GreenGrass Blog

Beyond Lawn Care: 12 Tips for Keeping the Backyard Safe This Spring

Kathy Wilder — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:01:00 GMT

Lawn Care shouldn't be your only concern in the backyard! The following is a very informative blog previously posted by Nanny Background Check which should be quite relevant for our readers. If you enjoy this info, be sure to visit Nanny Background Check's website for other great tips!

With the warm weather comes the overwhelming desire to get outside and into the sunshine. Before you tear the kids away from their televisions and video games and urge them out into the fresh air, though, you’ll want to make sure that the backyard is the safe haven for fun and games that it’s supposed to be. These 12 tips can help you eliminate common backyard hazards so that your family can enjoy the beautiful weather without fear of injury.

Kid-Proof Your Swing Set – As soon as the weather allows, your little ones will make a beeline for that swing set in the backyard. Before you let them go to town, make sure that it’s in good shape and is safe for them to play on by giving it a thorough inspection. Any protruding bolts or nails should be repaired, the ground should be covered with a shock-absorbing material and any rusty equipment needs to be replaced.

Put a Locked Cover on Your Spa – Hot tubs are a wonderful way to relax, but they can be very dangerous for small children. To make sure that a curious youngster isn’t able to gain access to your spa, invest in a locking cover that you keep in place at all times the spa isn’t being used.

Consider Ditching the Trampoline – The American Academy of Pediatrics’ position on trampolines is very clear: don’t let kids near them. There are things you can do to make a trampoline marginally safer, but nothing will take away from the fact that the contraptions are inherently dangerous.

Fence in Your Pool – If the backyard houses a swimming pool, springing for a fence that’s at least five feet tall and impossible to climb is a smart move. Even if you don’t have children of your own, swimming pools can be irresistibly alluring to little ones that could meet a tragic fate if they tumble into the pool and there’s no one around to rescue them.

Invest in Rescue Equipment – Just as you’ll want to make sure that your swimming pool has a kid-proof fence around it, you’ll also want to invest in a few life preservers and other emergency equipment to ensure that you’re always prepared should the unthinkable happen.

Double-Check the Placement of Your Grill – When your grill isn’t being used during the winter months, it’s not uncommon for it to be moved or shifted to the side a bit. Before you fire it up for the first celebratory barbecue of the season, though, you’ll want to make sure that it’s clear of any low-hanging branches or structures that could go up in flames if the grill gets out of control.

Look for Poisonous Plants – There are a variety of attractive and hardy plants that present a deadly risk to kids and pets, so you’ll need to brush up on the plant life your landscaping design is harboring. Make sure that none of them are poisonous and that any questionable specimens are removed.

Clear Away Debris – Winter winds, storms and snow can create a pile of debris on your lawn, and each piece can present a tripping hazard for kids and adults alike. Before letting the kids and pets loose for a jaunt in the sunshine, give the property a good once-over that includes the clearing away of last season’s debris.

Eliminate Standing Water – Mosquitoes can breed in shockingly small pools of stagnant water and can carry a variety of diseases that cause very real health complications. Make sure that birdbaths and other standing-water features are changed regularly, and that stagnant water sources are eliminated as mosquito breeding grounds.

Inspect Your Deck – Your deck will need a coat of water sealant and protectant on a regular basis, but the harsh elements of winter can still damage even a treated deck. Make sure that there are no splinters, cracks or protruding nails that can injure bare feet before the shoeless season begins.

Scout for Infestations – Wasps’ and bees’ nests are no laughing matter. Make sure that you eliminate any sources of potential infestation, especially if a member of the family suffers from insect sting allergies.

Put Away the Power Tools – It’s easy to leave a piece of equipment lying out when you’re taking a short break from spring repairs and cleaning, but those power tools can be more dangerous than the hazards you’re using them to repair. Make sure that you never leave tools unattended, especially if there are children on the property.

Thank you to Nanny Background Check for the above useful information and for allowing us to re-post their article!

Tulsa Lawn Care March Madness - Mow Your Lawn!

Kathy Wilder — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:10:00 GMT

March Madness (the spring frenzy of lawn care madness, that is) is in full swing. Our phones have been crazy busy! With the recent sporadic high temperatures, weeds have exploded in the Tulsa area, especially the broadleaf weeds like henbit (those weeds with the purple flowers.)

People are calling, saying “I don’t know where all these weeds came from!” Yes, they seem to be a bit worse this year.

But every year, people call and say they still have weeds, even after we’ve sprayed. A lot of times, they don’t really, it just looks like they do. The first two points below are ones that we explain over and over and over, all day long, this time of year. I think a lot of people have this misconception that when we spray their lawns, all the weeds will disappear! We wish! Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way. The following will help you understand a little more about how weed control works, and how you can speed up the process.

MOW YOUR LAWN

If you or your lawn care company sprayed your lawn, and it’s already gotten some rain or you’ve watered it yourself, you need to MOW YOUR LAWN. Unlike during the hot summer months, the weeds will not turn brown. Neither will they disappear. They will twist or curl, or simply stop growing. They’re dead, but they will remain in your lawn until the first time you mow.

If your lawn care company sprayed your lawn a week or two ago, and you now have weeds that weren’t there when it was treated, they are more than likely a new crop of broadleaf weeds. Most all lawn care companies are treating right now with a mixture of the following: a pre-emergent for crabgrass, a post-emergent for broadleaf weeds, and fertilizer. A post-emergent works on the weeds that are visible in the lawn at the time of the application. A whole new crop may have sprung up since then. There is no pre-emergent for weeds like dandelions. If it’s not time for your next application, call your company for a service call. (At GreenGrass, service calls in-between regular applications are free to full-program customers.)

If you are a DIY, be sure you put down a crabgrass pre-emergent NOW, if you haven’t already. Crabgrass will start germinating very soon, and it’s very difficult to get rid of it once it sprouts. Your home and garden store will have various brands of post-emergent weed control for the weeds in your lawn now, like dandelions and henbit. I believe there are some products that contain both pre and post-emergents, that are available over the counter.

When all chance of frost has past, SCALP YOUR BERMUDA LAWN. The average last frost date in the Tulsa area is March 27. Put your mower on its lowest setting, mow your lawn, and bag the clippings. The idea is to remove all that old dead stuff that’s been on the lawn all winter, allowing the sun to warm the soil and encourage a quick green-up. The best defense against weeds is to have a thick, healthy, actively-growing turf. DO NOT scalp your fescue grass.

Fertilizer helps fight weeds as much as weed control does. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can spray weed control, but forego the fertilizer so that you don’t have to mow as much. No fertilizer usually results in a thin lawn with a weak root system, which will be easily invaded by weeds. Bermuda grass requires higher amounts of nitrogen than most other grasses do to stay looking really nice. By coincidence, some broadleaf weeds can't withstand high fertility.

Mowing frequently during the growing season will greatly help weed control. Many people mow once per week in the summer, or (gulp) less. But when nighttime temperatures are in the 70’s, bermuda grows 24/7. If you are observing the 1/3 rule, you know that it’s never good to mow off more than 1/3 of the grass blade at once, or your lawn will look brown after you mow. For more info, read our mowing guidelines.

Mowing may seem like a mundane chore, but your mowing habits GREATLY affect the appearance of your lawn, every bit as much as watering!

Happy Easter to all!

March Lawn Tips & GreenGrass Tulsa Lawn Care Service Area Update

Kathy Wilder — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:17:00 GMT

At GreenGrass, we’re growing and expanding, just in time for spring! Our previous service areas included Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Bixby, Jenks and Owasso.

We are very excited to add Claremore, Collinsville, Coweta, Catoosa, Glenpool, and the eastern part of Sapulpa to our lawn care service area.

Don’t scalp your bermuda or zoysia lawn yet. It’s too early! We’re going to have some very nice, warm weather coming up, and it will be very tempting to believe that the cold weather’s over. However, the Old Farmer’s Almanac lists Tulsa’s average last frost date as March 27. I remember snowstorms in March. Just saying. Read more about scalping and mowing.

Keep the leaves off your fescue grass. If you have piles of leaves on your fescue, please blow them off! Fescue needs this time to soak up some good sunshine while the leaves are still off the trees. The more sunshine it gets in this cool weather, the better it will look in the heat of the summer.

Don’t get in a hurry in your flowerbeds. Sometimes, the home and garden stores sell things before it’s time to plant them. Caladiums, for example, should not be planted until nighttime temperatures are over 60⁰. I learned this the hard way after losing many caladiums, thinking they were just puny plants. They’re actually quite sturdy! But they don’t like temperatures below 60⁰.

