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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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1. Allegheny Viburnum (Viburnum rhytidophylloides ‘Allegheny’)
This plant works great when you need a large shrub to add structure to the back of a bed or as a screen in the back yard. it is not tidy enough to be used as a specimen plant or in any highlighted position With care it can grow to 12 feet tall in less than 5 years. I have several planted as a screen against a shed in my backyard and I have pushed them hard – but they are over 15 feet tall in just 5 years.
The shrub has thick 6” leaves that are thickly textured and beautifully colored. It has a surprising delicate white flower that persists for Most of May and then ripen into bright red fruits by October. I call it semi-evergreen because about 1/2 the leaves stay attached for most of the Winter.
This is one of my favorite plants and I recently used it in a very fun project that turned out very well (despite the quality of the photographs). These will grow beautiful and provide the perfect screen for this deck and offers an alternative to the overused juniper and arborvitae.
2. Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana)
Magnolias often come and go as peoples favorite plants. However, this one has and always will be my favorite for planting in Kansas City landscapes. It is better suited than many for our zone and grows luxuriously well. My favorite form is when it is grown as a multi-stemmed shrub. It has a striking upward growing habit that gives it a strong architectural presence and lends itself well to be a focal plant in landscape planting.
I have two of these planted as pillars on the front corners of my house. They have performed very well for about 4 years now and have grown taller than the roof of my raised ranch.
3. Hardy Banana ‘Musa Basjoo.
The Hardy Banana plant is a plant that grows VERY well in Kansas City. I have had them growing at my house for going on 4 years and a customer has had them successfully growing for over 8 years.
These pictures show them growing in my yard in early July. By September they had pushed leaves higher than the roof of the porch you can see there. That is approx 18 feet high.
  
Although these look very tropical they are easily grown even in our unpredictable KC winters. They will die back to the ground in the winter and begin to grow again in the spring. The more protection you give them the bigger they will get the following year because you will protect more of the plant – giving it a head start on next years growth. I try to protect several of the biggest plants so they will grow as large as possible the following Spring. I protect them by building 4’ tall cages around them and filling them with leaves. This si the secret to really big plants. However, even unprotected plants will reach 10’
Another bonus – they reproduce madly. You will easily triple your number of plants every year as new pups sprout around the base of the mother plant.
4. Walker’s Low Catmint (Nepeta x faassenii)
I would choose this plant as one of my all time favorite perennials to use as a llandscaper. Not because of how showy it it or how rare it is or for any ONE attribute. Rather, because it has so many very good uses and it has never let me down.
This plant has small bluish green leaves that are highly fragrant leaves that smells like mint. The plant grows in a mound about 1 foot high and 2 feet across. however after its first season in the bed you will not be able to tell its shape because it will have spread through runners and be taking up much more space than that. In fact this may be the only time I would not use catmint – is if you need it to stay perfectly contained because it is so hardy and likes to spread. The flower begins blooming in June. If about 3 weeks later you shear off the old blooms you can easily extend its blooming into late summer. The blooms are a pale lavender and spread across the plant like a purple mist.
It was named Perennial of the Year in 2007 for its versatility and hardiness.
5. False Indigo (Baptisia australis)
I have been in love with this plant since the first time I saw it in full bloom when driving past a very neglected  garden in the middle of July. Everything else in the garden had died including what looked like remnants of stella d’ oro’s and some poorly placed care-free roses. I quickly took a mental note and the next time I was at my favorite nursery I bought a couple plants.
I was not immediately impressed. The plant just stood there for the entire season. The next year it was about the same. But, by the third year it had really taken off and is now one of the plants people always notice when they walk around and see that part of my garden.
Baptisia has since proved its worthiness in many designs and ahs often become a favorite plant to use in landscape designs. It does have it quirks though. Number one – it is a plant that you have to plant and leave it alone. it does not transplant well once it is established in your bed because of it unique rooting structure (which is also responsible for its durability. Secondly – I have found it is incredibly sensitive to any kind of sprays. In my incessant meddling I am always trying things that will supercharge my plants. During one of these ‘experiments’ I was spraying a mixture of compost tea and iron on few plant in my garden around the Baptisia – and it turned black over night – the entire plant. The plant recovered fully – but it took a while. I have since learned that any foliar spray will have varying degrees of the same effect.
6. Little Henry Sweetspire (Itea Virginica)
This shrub is a great plant that fits into almost every kansas city landscape in some part. In order for a plant to become a favorite of mine, it has to be versatile, tough and at least interesting in  all season. Sweetspire does this. It is deciduous shrub that can grow up to 5 foot tall in a roughly globular fashion. There is a very similar variety call Little Henry’s Sweetspire that is nearly identical – but more compact. This shrub has two times of the year that it is a knockout. One time is in early June when it shows off its long beautiful blooms. It is equally beautiful in the fall when the foliage turns into a striking shade of crimson…and…the leaves persist well into mid winter.
7. Drift Roses (Rosa ‘Meijocos’)
 I will have to admit that although I hate to admit it I do love Knock Out Roses. I was one of their first big proponents and had a bush that was kind of secretly handed to me before they were publicly being sold. However, in the last 10 years they have become victims of their own success and are now way over planted and used in every subdivision entrance, every front yard bed and around every park sign. Now I feel a little guilty when I reach out for the knock-out rose once again for the customer that says they want low maintenance year-round color. There just is not another plant that can match up in those situations – unless – you were looking for something smaller.
From the same breeders who gave us the knockout rose we now have the Drift rose. This is essentially a groundcover rose (around 3 feet high) with all of the great benefits of the knockout rose, but in a smaller package. It blooms from early spring until the first frost, it is disease resistant, and it is extremely cold hardy.
I find it works great to line a walkway with when you do not want the height offered by a knockout rose. It can also work great planted at the edge of a rocky wall.
I am going to continue this list – so check back soon – or better yet sign-up here to get regular updates.
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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.
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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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One of the landscaping projects I am most excited about this year is the remaking of a new clients complete backyard in Brookside. These clients called me in April, looking to have the work done by their wedding in May. In order to get things done in time I knew we would have to work fast to be able to schedule, plan and get everything ready. Right now, we are on track.
The plan was fairly simple and drawn out on the spot since we were going to have to move fast. Essentially, we will be removing all the existing shrubs in the back since they were not part of a cohesive plan. New beds would be created around the perimeter of the property and then new sod would be installed.
The Plants
Here are the plants that we will be using in this landscaping project.
The Dirt
Dirt is quite a misnomer. I don’t use dirt for many of my Kansas City Landscaping Projects. This is 8 yards of pure compost. Generated organically from a local yard waste recycling center. It is the single most important thing to the the landscapes I plant not just surviving, but thriving. This dirt will be spread out and tilled into all bed and new lawn areas.
 
The Removal
A lot of plants had to be removed before anything else could be accomplished.
Once all the shrubs were removed. This is what it looked like as it filled my trailer!  There is a lot of plant material in that trailer !
Moving the Dirt
Here are progress shots as the
compost is trucked around to the back. Because of the layout of this yard, the dirt could only be moved by wheelbarrow. 10,000 – 12,000 pounds of compost was used for this project.
    
That was the stage 1 of the project. Next, will be the more exciting part of preparing the beds and installing the plants.
Stay tuned 
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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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