockout roses. You don’t need to know the details of growing points and inward facing canes like you would if we were doing in-season pruning of a hybrid tea rose. All we are going to do is cut every cane off about 6 – 12” of from the ground.
Step 1: Gather your supplies
The first step to trimming your roses is gather your supplies. I suggest that you have
- Long sleeved shirt and pants to protect you from thorns. (my attorney would also say I should probably suggest you wear eye protection too….but life is more fun with a little risk involved). You’ll also want some nice heavy leather gloves.
- A decent set of pruners. No need to run out and buy a $50 pair of Felco pruners. Instead I would suggest a nice pair of $10 pruners for this job and save the Felco’s for the important pruning.
- Some twine to tie up your bundles. After you cut down the roses canes – you are going to need to dispose of them and tying them in bundles works well for that.
Step 2: Approach the Naughty bush and begin cutting
You should now see your ugly Knock out rose Bush in your yard. It is not pretty and it needs to be rejuvenated. Your going to do this garden task most likely sitting down on your bum so that you can scoot in under the plant and cut each cane about 6-10” off the ground. Notice I did not include a ruler in your needed supplies. No need for that amount of exactness. The canes you cut off are not going to grow any more. However new shoots will branch off these existing canes and be your new branches.
Step 3: Check your Work
Your newly ‘parented” roses should look like this. All the canes are cut off approximately 10” off the ground.
Step 3: Wait for Growth
Soon your cut off rose will begin to appreciate the tough love it ahs given and begin shooting up some new growth! This will be the start of this summers beautiful plants!
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Kansas City gardeners can breathe a sigh of relief that we did not reach the forecasted lows last of week of -20. For many years, we have been lulled into thinking that we may have shifted into zone 6. However, it only takes one very cold night to ensure that we are truly a zone 5 area. The plant hardiness zones are based on the average lowest temperatures for a 10 year period. We are about to reset those zone maps if we approach -20 degrees. Plants are rated to their zones based on laboratory tests as well as the experiences of growers in the fields. Plants rated as hardy to Zone 5 generally survive low temperatures of -10 to -20 degrees. Zone 6 plants are only expected to survive to -10 degrees.
Of course, zones are only part of the answer to how your plants will during this cold snap. Zones define large areas, but not small microclimates that exist around your home. If your plants lie in a low lying area or out on a windswept plain, they are going to have considerably more exposure to cold temperatures than if they are nestled in a protected courtyard, along a south facing wall or on the wayward side of a hill.
That being said, many plants in Kansas City are going to suffer from this cold. Dan Simmons of Show-Me Horticulture and I were talking about what effect this could have on plants. We both agreed that a few of the standouts are plants that have started being popular at retail nurseries lately despite being unproven (or proven poorly) to thrive with very cold winters such as this years. A few plants that are going to be strongly affected are southern Magnolias such as Bracken Brown Beautys, crape myrtles, azaleas, rhododendrons and other broadleaf evergreens. These are all plants better suited to Zone 6. They may have done quite well in Kansas City the last several years, but will be well-tested this winter to see if they have enough protection to survive the extremes.
Even a few proven plants will still be stressed. Boxwoods, yews, and many broadleaf evergreens will likely show some damage come next spring from the prolonged cold weather combined with dry winds that we have experienced over the last several weeks. Another group of plants that will very likely show some signs of stress will be some of the ornamental grasses such as the ornamental fescues, the Japanese Silver grasses and the fountain grasses. Some of the larger trees such as Zelkova, Golden Rain Tree, dogwoods and redbuds could suffer some superficial damage to outermost branches as well.
Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to protect your plants now. If your plants went into the winter relatively healthy and unstressed they will have a much better chance of survival than if they were stressed already. Newly planted plants will have a harder time than older, more established plants. The snow that is insulating the ground is the biggest protection we have right now and this can be bolstered if you are inclined to pile snow around the crowns of your most valuable plants. Another option that can be helpful is to build a windscreen around broadleaf evergreens to help protect them. Lastly, to help plants bounce back as much as possible, give them a good slow soaking of water as soon as the ground thaws and repeat at least monthly throughout the winter. This will help immensely as your plants begin to heal their wounds.