Be sure your lawn equipment is ready to go. This is a great time to be sure all your outdoor stuff is in working order – a much better time than 3-4 weeks from now when everybody else discovers they have a problem with something. Make sure your mower blades are sharp and that the blower and weed eater and mower all start and run well. Change oil and spark plugs if you need to. Make sure your gardening gloves don’t have holes in them. (I think I have 6 or 7 assorted, unmatched gloves, due to a certain puppy I know…)

Don’t seed fescue now! Fescue’s growing season starts in the fall – it’s a cool season grass. If you plant it now, it won’t have time to get a root system down before the heat of the summer, and you will lose a lot of it. Also, if you seed now, you won’t be able to put down weed control in those areas. Then, when your fescue thins out due to the heat, you’ll be invaded with weeds!

Don’t prune flowering shrubs like forsythia and azaleas. Most spring-blooming shrubs flower on last year’s wood. If you prune now, you’ll be cutting off a lot of flowers! Prune them after the blooms fade.

Be sure you have a crabgrass pre-emergent down at least by the end of March. A crabgrass pre-emergent will cut down immensely on this nasty, invasive weed for months! On the other hand, it’s very difficult to eradicate once it has germinated.

If you’re a DIY, you can buy crabgrass pre-emergent at your local home and garden store. If you’d like someone else to do it this year, we’d love to give you a free estimate!

Tulsa Lawn Care Update: Rain, a Precious Commodity!

Kathy Wilder — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:46:00 GMT

Today is a great day in Tulsa! For the past two days, we’ve had “wintry weather.” In Oklahoma that means a mixture of rain, sleet, hail, thunder and lightning, snow, ice, and more rain. It’s been a big, sloppy mess, punctuated by car accidents, and white-knuckled driving for those of us who managed not to crash into anything.

Ditches are full, back yards are flooded, and we still have some piles of snow. When you let the dogs out, they come back in as mud balls.

And here at GreenGrass, we can’t get our lawn care work done.

Isn’t it great? We need this rain so BADLY that none of the above matters. (Except for the car wrecks! I'm very sorry for anyone that happened to!) Spring has actually sprung! I know the temperature doesn’t feel like it, but in the lawn care industry, we are full tilt into spring. It’s time for crabgrass pre-emergents and broadleaf post-emergents, weeds are popping up, and so are crocus and tulips. Our first weed control application can be done through the first week of March, so it’s not too late, and the delay in production due to rain is just fine!

Because, you see, the lawns and landscapes in Tulsa need the rain worse than anything else.

We all know we’ve been in the midst of a terrible drought for two years, now. But I’m not sure people realize the toll this has taken on our landscapes or on the Oklahoma landscape in general. It’s not just a matter of having to water our lawns a lot. On the news yesterday, I saw people taking down huge native trees that have just perished. For our ecosystem, this has been a disaster. Trees and wooded land harbor wildlife. Pastures feed our cattle. Agricultural land feeds us. The drought has been devastating to our wildlife, our agriculture and livestock, and economy.

As far as our business here at GreenGrass, we can make up our rain days. We wish it would rain every other night! Nothing is better for our lawns and trees and shrubs than rain right now, going into spring green-up. And don't be surprised if you see new broadleaf weeds popping up after the sun comes out. But our weed control application will take care of that!

Lawns need at least an inch of water per week during the growing season, and at least a half inch of water per week in the winter when they’re dormant. Moisture is insulation. Snow is insulation. In fact, when we expect a hard freeze, watering beforehand will protect your lawn and your plants.

So. We can put up with a big, sloppy mess for a while, if that’s what it takes. Water is life!

Note: In addition to Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Owasso, Coweta, Bixby and Jenks, we now service Claremore, Catoosa, Glenpool, and some parts of Sapulpa. It's time to think about your spring pre-emergents, and we'd love to do a free estimate for you!

February Tulsa Lawn Care - Scalping Bermuda, Pruning, Transplanting

Kathy Wilder — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:05:00 GMT

It seems like at this time of year, when we have a nice day in the high fifties or sixties, people seem to forget that it’s still winter. People call us and ask when they should start mowing and should they scalp now? Is it time for pre-emergents? Or is it too late for pre-emergents…or too early? Is it okay to prune trees now? How about transplanting a shrub?

First of all, it IS still winter, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few things we can do now, to get ready for spring. And, there are a few things we don’t want to do now.

Don’t scalp your lawn yet! Scalping bermuda grass removes all the old dead material from your lawn so that the sun can warm the soil and your lawn will green up faster. But right now, we can still get freezes that could harm your bermuda grass’ roots. Don’t scalp your lawn until all chance of frost has past. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the average last frost date in Tulsa is March 27. Read more about mowing and scalping.

Yes, it’s time for crabgrass pre-emergents. Speaking for the lawn care industry, we are all putting down pre-emergents now. Luckily, we have a large window to do that, January through March or April. Technically, you just have to get it down before the crabgrass germinates, when the soil temperature rises above 55⁰. In Tulsa, that’s usually between late March to early May, depending on the weather. According to OSU, at least one pre-emergent application should be down by mid to late March.

Should I prune my trees and shrubs now? Some yes, and some no. Technically, this is a good time to prune, because the leaves are off the trees and shrubs now, and you can clearly see their shapes. But, as a rule, you shouldn’t prune most spring bloomers before they bloom, or you may not see a good show of flowers. Prune plants like forsythia, flowering crabapple, lilac, magnolia, rhododendron and weigela in late spring, after the blooms fade. Right now, you can prune crape myrtles, hydrangea peegee, redbuds, butterfly bush and wisteria. If in doubt, look up the particular plant. For example, you can prune spirea now, except for bridal wreath spirea which should be pruned in late spring/early summer.

February is the ideal time to transplant. When a tree or shrub is dormant, it’s a good time to move it if you are so inclined. Dig the hole where you’ll be planting it before you dig up the plant – be sure the hole is as deep as the root ball and at least twice as wide. When you dig up the plant, make sure the roots don’t dry out. If roots are torn, or ragged, snip them off cleanly. Don’t put anything in the hole except the plant and the soil that came out of the hole. Don’t put fertilizer in there, because the roots need to be established before they can absorb it. Keep it well-watered (deep watering twice per week) for 2 summers.

For more info on transplanting or planting trees and shrubs, Clemson University offers excellent step-by-step instructions in “Transplanting Established Trees and Shrubs.” For info on regular planting, OSU has a great fact sheet “Planting Trees and Shrubs.”

Don’t seed fescue in the spring unless you have some bare areas you absolutely can’t live with! For full details, please see my previous blog, Seeding Fescue Grass in Tulsa, or our Fall Seeding Fescue & Rye page.

If you ever have a Tulsa lawn care question, please feel free to Contact Us.

If you'd like a free estimate for Lawn Care (weed control & fertilization) just fill out our Free Estimate Form!

Lawn Care Facts: The Intriguing & Uncertain Science of Allelopathy

Kathy Wilder — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:29:00 GMT

I ran across some really interesting facts while I was researching something else and thought I would share!

Allelopathy (uh-lee-LOP-uh-thee) is a biological phenomenon where a plant releases chemicals that inhibit another plant’s growth or reproduction or very survival.

Allelopathy was recognized as early as 300 B.C. by Theophrastus who studied under Plato and was Aristotle’s successor in the Peripatetic school of philosophy in ancient Greece. He noticed that pigweed inhibited the growth of alfalfa. In the first century A.D. a Chinese book on agriculture and medicinal plants, the Shennong Ben Cao Jing, listed 267 plants believed to have pesticidal qualities, some with allelopathic characteristics.

The term allelopathy was first coined in 1937 by Hans Molisch, an Austrian professor, to describe plants that inhibited the growth of other plants. Later it was used in a broader sense of plants that affect another plant in any way. A lot of research has been done on allelopathy, producing a lot of disagreement as to the actual effects, since one plant can always affect another plant if they are vying for the same growing space.

However, interest has recently been renewed and much research is ongoing, mostly for agricultural purposes. Allelochemicals that plants exude are definitely real.

Think of the possibilities! Allelopathic weed management in crops would greatly reduce the need for herbicides. And what if someone could produce an allelopathic bermuda grass cultivar that would inhibit weed growth?

Did you know that the dreaded nutsedge (or nut grass,) the bane of lawn care companies and homeowners and one of the most invasive weeds in the world, has allelopathic qualities? If you think it’s a nuisance in your lawn, you should see it in crop fields, where it can significantly reduce the crop yield!

Another good example of allelopathy is the Black Walnut tree (Juglans nigra) which contains the chemical Juglone in all of its parts, although it is concentrated in the roots, nut hulls and buds. Juglone is a respiration inhibitor. Not much will grow under a walnut tree, where the roots are biggest. However, tree roots can really spread out so a walnut tree can affect plants that aren’t directly under it. A plant’s allelopathic qualities can affect some plants intensely, and others not at all.

For example, tomato plants, eggplants, apple trees, crocus, azaleas and pepper plants are very susceptible to juglone, while beets, carrots, tulips, arbor vitae, lilac, forsythia and corn are not.

Some other allelopaths are: eucalyptus, cottonwood, sassafras, black cherry, and sorghum. Sorghum is currently being researched in earnest as a weed suppressant. (Allelopaths - I feel like I’m talking about Star Trek characters…)

Anyway, the future use of allelopathy both for agriculture and other horticultural applications seems very promising! And, if a plant has allelopathic qualities, does that make it more hardy than other plants?

Seeding Fescue Grass in Tulsa: Should You Overseed in the Spring?

Kathy Wilder — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:34:00 GMT

No, no, and no! Fescue’s growing season starts in the fall, so spring is not the time to seed fescue in bare areas, or to overseed your existing fescue.

In Tulsa (zone 7), we grow fescue in the shade, because it’s a cool season grass that’s heat-intolerant. Fescue will grow in full sun farther north, and in those areas, it’s probably fine to seed in the spring. But here in Tulsa, the life cycle of fescue is different.

Fescue, like all grasses, needs sunlight to grow and be healthy. But we plant it in the shade, because it gets too hot in the sun for the fescue. By planting it in the fall, we insure that the new baby seedlings won’t get too hot because the temperatures are cooler, and we insure it will get sunlight to grow and make food for itself (through photosynthesis) because the leaves are falling off the trees. All winter long, the fescue gets sunlight, makes food, and stores carbohydrates to get it through the long, hot summer.

Fescue looks its best in the spring, and it’s green and growing and lovely before the bermuda even comes out of dormancy. If you seed in the spring, it will look beautiful! But as soon as the hot weather hits, it will suffer because it hasn’t had enough time to get a good root system down. And it hasn’t had sunlight all winter to make food for itself. So, you will lose about half of what you seeded, maybe more. Even established fescue that was seeded last fall will falter in the 100⁰+ temperatures and drought during the summer. Unless you keep it thoroughly irrigated, you will lose some of your fescue to our hot summers, every year – which is why you should overseed it every fall.

During the summer, when temperatures are above 90⁰, your fescue will need to be watered lightly every day, just to cool it off. Then, it will also need its regular deep watering twice weekly.

If you have bare areas in the shade that you just can’t live with until next fall, go ahead and seed them, and the fescue will look nice for a little while – just bear in mind that you will lose a lot of it and you really need to reseed all your fescue in the fall. Note: ALWAYS let your lawn care company know that you are planning to seed. It may affect what they put on your lawn!

If keeping up with overseeding your fescue is a bit much for you, we’d be happy to give you a free estimate for fall overseeding. Or, you might want to consider putting in some ground cover or doing something else in your shade areas. Our page on The Dreaded Shade Areas outlines many alternative solutions!

Tulsa Lawn Care Tips: How to Get A Green Lawn

Kathy Wilder — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:31:00 GMT

Note: I am specifically discussing warm season lawns, like bermuda and zoysia, in full sun. If you have bare areas around trees or in other shady areas, you will need to seed fescue in those areas in the fall.

If you want to know how to get the best lawn in the neighborhood this year, look no further. I have the secret answer, the secret trick of all tricks, the simplest, no-brainer, thunk-in-the-head kind of solution to your problems!

First of all, a good lawn care company, like GreenGrass Lawn Care, is a great start. We apply pre-emergent weed control, post-emergent weed control, liquid aeration and fertilizer to keep your lawn healthy.

But no lawn care company can give you the best, greenest lawn on the block. You, alone, have the power to make that happen. And it’s simple. Here it is: Mow and Water. Be sure you get fertilizer.

How about that? “But I do mow and water!” you say. Yes, but there is mowing and watering, and then there’s mowing and watering. “What about weed control?” you say. Believe it or not, fertilizer, and mowing and watering properly are just as important to weed control as weed control applications are. But I’ll explain that here in a bit.

We treat a lot of lawns, and the most common problems we see on lawns that aren’t performing well are improper mowing and watering practices.

Here’s what can happen if you don’t mow and water properly:

Mowing off too much of your grass at once will make your lawn look brown (because you’ve mown off the green part.)

Mowing infrequently will also make your lawn look brown, because you’ll mow off too much at once (see item above.)

Mowing with a dull mower blade will make your lawn brown, because you’re tearing the grass, not cutting it. Torn grass, with ragged edges is more susceptible to disease and insect problems. (Disease and insect problems will make your lawn look brown.)

Not watering enough, especially in high temperatures, will make your lawn look off-color and wilted, because grass loses water in a process called transpiration, kind of like our perspiration. If we sweat a bunch and don’t get any water, what happens? Heat stroke! If your lawn reaches the wilty stage and still doesn’t get water, it will go dormant and turn brown.

Watering a little every day instead of watering deeply twice per week will give your grass a shallow root system that cannot be healthy or withstand drought conditions.

Please visit our “How to Mow Properly” and “How to Water Your Lawn” pages to see if you can pick up a few pointers you didn’t know about.

Now, about fertilizer. A thick, healthy turf is your best defense against weeds. Any lawn care company will tell you that. Weeds will invade a bare spot, because they can. Nature always finds a way to fill in a blank spot. Thin, scraggly turf is also an invitation for weeds to come in and take over. A bad weed problem in a lawn isn’t from a lack of weed control, it’s from a lack of a thick, vigorously growing turf to give the weeds competition.

We hear “I don’t want fertilizer, because then I’ll have to mow all the time!” If you don’t want to mow, you should consider alternatives to turf grass, because turf grass like bermuda needs mowed sometimes every 4 days during the growing season – if you want it to look fabulous, that is. Fertilizer is food for the grass.

If customers want weed control ONLY, we assume it’s because they know how to do their own fertilizing, and we strongly recommend they do their own fertilizing.

Just look at your brown dormant grass in the winter. If you have a lawn care company and you regularly get weed control and fertilizer applications, it will be mostly brown right now. But, nature being as it is, you’ll see some green weeds pop up either in the spring, while your grass is still dormant, or in the fall when it's going dormant. Your soil is literally teeming with weed seeds, just waiting for a chance to germinate. Some weeds seeds can germinate after being dormant for years and years. One weed plant can put out hundreds to thousands of weed seeds. Rain, wind and animals carry them to your lawn as well as birds which fly over and poop them out. If you have thick, healthy grass, hopefully the weed seeds will not have room to get sunlight and germinate. Sometimes they do anyway.

And that's the reason that weed control is ongoing – don't expect to get one application and be weed-free the rest of the year!

Getting a green, healthy lawn is team work between you and your lawn care company! If you're a full-program GreenGrass customer, and you see weeds in-between your regular applications, just give us a call and we'll come back at no charge. And, if you're not a GreenGrass customer, why not get a free estimate and see if we can be half of your lawn care team?

Lawn Care Tips: How to Choose a Lawn Care Service Company

Kathy Wilder — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:12:00 GMT

There are many, many lawn care companies in Tulsa and surrounding areas, and they all do weed control and fertilization. So how do you pick the right one for you?

Well, of course we think you should pick GreenGrass Lawn Care, but in all fairness, there are a lot of good companies out there, and they will all be vying for your business. What questions should you ask? How do you know if one is any better than the other?

Hopefully, we can clear up a few things. Here are the questions you should ask:

How many applications are in your full program? At GreenGrass, we do 6 applications spaced throughout the year. Some companies may do 7 or 8 or even 9. We believe that 6 applications are sufficient, and if your lawn needs something additional, it’s free.

Exactly what do I get on your full program? It’s very important to understand what your applications contain. We include pre and post emergent weed control, fertilizer, and liquid aeration. You can see the ingredients for each application on our Lawn Care Service page. If a company tells you it includes something else, like grub control or lime, you should ask about that. We don’t believe in putting down pesticides unnecessarily. Grub control is not necessary unless you have a problem with grubs damaging your lawn (which is actually pretty rare.) Putting down pesticides when there is no need to is not ecologically sound – it will kill the many good insects that are beneficial to the soil and which provide natural defense against bad insects. Besides, if grubs should become overactive, we will treat them at no charge if you’re a full program client. Lime isn’t necessary unless you have a very low soil pH. Why pay for these applications if you don’t need them?

What is the application price and the annual price? Are there any hidden fees? An estimate should include the price per application and also the annual price. That way, there is no confusion about the price or the number of applications – it’s just simple math. If your application price is $60 and there are 6 applications in the program, your annual price is $360. Some companies add a registration fee or administrative fee, which is unacceptable. See our lawn care pricing page

May I take fewer applications? Of course you can! You’re the customer, you can do whatever you want! But please bear in mind that we recommend the full program, because that’s what will make your lawn look its best, and we know we don’t have any unnecessary applications included in the program – each one is vital to your lawn’s health and weed control. So, if a company tries to talk you into the full program, rather than a partial program, they just have the welfare of your lawn in mind, assuming they don’t include “additional product” applications like grub control.