This spring will be quite revealing as we learn a lesson of what plants truly are able to survive Kansas City’s coldest temperatures. We will be better gardeners if we observe and learn from what nature teaches this week and choose plants that will thrive in Kansas City even during when it is at its coldest.
If you have any questions, please feel free to visit me at www.HamonsLandscaping.com or posting questions as a comment to this blog post. I enjoy talking to other plant lovers and answering any questions you might have.
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Frost coming to Kansas City Landscaping
 
For your plants — the transition into winter is a dramatic and often sudden one that is dictated by the first frost or freeze. As the caretaker of plants, there is very little you need to do in order to protect your plants from a frost or freeze unless you are simply trying too eek out a few more days/weeks before the inevitable end.
This may be true if we have a particularly early frost or freeze. Most plants can be best protected by erecting a tent around a plant. The ideal material for the tent is a thick insulating cloth that covers the plant completely all the way to the ground. It is important NOT to use plastic because it does not insulate well and can further damage by trapping moisture close to the plant therefore increasing damage caused by forming frost crystals.
Many of the plants we love to plant in the fall are chosen especially because they are fairly frost tolerant. Flowers such as pansy, kale, ornamental cabbage, Hardy Mums are all frost tolerant and can extend the beauty of your garden by several weeks. A complete list of frost tolerant plants
Your lawn will not be so strongly affected by the frost. Its correlation with lowering soil temperatures will have an effect but the actual grass tissue will likely not be harmed by the frost in any way. The only caveat to this is that if you walk on frosted turf you can damage the grass blades and they will turn brown if conditions are just right. This is because when you step on the turf while frost is on the grass, you can explode the frozen tissue causing it to die away. This is just cosmetic damage but can stay visible for a long time until next Spring when new growth replaces the killed tissues.
My primary suggestion when dealing with fall frost is to allow nature to decide when its time for this years growing season will end — knowing some seasons will be longer and other will be shorter.
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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.
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This year, Kansas City Landscaping has seen a Spring that was more gradual than in past years. This has been good for the plants and lawns in Kansas City . Consistently cool Kansas City temperatures with only rare and short warm-up have allowed us to gradually slip into Spring and avoid the landscaping pitfalls of moving too fast. Landscapers like slow springs because very few plants have been hurt by April freezes this year and although it has been fairly dry the plants have faired well. However, gradual will soon give way to rapid growth as soon as we get some heat. Lawn Mowing will soon be the most common weekend chore for most Kansas City homeowners.
Blue Grass and Fescue lawns have thrived in this slightly cooler temperature. They have been growing laterally and down for the last several weeks. The imminent heat will spur rapid upward growth – we will soon be mowing VERY often!
One of the negatives of this low soil temperature ahs been for any new spring lawn seeding. The grass has not grown much at all if any. That is again due to cooler than normal soil temps. This may not be a great thing for Spring seeded lawns since it simply will not have the time needed to grow before summer heat sets in. However, if my inside sources at NBC Action News are accurate, we may have a cooler than normal Summer which would be good for all of Kansas City’s lawns.
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A gift has been bequeathed to you. As part of this gift, each homeowner in Kansas City will be given over 200 pounds of this miracle product –guaranteed to revitalize your soil, allow it to store more moisture, improve soil structure and provide high grade fertilizer. The gift will fall from above and scatter itself over your lawn. Many of your neighbors will even freely share with you – some even purposely blowing this gift into your yard.
If you haven’t yet figured it out, this gift is the leaves from trees.
The sad thing is hundreds of people will throw this gift out. Collect it, bag it and put it on the curb.
Instead of raking and bagging those bulky leaves, save yourself some time and put them to good use as a natural mulch and soil amendment from your lawn.
I suggest two ways of utilizing this gift for your lawn based on your personality type. To determine your personality type, consider the cast of the popular TV sitcom Friends’. If your personality type mirrors the character of Monica, you are Type A. If you are more closely aligned with Joey, then you are type B. If you do not know what the show Friends is, you can assume you are Type A.