Is there some way I can get my lawn care free? At GreenGrass there is! Each time you refer a friend, family member, co-worker or stranger off the street who takes our full program, we credit $50 to your account. See the entire lawn care referral offer.

If I use your service, will my lawn look great, or do I have to do something? Homeowners can greatly enhance their lawn care application results with proper mowing and proper watering. In fact, a homeowner’s good cultural practices can make a difference between a good lawn and a great lawn! We have both mowing tips and watering tips for you. All lawn care companies should make this clear, and let you know what you can do to help your lawn look its best!

Do you do free service calls in-between the applications if I have a problem? At GreenGrass, we are always happy to come out at no charge for a problem if it’s not time for your regular application. Lawn care is not an exact science since we are dealing with Mother Nature. Be sure to ask this question, as some companies may only guarantee an application for so many days.

If I have a problem with a fungus or with insects in my lawn, how much does it cost to treat it? If you get brown patch in your lawn or an invasion of chinch bugs or army worms, we will treat your lawn at no charge if you’re a full program customer. Many companies charge for this.

Will you call to let me know you’re coming out so I can unlock my gate or put up the dogs? Of course – you’re the boss! If you don’t have locked gates or dogs and want us to just come out at the appropriate times and do our thing, that’s fine too. All companies should be willing to notify you the day before or the morning of an application if you need to know.

Will the applications hurt my kids or dogs? Most companies should recommend that you keep children and pets off of the lawn until the application is dry. Some people and even dogs can have particular allergies that may make them sensitive to the material. Some customers wouldn’t dream of leaving their dogs out when we do an application, and others leave them out all the time. This is a personal choice.

How do I pay? At GreenGrass, we leave an invoice on your door and you can mail a check, call us with a credit card, or go on our website and pay online. Or, if you prefer, we can mail your invoice or email it. If you would like to save 4% off the total price for the year, you’re welcome to prepay for the year.

Can you keep me up to date on agronomic conditions or things I should be doing? At GreenGrass, we try to educate customers on what’s going on with their lawns. We have our lawn care blog here on our website (which you are now reading) – it’s easy to sign up to receive it by email (or you can ask us to do it for you) – that will keep you updated on what’s happening now. This is an easy way to alert our customers when we’re having a chinch bug invasion (which looks just like you aren’t watering enough) or when conditions are right for brown patch disease or Spring Dead Spot or Dollar Spot. We’ll tell you what to watch for! This free service keeps you informed!

Do you phone solicit other services? We do not. We know it’s very annoying for people to call you just to try to sell you something. We may put inserts in with your invoice to tell you about our mosquito control or flowerbed weed control applications, but we will never call you to try to sell you something else! Some other companies may call you constantly.

Is your service guaranteed? Can you guarantee a weed-free lawn? Our service is guaranteed in that if your lawn is not responding to a treatment, we will come back at no charge to fix the problem. Guaranteeing a weed-free lawn is something no lawn care company can do, because nature is out of our control, and the homeowner’s actions are out of our control. Pre-emergent weed control does not exist for many weeds, so they will continue to come up. Wind, rainwater and animals carry weed seeds around, and weed seeds can last in your soil for years and years before germinating. A lot of the lawns we treat DO look weed-free, but we can’t guarantee it.

Am I free to cancel at any time? At GreenGrass, yes! We have no written contract, but rather a verbal agreement.

Please feel free to email us or call us at 918-344-5737 if you have any questions, or if you’d like a free estimate.

Drought-Hardy Plants for the Tulsa Area - Zone 7 Lawn Care

Kathy Wilder — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:11:00 GMT

As I discussed in my previous blog, most of Oklahoma is under extreme to exceptional drought conditions, making lawn care difficult! Tulsa’s ongoing drought, paired with summer heat, has devastated a lot of landscape plants and even some trees. Many gave up on their gardens last year because they simply couldn’t keep up with the watering. In 2012, we had 38 days over 100⁰ (9^th highest year since 1905) and in 2011 we had 44 days over 100⁰ (6^th highest year since 1905.) None of this makes things easy in the garden.

So it makes sense to look for some plants and flowers like those listed below that are drought-hardy for our zone 7 gardens. As an added bonus, some are also deer-resistant and very attractive to butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.

Note: perennials are plants that come back every year. Also, please don’t shy away from plants that attract bees. They won't bother you! Bees are wonderful little creatures that are critical for pollination, and their numbers are dwindling. Planting plants that produce nectar to attract them will help keep their population up!

Blanket Flower - Gaillardia aristata – also called Indian blanket. Occasional watering will allow them to bloom longer; establishes easily from seed, and reseeds itself.

Perennial
Attracts: birds, butterflies and bees
Height: 24”-36”
Blooms: Summer/fall
Full sun, moisture average to dry
Zone 2-10

Crocosmia – also called falling stars or coppertips. Grown worldwide, over 400 cultivars exist. Crocosmia are lovely in cut-flower arrangements.

Perennial
Attracts: Hummingbirds and bees
Height: 24 to 36 inches
Blooms: summer
Full sun, moisture average to dry
Zone: 7-11

Crape Myrtle – Lagerstroemia indica – lovely, low-maintenance shrubs or small trees that bloom continuously all summer. Many, many varieties exist, so understand what kind you are buying. Crape myrtles range from 3 feet tall to 30 feet tall at maturity, and colors vary from white to all shades of pink, lavender and red.

Perennial
Height: 3’ for dwarf varieties, up to 30 for others and all heights in-between
Attracts: butterflies
Blooms: Early to late summer
Full sun, moisture medium to low
Zone: 7-9

Desert Willow - Chilopsis linearis – also called Willowleaf Catalpa or Desert Catalpa. This is a small tree whose irregular shape can easily be pruned into either a small tree or a shrub. It looks delicate with long, slender leaves and lovely flowers, but it thrives in heat!

Deciduous (leaves fall in the winter)
Attracts: Bees
Height: 5’ to 26’
Blooms: May-September
Full sun, moisture low to dry (can’t stand constant wet conditions)
Zone: 7-11

Yarrow – Achillea millefolium – this native species can be rather weedy, but there are many cultivars (cultivated varieties) that are spectacular in the garden and colors range from yellow to white, pink, orange and red. Great for naturalizing, survives with little to no care. Good for preventing soil erosion, good companion plant (improves health of plants around it) and leaves are a very good addition to the compost pile.

Perennial
Height: 8” to 36”, depending on cultivar
Attracts: Butterflies, ladybugs, predatory wasps that feed on insects like aphids & thrips
Blooms: on & off, early spring to late summer
Full sun, moisture low to dry
Deer and rabbit resistant
Zone: 3-9

Lavender – Lavandula angustifolia – Beautiful aromatic lavender spikes are drought, heat and wind tolerant. Tough plant! And the leaves are evergreen.

Perennial
Height: 1’–3’; can also grow 1’–3’ wide
Attracts: Butterflies, birds, hummingbirds
Blooms: early to midsummer
Full sun, moisture low to dry – doesn’t like to be waterlogged
Deer resistant
Zone: 5-9

Tulsa Winter Lawn Care Tips for January 2013

Kathy Wilder — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:07:00 GMT

Wow! We actually got some rain last weekend ! That’s really good news for the Tulsa area, but unless it continues on a regular basis, our lawns and landscapes are going to keep suffering. A small portion of Oklahoma is experiencing “Severe” drought , while the majority of it is in “Extreme” or “Exceptional” drought. Exceptional drought is the worst drought condition you can have. The U.S. Drought Monitor website has a map that’s updated weekly, making it easy to see what we’re up against. It’s not good.

We understand nobody wants to drag out the hose in the winter to water flowers and shrubs and grass. But we strongly recommend watering anything you can water. The fescue needs it, the pansies need it, the trees and shrubs need it. Even the roots of your dormant Bermuda need it! Not only does your yard need water year-round, water also provides insulation against cold temperatures for your plants and grass. Our dryness wouldn’t be nearly as big an issue had we not had drought conditions for 2 years now. The plants can only take so much before they just croak! (I lost a huge dawn redwood last year due to drought and heat.)

What else is there to do when it comes to lawn care in the winter?

Keep leaves off your fescue. Fescue doesn’t look so hot right now, with the cold snaps we’ve been having. But it’s actively soaking up sunlight and making food for itself which will keep it going through the summer when the leaves are back on the trees and it’s in the shade again, and the temperatures are soaring. Fescue is heat-intolerant, not sun-intolerant, which is why we plant it in the shade here in the Tulsa area. If fescue is covered in leaves right now, it can’t get sunlight, it can’t make food for itself, and it will suffer when the heat comes. If you can’t pick them up, blow them off. And don’t mow over the leaves and mulch them into your fescue. It’s fine to do that on the bermuda grass, but the fescue needs sunlight! And if your fescue perks up, don’t mow it short – it needs all the leaf surface it can get right now for photosythesis.

Spray difficult grassy weeds in your dormant bermuda grass with RoundUp or another product containing glyphosate. BEWARE: you can only use glyphosate in dormant bermuda grass – DO NOT spray it in fescue. And you can only use glyphosate in dormant bermuda grass if it’s really really dormant. Check out the grass down at the base, near the soil. It should be brown all the way down. We’ve seen some cases where the bermuda has been sheltered, like under a massive pile of leaves, and it’s still a little green. If you see ANY green, don’t spray glyphosate on it. Glyphosate will kill almost anything that is actively growing, including your grass.

But if you have fescue clumps or other green grasses in your brown and dormant bermuda, this is a great time to treat them. If you’re a GreenGrass customer, we will be taking care of this for you when we do your first application.

When should you put down a crabgrass pre-emergent? We start putting down the first of two crabgrass pre-emergent applications as soon as possible in January. Luckily, we have a large window to get this done, because we’re usually hampered by bad weather. We can’t spray the applications in rain, snow, freezing temperatures or high winds. Note: If you are doing your own crabgrass pre-emergent, you should probably put it down in March, or according to label directions – crabgrass can sprout when soil temperatures reach the mid-50 degrees. Obviously soil temperatures vary by location and weather variations. The idea is to get it down BEFORE the crabgrass starts to sprout. Over-the-counter products are different than the ones licensed applicators apply.

Feed the birds. Migrating birds may have a hard time finding food this time of year, and they need nutrition. Bird seed and suet cakes aren’t that expensive, and you can find them at your local home and garden store, grocery store or discount store (like Wal-Mart.) The birds will certainly appreciate your efforts, and you might see some unusual species! Water is also an issue, so a bird bath or any shallow container with water in it will attract all kinds of birds.

Look at seed and plant catalogues, and think about things you’d like to do outside this coming year. I don’t know about you, but I MISS my garden and green things and flowers. If you do, too, there are plenty of online catalogues (who will happily send you a real one if you’d rather) and lots of ideas like this Backyard Ideas board on Pinterest.

BloomIQ is also a great website to cruise around on. You can pick the qualities or colors or sun requirements you’re looking for in a plant, and it will show you choices for your specific area by hardiness zone or zip code!

2012-2013 Winter Forecast for Tulsa, Oklahoma

Kathy Wilder — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:13:00 GMT

In Oklahoma, weather seems to be anyone’s guess, which can make lawn care (and life) difficult! But winter in Tulsa, on the average, is “usually mild.” Tulsa has a temperate, subtropical climate with an average temperature of 60⁰. Pretty hard to believe, huh? We all remember the massive ice storm of 2007, the blizzard of 2011 with -13⁰ temperatures, and the 115⁰ days this past summer. Temperate? Hmmph!

So, what are we looking at this year? We had expected El Nino to be here by now, but it’s either really late or not coming at all. They're calling what we have La Nada!

Our USDA hardiness zone is 7a, which is a transition zone. These weather predictions indicate that we are truly in a transition zone for weather also. Perhaps that’s why we never know what to expect! Oh, bad news: almost every website I checked said next year will be a bad hurricane season, starting in June.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac has us right in the middle of a line from the Dakotas down to Texas that divides the U.S., with the east half getting much colder temperatures, and the west half getting warmer temperatures. We’re also right on the line for the area predicted to have above average snowfall which includes a triangular area from El Paso to Detroit to Virginia Beach. If you draw a straight line from El Paso to Detroit, it pretty much goes right through Tulsa!

The Weather Centre predicts that a neutral ENSO status (El Nino-southern Oscillation) will give us conditions somewhere between El Nino and La Nina, in other words, neutral. Not overly cold, not overly warm. Apparently, the oncoming El Nino just disappeared!

NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) favors drier and warmer than normal conditions, but they admit they’re a little stymied by El Nino’s lack of appearance, because El Nino’s climate pattern would give them a little more confidence in predicting the way the winter will proceed.

LiveWeatherBlogs.com believes we will have “near normal snowfall” and above normal to normal temperatures. They also say a bunch of stuff about El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Arctic Oscillation, displayed in a bunch of cool charts which I couldn’t quite sort out, but feel free to visit their website and check them out!

Accuweather.com predicts average snowfall for Oklahoma & Texas, and possibly some relief from the drought late in the winter and into next spring.

Although it’s hard to tell what winter will bring, it’s always good to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Right now, our lawns and landscapes are getting ready to go into winter in an exceptionally dry condition. We’re still 10” behind in rainfall for the year, and winds have been high and gusty, which dries out a landscape in a heartbeat! Last night Channel 2 reported that it's been 39 days since we had rain, and that was 1/10 of an inch.

Please water your landscape every chance you get on nice days. Hopefully, we’ll get some rain this weekend, but we’re a far cry from the rainy fall weather we’d hoped for. The drought this year, combined with the drought last year, adds up to very adverse conditions for trees and shrubs, and they are struggling! And our bermuda lawns desperately need moisture for insulation against cold temperatures

Tulsa Lawn Care 101 - What Kind of Grass Do I Have?

Kathy Wilder — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:33:00 GMT

When you've been in lawn care for 24 years like I have, you tend to assume that most people know the most basic things, like what kind of grass they have. But at GreenGrass we frequently ask people this question in response to their questions about their lawns, and they simply don't know.

But that's okay. I’ll try to make it a little easier!

What's the best grass for the Tulsa area? Here, in zone 7a, you may encounter bermudagrass, zoysia, fescue, rye, and maybe even the occasional centipede or St. Augustine lawn. Here's what you need to know about growing grass in Tulsa and surrounding areas:

Bermudagrass – the full-sun, warm-season grass of choice in Tulsa and other warm climates (pictured, right.)

To identify bermuda:

• Green in the summer and brown in the winter. Will also turn brown in drought conditions.

• Spreads by underground rhizomes and aboveground stolons, so you may see "runners" growing out over your sidewalk or driveway (below, left.)

• There are many different varieties of bermuda, from course-bladed common bermuda to fine-bladed cultivars (cultivated varieties) like Tifway, so your neighbor's bermuda may not look exactly like yours.

• Bermuda should be mowed short – ½” to 2.5” depending on the variety and the time of year. If it gets too long, you will see seed heads. Sometimes our clients think bermuda seed heads (pictured, right) are weeds. They are not, but if you see them, you aren’t mowing often enough.

Good bermuda qualities:

• Can take a lot of abuse, which is why it's ideal for sports fields and golf courses.

• Drought and heat tolerant in the southern half of the United States.

• If it’s healthy, thick, and properly-mown, bermuda can choke out almost any weeds.

• Although it turns brown and takes a nap in the winter, it’s just dormant, not dead. In the spring, it wakes up and turns green again.

• Bermuda is resilient. Although it may also turn brown and dormant during a drought, it will green up again when it gets water. Going dormant is its way of conserving energy.

• One of the fastest-growing warm-season turf grasses – can grow 24 hours per day when low temps are in the 70's.

• Easily established from sod or sprigs.

• Damaged areas can easily repair themselves – the surrounding bermuda will fill it in.

• Will grow in poor soils

Bad bermuda qualities:

• Turns brown in the winter. Not too attractive, especially if you’re from up north and used to Kentucky bluegrass. (These are the people who call us all panicky: “My grass is dead, the WHOLE LAWN died!”)

• Can also turn brown and go dormant in drought conditions with no water. Keeping bermuda green during a drought will raise your water bill significantly! (Picture, right, shows watered bermuda lawn in foreground & non-watered bermuda in drought-induced dormancy across the street.)

• Needs a lot of mowing during the hot growing season, a minimum of once per week, sometimes every 4 or 5 days. Assuming, that is, that it’s getting sufficient water.

• Best established from sod or sprigs, not seed, so it’s somewhat more expensive to put in a new lawn than it would be if you could just plant seed. Most of the finer cultivars are not available in seed, and some of them are sterile, producing no seeds.

• Although not common, winter injury to bermuda can occur when conditions are just right, resulting in areas of dead grass.

• Needs more fertilizer than other grasses for good color. It prefers deep, well-drained soil.

• Will not grow in shade. Some varieties may be more tolerant of partial shade, but it will never look as good as bermuda in full sun.

Fescue Grass (Tall fescue) – The shade grass of choice in Tulsa (pictured, right,) and also a full-sun grass in more northern climates.

To identify fescue:

• Will be green when bermudagrass is brown and dormant. (If other people have brown grass in the winter, and yours is green, it’s fescue.)