The Monica Personalities
Since you are very concerned with every detail of your lawn, the best way for you to use your leaves is by regularly mowing your lawn with the bag attached. Use a lawn mower with a bag attachment to quickly gather your leaves and shred them into mulch. This will vacuum and clean your lawn as well as shred the leaves at the same time. These shredded leaves are more valuable than gold for all the plants in your landscape. They can be piled in vegetable gardens to be tilled in later or they can be added as mulch in perennial gardens. Then spread these leaves up to 12" deep in your gardens. Mulching with leaves conserves moisture, controls weeds and grasses, protects against extreme heat and cold, and prevents soil erosion. Additionally, they can be composted in a compost pile to be used later.
The Joey Personalities
As a Type B personality you are focused on long term results of your lawn. You are willing to deal with a little bit of shredded leaf clutter on the lawn knowing that in the long run your lawn will look better and be healthier. Mow your lawn with a mulching lawn mower regularly. The mulching mower will shred the leaves into fine particles which will filter down through the blades of grass onto your lawn where they will disappear and benefit the soil. With regular mulch mowing, many homeowners would never have to rake their lawns as an acre of lawn can recycle the leaves of 60 trees.
Either of these methods is paramount to the old standby of raking and trashing your leaves. By raking and trashing you are adding immense amounts of waste to our landfills and depriving your lawn of necessary nutrients and organic matter. But more importantly, at least to all of us TYPE B’s in the world; it is a whole lot less work! There is only one reason I can see where raking is ever necessary. If you have small children, it is imperative that you rake the largest pile of leaves you can possibly assemble in the middle of the yard. Then, spend at least 3 hours jumping in and redistributing them all over your yard before mowing them by one of the methods mentioned above.
Enjoy the gifts that fall from the sky this autumn and make sure you fully utilize them to make your lawn more healthy and lush.
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Summer is still burning strong and we surely have several weeks left of stifling heat in Kansas City. Many of the lawns in the city are showing the stresses of surviving yet another brutal summer of heat and dryness. If your lawn no longer looks thick and healthy or has more weeds than grass, it is time to renovate. Renovating your lawn involves removing all unwanted weeds and grass types and then reseeding with improved varieties of your choice of turf. Timing is critical for successfully renovating your lawn – late enough to avoid the worst of the summer heat yet early enough to allow ample time for growth before the freezing weather arrives.
In Kansas City, the first week of September is usually the ideal time to seed.
To seed your lawn properly requires a broad knowledge of grass, several different pieces of specialized equipment and a large commitment of time. For these reasons, I suggest that homeowners contact a qualified professional who specializes in growing quality turf. Although cost is a consideration, when you look at the time, supplies and rental fees you might quickly realize that using a pro will pay off. Every year, I am disheartened by the dozens of calls I get in late fall from homeowners who have spent hundreds of dollars and lots of hard work seeding their lawns with poor results. I have to tell these customers that we have missed the ideal time for seeding and the repair will require considerable extra time and cost without the guarantee of superior results.
Of all the lawn care tasks needed each year, I strongly believe that lawn seeding is the most important one to be done by a professional.
When you hire a lawn care company, you will want to check their license, insurance and references to make sure you are working with a professional. Then ask them about their seeding process. The highest quality lawn will come from a professional who includes all of the following steps:
- Soil Test - imperative to start by fixing and soil chemistry problems (4 weeks prior)
- Spray Herbicide - important to control weeds prior to seeding (4 weeks prior)
- Spray with Growth Regulator - slows down growth of existing turf so it does not compete with new grass (2 weeks prior)
- Plant seed - prepared by first aerating and then followed with a slit seeder that will slice precise grooves into the soil creating ideal areas for seed to grow
- Starter fertilizer and Rooting stimulant - applied to the soil to provide nutrients to emerging seedlings
Now, the professional’s work is done and it’s time to care for your newly planted lawn. You will need to moisten the ground daily for two weeks to promote germination and then to pamper the young seedlings. As the grass grows stronger, you will begin to establish a regular schedule of deep, thorough watering. Proper watering is essential to your lawns success and it involves quite a commitment – however, it is the last step to the lush, healthy lawn you envisioned when you started the renovation process. Soon you will be walking barefoot through your lawn enjoying the thick green carpet, underfoot.
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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.
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