• If your lawn perks up in February and looks fabulous March through May, you have fescue.

•Fescue does not spread, so you won’t see runners going into the flowerbeds or out onto your driveway.

• If fescue is being mowed correctly, it will be twice as tall as bermuda. In Tulsa, you may see fescue under trees in the shade, while the rest of the lawn is bermuda. So if you see a brown lawn in the early spring with green grass under the trees, it’s a bermuda lawn with fescue planted in the shade areas.

Good fescue qualities:

• Perfect to plant under trees and in other shady areas in your yard where bermuda won’t grow. Many people start out with a bermuda lawn, but as their trees get bigger, the shade areas increase, and they end up with bare areas under their trees. This is the perfect place to seed fescue.

• You can establish a fescue lawn quickly by seeding, which is fairly inexpensive, compared to sodding (be sure you pick a tall fescue seed blend.)

• Doesn’t turn brown and go dormant.

• Doesn’t require nearly as much fertilizer as bermuda does.

•Will not require as frequent mowing in the summer as bermuda.

Bad fescue qualities:

• Will lose some of it each year, due to high temps in Tulsa.

• May need to be watered lightly every day in the heat of the summer just to cool it off, and also watered deeply twice weekly to meet its water requirement.

• Must be overseeded each fall.

• Sometimes doesn’t look too good in the hot summer (pictured, right - fescue in Tulsa during drought & temps consistently over 100 degrees.)

• Will not grow in total, heavy shade. All grass needs light. Bear in mind that we grow fescue in the shade here in Tulsa because of its heat intolerance. When we seed it in the fall, the leaves are coming off the trees, and the fescue gets sun for a long period – long enough to store carbohydrates to get through the hot summer. That’s another reason it looks poorly in the summer – lack of sun.

• Needs to be mowed earlier in the season since it’s green and growing before the Bermuda is even out of dormancy. Fescue’s growing season begins in September (which is when you seed) so you will have to keep mowing it later in the year.

• Not tolerant of heavy traffic

• Does not spread and can’t repair itself if you have a damaged area.

Ryegrass – a perennial cool-season grass, (not to be confused with rye, the grain in rye bread!) sometimes used in small percentages in fescue blends to seed or overseed in shade areas in Tulsa in the fall. Ryegrass is also used to overseed dormant bermudagrass lawns in the fall so the lawns will be green throughout the winter.

To identify ryegrass:

Frankly, if you live in Tulsa, you aren’t likely to see a whole lot of ryegrass, but it has the same basic characteristics as fescue grass. It’s a cool season grass, and it grows best in zones 1-6 (Tulsa is in zone 7a.)

However, if you see green grass in a full sun area in the fall, winter or very early spring, it’s most likely rye that has been seeded over the dormant bermuda, to give the appearance of a green lawn all winter.

A lot of the fescue you see under trees and in other shady areas has a small percentage of rye mixed in with it because rye germinates so quickly that it holds the fescue seed in place.

Good Ryegrass Qualities:

• Can germinate in as little as 5 days.

• Grows very well in the winter.

• You can seed rye over your dormant bermuda lawn for a green lawn all winter.

Bad Ryegrass Qualities:

• Grows quickly in the spring and needs mowed twice per week. (Mowing height during the winter should be 2-3”.)

• Not drought tolerant except for short periods, so it needs frequent watering.

• It gets too hot for ryegrass in Tulsa, so there are really only 2 uses for it in our area:

1. Mixing a very small percentage into a fescue blend so that its early germination will hold the fescue in place until the fescue germinates.

2. Seeding it over a dormant bermuda lawn so that the lawn will look green all winter.

In the first case, the rye will die quickly as soon as it gets hot. This doesn’t really matter, since the majority of the shade grass is fescue.

In the second case, here are some potential problems:

• The ryegrass will need fertilizing, and in doing so, the fertilizer may stimulate the dormant bermuda, making it susceptible to winter damage.

• When it begins to warm up, the rye grass in the sun may compete with the bermuda for fertilizer while the bermuda is trying to green up. To combat this, mow the rye grass down to one inch a few weeks before the last frost.

St. Augustine grass – a good choice for Southern and coastal lawns, St. Augustine is native to the Caribbean, Mediterranean regions and Africa.

Unfortunately, we aren’t in the south or on the coast, so St. Augustine grass doesn’t do very well here, although we have seen it in a very few lawns in Tulsa.

american-lawns.com has detailed information on St. Augustine grass

Centipedegrass – a good choice for the southeastern U.S., from South Carolina down to Florida and across the coastal Gulf states to Texas.

Again, not a good choice for Tulsa. A hard freeze will kill centipedegrass and fluctuating warm and cold temperatures in the spring will damage it severely.

american-lawns.com has very good information on centipedegrass

October Lawn Care in Tulsa

Kathy Wilder — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:03:00 GMT

Hello, Tulsa! Here’s some fall lawn care advice and what's going on with your landscape in this beautiful fall weather!

OVERALL LANDSCAPE

Water – Be sure to keep your lawn, trees and shrubs, and flowers watered. Some areas were lucky enough to get some rain last weekend, but some areas had none, and high winds will dry out the whole yard in a heartbeat! You don’t want your landscape to go into winter being dry – that’s the worst possible scenario! Moisture provides insulation. Even snow will protect your landscape from harsh winter temperatures. But cold, dry weather can cause damage to all plants, including trees and grass.

Many of the trees in Tulsa are already stressed out from our drought this summer, compounded by the drought the previous summer. Trees grow slowly, and it takes a long time for them to show damage from something that happened months or years ago. They can also be slow to recover, so remember to water them when you can.

Keep the leaves up! Leaves piled up in the grass don’t do the grass any good, especially on fescue which needs sunlight in these cooler temperatures. If you don’t have a blower or leaf-sucker-upper, just mow over them. Dead leaves are good organic material, and if you crunch them up, they will actually benefit your lawn without causing a thatch problem.

Of course, if you and your neighbors have huge trees, you may have too many leaves to do that. Personally, I have a leaf-sucker-upper (somebody, help me out here! What do you call those things??) and I crunch up all the leaves and dump the bag out in my flowerbeds. Fabulous mulch! And it’s good, decaying matter that will break down to enrich the soil.

Mulch young trees – You can use crunched up leaves for this, or buy mulch. Just be careful not to pile it up against the trunk. I know, you see trees with “mulch volcanoes” around them all over town, but that is not the correct way to do it. You’re trying to hold the moisture in around the roots, not up against the trunk where moist mulch would cause it to rot.

Plant flowers – this is a great time to plant bulbs for spring and pansies that will look great now as well as in the spring. Pansies love the cold weather and will even bloom in the snow. Plus, if you plant them now, they'll look really good in the spring.

Note: I went to Grogg’s Green Barn around 61^st & Mingo the other day, and bought some gorgeous mums and some tulip bulbs. Great place! They carry all kinds of organic stuff, native plants, even beneficial insects. And the staff is really nice and knowledgeable. The lady who waited on me gave me a good tip. I’ve always wanted to plant tulips, but I never knew where to put them. I hate to waste garden space on something that will bloom once in the early spring, and that’s all. She told me she plants tulips bulbs underneath her pansies, and in the spring, they come right up through the pansies and look lovely! I’m gonna do it this weekend, and I’ll let you know in the spring how it turns out.

GRASS

Fescue – Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to overseed your fescue areas, and seed any shade areas where your bermuda has thinned out due to encroaching shade. If you haven’t, do it now! Time is running out! I know, I know, you’re busy. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve only seeded about a third of my fescue areas so far and hope to finish this weekend! But if you don’t do it soon, you'll have missed the best time to seed, and when next spring rolls around, you’ll wish you'd gotten it done. Seeding in the spring is asking for a 50%+ failure rate, because fescue is heat-intolerant, and it won’t have enough time to get down a good root system before the heat of the summer. And you know what summers are like around here!

Okay, so say you were on the ball, and your seeding is already done. Yay! Remember you MUST keep it moist for it to germinate, a task that’s far from easy with the horrendous wind we’ve had the past few days. I almost blew away in a parking lot three times yesterday!

After your seed germinates, keep on keeping it moist. You may need to water it lightly 2 times per day. When it’s up and has been mowed twice, you can resume your regular watering schedule. Remember to keep the leaves off of it so it can get sunlight, but don’t rake, or you’ll pull up the seedlings.

Bermuda – Bermuda is getting ready to turn brown and go dormant. Some areas have already had a light frost, and when that happens on your lawn, you may see a squiggly line pattern in your bermuda (pictured, right.) This is normal!

Mow your bermuda high this time of year, and don’t even think about scalping it. Some people think they should mow it really short the last time they mow, to make the yard look clean. But scalping should be done only in the spring, or when the grass is actively growing and has time to recover. Right now, you want to leave it a little long so it has some insulation against the pending freezing temperatures.

Have a great weekend, enjoy this beautiful weather, and let me know if you know the real name of a leaf-sucker-upper!

Lawn Care Info: Weeds and Jurassic Park

Kathy Wilder — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:53:00 GMT

Remember in Jurassic Park when Ian was nervous about the whole dinosaur-in-a-theme-park deal because of chaos theory? He said "life finds a way." He was referring to the fact that John Hammond (dinosaur-cloner, owner of the park) thought he was in control of the situation because they had genetically engineered all the dinosaurs to be female, so there was no way they could reproduce. And what did they find later? A nest with eggs in it.

Weeds are a prime example that nature does prevail, and always will.

Consider this: if you have a bare area in your lawn, you will get weeds there -- even if you've had a lawn care service for years, or even if you've been treating weeds yourself.

If parts of your lawn are thin (due to encroaching shade, poor mowing habits, no fertilizer, etc.) you will get weeds in it.

Nature sees that bare dirt going to waste, and makes something grow there.

Conclusion: A thick, healthy lawn is the only thing that really keeps the weeds out. Weed control materials by themselves will not do the job. Mow often, water properly, and don't forget the fertilizer! Remember, though, that weed control must be ongoing. Weed seeds are everywhere: lying dormant, being spread by mowers and weed eaters and people's feet, and squirrels and birds pooping. Everywhere!

Note: If you live in the Tulsa area, and you're not a DIY kind of person, we'd be happy to give you a free estimate for weed control & fertilizer or flowerbed weed control.

Now consider this: I had a virtual crop of purslane come up in my flowerbed this summer. Where did they come from? Did someone explode a purslane-seed bomb? I'd never seen purslane in my flowerbed before!

The fact is, most weeds are prolific seeders, assuring the continued procreation of their species.

A single dandelion plant may produce from 2,000 to 12,000 seeds. Individual plants left undisturbed may survive up to 13 years.

A single crabgrass plant can produce 150,000 seeds.

A study in Minnesota found as many as 130 million weed seeds per acre at a 6" depth. (That's 2,948 seeds per square foot.)

And it gets worse! These seeds can last for decades! Jimsonweed, for example, can germinate at a 90% rate after 40 years in the soil.

Conclusion: When I dug around and tilled the soil to plant flowers this year, I stirred up a bunch of weed seeds that had been in the dirt for some time. This is why we get weeds in our flowerbeds, because we're always digging around in there, disturbing old weed seeds!

Trivia: The oldest known seed to have germinated was a Judean date palm seed, which was discovered in Israel while excavating Herod the Great's palace. The seed was carbon-14 dated at 2,000 years and germinated in 2005.

A 1,300 year old carbon-14 dated sacred lotus seed found in a dry lake bed in China was also successfully germinated in 1995. Not exactly from the Jurassic period (150-200 million years ago,) but really old, just the same! (However, plants from the Jurassic period, like cycads, are still around today, which proves my point about the procreation thing...)

Other claims have been made about much older seeds - 3,000 year old seeds from Egyptian tombs, or 10,000 year old seeds taken from Russian permafrost -- but none of the claims have been confirmed with radiocarbon dating.

Tulsa Gardening - Heat Stress: Survival & Recovery

Kathy Wilder — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:35:00 GMT

At one point in August, after days and days of over 100°, I figured my zone 7a gardens were a lost cause. Even my tropicals in the shade garden showed blistered and crunchy leaves. Of course, that didn't keep me from spending exorbitant amounts on my water bill...just in case. I had Sunpatiens that were literally laid out flat on the ground, even though they were a good 12" tall just a week before. And my regular impatiens just stopped flowering.

Then we got a few good rains, one of them 3", and the temperatures came down. Awesome! My flat, brown fescue leaped to attention, and my bermuda greened up practically overnight. Nothing like rain to boost your lawn care! Last week I noticed a row of bradford pears that were actually blooming! (They must be very confused...)

So what survived in the garden, and what didn't?

3 weeks ago, this bougainvillea consisted of bare sticks, but it has come back very well!

I'm afraid that the lace-leaf variety Japanese maple in my shade garden didn't care for those high temps. These have always seemed like pretty tough little trees, and both of ours have weathered extreme winters. But the excessive heat this year was a bit much, and they both show a lot of sun scorch. I'm sure they'll recover, but we may need to do a little pruning.

Most of my hostas (and I have a LOT) bit the dirt. Apparently they can't take a little morning sun when it's 110°. I'm pretty sure they'll come back next year, because they've never let me down before.

This is some type of hydrangea, or maybe related to a hydrangea? When I bought it at a little nursery/produce place in Skiatook, the owner said he couldn't remember exactly what it was. Anyway, it was going great guns all summer, and when the really hot temps stuck around, it got scorched!

On the other hand, the angelonias and portulaca never missed a beat!

The celosia was doing so well until the heat. Then it got scorched, and a few plants just keeled over!

The white caladiums did fabulously well, much better than the red or pink.

These things get morning sun and then dappled shade - they didn't even blink through the high temps. I had originally planted double begonias here, around the lamp post, but they just shriveled up and died in the heat, so I found these at the end of June. They were labeled "Wandering Jew Plant" (?) and they haven't shown any sign of heat stress at all! I will definitely look for them next year, even though I don't know what they really are. I found nothing that looks like them under "wandering jew plant" -- does anyone know?

These begonias on the side of the house did very well, considering they get an hour or so of late afternoon sun!

I rescued a couple of leggy coleus from the "only-fifty-cents-cuz-they're-gonna-die" shelf in Wal-Mart, and planted them in front of a perennial japanese silver fern which was having a hard time with the 100° morning sun. The coleus flourished and did a good job of shading the fern (so good that you can't see the fern in the picture -- note the struggling hosta behind the green coleus.)

The only problem that remains is the leaves that have been falling for at least a month -- it's really hard to keep the lawn and beds cleaned up. However, we have a lot of large trees and we're usually knee-deep in the fall, so maybe it won't be so bad this year, since a lot of them have already fallen!

Landscape Tips - Time To Think About Tulips in Tulsa

Kathy Wilder — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:04:00 GMT

Now is a great time to pick out tulip bulbs for a beautiful springtime landscape display. I don't know about you, but I could just drool on some of those catalogs, and the websites are even better! Many companies have their bulbs on sale now to entice you to buy before it's time to ship.

WHERE TO FIND BULBS: Your choices are practically endless - home and garden centers, catalogs and a myriad of websites. I have listed some popular sites at the bottom of the page.

WHERE TO PLANT THEM: You need to take into consideration your hardiness zone and what kind of garden space you have. Most tulips grow in zones 3-8, but in zones 3-6 they grow well in full sun. In zones 7 & 8 they grow in shade or morning sun only. Bear in mind that trees are not fully leafed out when many tulips bloom. Check your hardiness zone on the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.

Furthermore, tulips don't like to be wet - in fact, most bulbs need very well-drained soil in an area that doesn't get watered a lot.

Personally, I always look at the height of a plant (especially flowers on slender stems,) given our wind in Oklahoma. If the plant grows to 48" tall, and the area I want to plant isn't sheltered, I'm thinking "hmmmm...better not!"

NOTE on animal problems: If you have deer-eating-your-plants problems, you might want to consider other bulbs, because deer love to eat tulips! Squirrels can be a problem also, but if you provide other food for them, they usually leave them alone. Some flowering bulb plants like allium, scilla, or fritillaria imperialis naturally repel deer and rodents, and you may be able to plant tulips around them.

WHAT KIND OF TULIP BULBS TO BUY: There are so many varieties to choose from, anyone can find a color and style they like. But, whatever you buy, be sure you understand what zone it's hardy in, how tall it will get, and when it blooms. You may want to order some taller ones for the background, some shorter ones in front - maybe some that bloom in early spring along with some that bloom in late spring, so you have a longer color display.

Usually, species type tulips are hardier and shorter. Species refers to varieties that remain as found in nature - they haven't been bred or hybridized. Most hybridized varieties may be good for 3 years, but a lot of species varieties will come back year after year. (No, you shouldn't dig up the bulbs each year.) The older varieties seem to last longer. Newer hybridized varieties were more than likely developed with the cut-flower market in mind. Some of the older species varieties have been around since the 1500's! Botanical varieties are hybridized, but very close to the original species.

Don't ever buy tulip bulbs in the spring, no matter how "on sale!" they are. Bulbs are living things, and you can't keep them until next fall.

WHEN TO PLANT THEM: Tulips must be planted in the fall - about 6-8 weeks before the first frost. You can check when your average first frost occurs on the Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Chart. Here in Tulsa, our average first frost is November 7. Ordering bulbs now is the best idea, because most places will deliver your bulbs at the proper time to plant. Never buy bulbs and leave them sitting around for a long time - you want to get them into the ground as soon as you can after delivery!

WHAT TO DO AFTER THEY BLOOM: Nothing! Leave the foliage right where it is until it's dead. The foliage continues to make food for the bulb, readying it for next year so it will bloom again. If you cut it off too soon, or tie it up, the bulb won't do well next year. Once the foliage is gone, feel free to snip it off so it doesn't offend the rest of your beautiful garden!

Many people feel like they have to lift the bulbs out and replant them next year, but that's a lot of work and not the best scenario for the plant. Leaving them where they are is best for them. It is advisable not to plant them in the first place anywhere that you are going to water heavily during the summer. Bulbs don't like to stay wet!!

More info:

13 ways to get your tulips to come back - from tulipsinthewoods.com

How to Plant & Grow Tulips - from The Old Farmer's Almanac

A good site offering species tulip bulbs - John Scheepers, Inc.

Another good site offering species tulip bulbs - McClure & Zimmerman

Great flower bulb site that's been around a long time - Brecks

Flower, vegetable, & herb seeds, bulbs - Eden Brothers

All kinds of bulbs - Holland Bulb Farms

Lawn Care Tips - The Skinny on Tulsa Shade Grass (Fescue)

Kathy Wilder — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:17:00 GMT

Fescue seedlings at 3-4 weeks.

In Tulsa, we find that our lawn care customers are frequently confused about shade grass, fescue grass, bermudagrass... and just grass in general. Not surprising, considering that we are in a transition zone, according to the USDA hardiness zone map. Translation: It's really too cold here for bermuda, and it's really too hot for fescue. So, if you google the "care" of bermuda or fescue, you may not end up with the correct advice for the grass in our transition zone.

In climates farther south, bermuda stays green year round. In climates farther north, fescue grows in full sun. Here, we call fescue a "shade grass" because our temperatures are too hot for it to survive in full sun. Since the time to overseed fescue is coming right up (mid-September) here's what you need to know about the Life Cycle of Fescue, here in Tulsa:

FALL - Fescue is seeded mid-September through mid-October. Fall is the beginning of this cool season grass's growing season.

FALL/WINTER - The fescue gets plenty of sunlight, because the leaves are falling from the trees. It uses the sun to manufacture carbohydrates (through the process of photosynthesis) and stores them for later use, to help it get through the hot, shady summer ahead.

SPRING - The fescue looks great in the spring! Moderate temperatures and lots of sunshine have fescue looking its best!

SUMMER - The hot summer temperatures arrive, and the trees are fully leafed-out. It's too hot for the fescue, and it's not getting much sunlight. It needs watered lightly daily, just to cool it off, and also twice per week for a deep watering. Fescue needs as much leaf surface as possible to make food for itself. At this time, fescue needs to be mowed at a height of 3"-4". If it's mowed as short as bermuda, it will decline quickly.

LATE SUMMER - The hot temperatures continue, often accompanied by drought. Unless one is diligent in watering, the fescue doesn't look very good and is fading fast.

FALL - Cooler temperatures come with fall, but by now a lot of the fescue has thinned out or died in areas. Fescue does not spread like bermudagrass. It's time to overseed it and start another season!

Taking Care of Fescue - Important points to remember:

Always let your lawn care company know if you are planning to seed. Pre-emergent weed control can be put down as early as January and as late as December. If you seed, you don't want pre-emergent weed control put down until your seed has germinated!
Overseed your shade areas every fall.
Choose a tall fescue "blend." Different types of tall fescue have different resistance to insects or diseases or drought, so if you have a problem, all your grass will not be affected in the same manner. Some blends may contain some bluegrass or rye. Check the "weed seed content" on the label, to be sure it's zero.
Seed must be kept moist to germinate. Since a blend will contain different types of fescue or other grass, some of it may germinate more quickly than the rest. If you are seeding bare areas, cover the seed lightly with some peat moss so it doesn't wash away.
Young seedlings must be kept moist (for about 3 weeks) or they will die. Water lightly daily.
Fescue seedlings need sunlight, so keep the leaves blown off of them. If they can't get sun, they will starve to death. Don't use a rake, or you will pull up the new seedlings.
During the heat of the summer, water lightly daily to cool it off. Also water deeply twice per week.
Mow your fescue at a height of about 3". This is essential for its health!

And, if you don't want to seed your fescue yourself, we'd be happy to give you a free seeding estimate! See our Fall fescue seeding page for more info!

Lawn Care Tips - How to Kill Poison Ivy

Kathy Wilder — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:05:00 GMT

Poison ivy is tough to kill! It's so tough, that killing it isn't enough - you can get poison ivy rash from a dead plant. Or even a dead root! Unfortunately, I know this from experience.

A word of warning: If you need to get rid of any invasive, unknown, viney thing that has taken over your fence or gate or grown up the side of your house, take precautions. Don't just get on a ladder and start hacking at it. Cover yourself - long sleeves, long pants, shoes and socks and gloves. And safety glasses. I once got on a ladder and started hacking at a vine that had grown up the side of my house, and I woke up the next morning with black marks all over my arms and they itched like crazy! My dermatologist didn't know what it was, or what the plant was, and didn't care.

And I'm not even allergic to poison ivy! But it wasn't poison ivy, or poison oak, or sumac or anything that I'm familiar with. (If you don't know what it looks like, here's a good drawing of the poison 3 on WebMD.) In fact, I saw the same plant again, growing all over a fence in someone's backyard, and she said she'd never had a problem with it and thought it was pretty! So! You never know.

Anyway, back to poison ivy. Here's what to do if you have it!

Buy a poison ivy killer. You can find a product in any home and garden store - some are even in spray cans, or have brushes attached. Vine-X seems to get good reviews. Be sure you read the label directions very carefully. Poison ivy is a woody vine and very tough to kill. If it's growing on a tree or in your flower bed, or on something you don't want to kill, you're going to have to be very, very careful!

If the poison ivy is growing on something you don't want to kill you will have to cut the poison ivy off at the base, and remove the vines from your plant that you don't want to harm. Cover up, as mentioned above in the 2nd paragraph. Or, you can "paint" the poison ivy killer onto the poison ivy vine itself. However, you're going to have to remove it eventually, whether it's alive or dead.

Spray the poison ivy or the poison ivy base and roots if you had to cut it off.

After it dies, remove it - all of it, roots and all. Again, cover yourself up completely before you handle anything! You can get the rash from the dead plant or the dead roots.

Never burn poison ivy! Burning the plant will simply turn it into smoke that you can breathe in, which can be much more dangerous than a rash! Likewise, stay away from wildfire smoke or an area where someone is using a weedeater or lawn mower in the woods. Brushing against poison ivy plants leaves an oil called urushiol on your skin, and that's what causes the rash. You can't get poison ivy just by walking by it, but anything that sends the urushiol oil airborne is best avoided.

So, what if it's too late, and you already came in contact with poison ivy? First of all, don't rub the area with anything! Rinse with lots and lots of cold water. If you have rubbing alcohol available, pour some over the contaminated area first, then rinse with cold water. A garden hose will work. Hot water will spread the urushiol oil and open your pores to let it soak in. (Don't take a hot shower!!) Bear in mind that the oil may be on your clothes, so put them straight into the washer. Think you barely touched it? The amount of urushiol you could fit on the head of a pin is enough to infect 500 people.

DON'T USE a washcloth or a Handi-Wipe or anything like that before washing, or you will spread the oil on your skin.

Also, bear in mind that your dogs can run through poison ivy, get the oil on their fur, and transfer it to you when you pet them, or to your clothes when they brush against you. Try to make checking your property for poison ivy a regular part of your lawn care. Poison ivy rash can appear anywhere from between 48 hours to 15 days of contact, but washing immediately can lessen the severity.

Poison ivy rash does not "spread," nor is it contagious. Some areas of your skin are thicker than other areas, and it might take more time for the rash to show up on your leg than on your chest, because thicker skin absorbs the urushiol more slowly. You cannot get poison ivy rash from someone else who has it!

Should you go to the doctor if you get poison ivy rash? Normally, over-the-counter remedies work fine even if you still itch. However, if it doesn't get better within a week, if blisters get infected, if you get it in a sensitive area like your eyes or mouth, or you run a fever over 100° you should see your doctor. Be aware that some individuals are extremely sensitive and could exhibit symptoms as quickly as in 4 hours, with blisters erupting on their skin and their eyes swelling shut. These individuals should get to the doctor or an Urgent Care center immediately! A shot of corticosteroids will take care of the swelling.

So what stops the itch?? A hot shower can help - that is, after the rash has appeared, at which point the oil has long since soaked into your skin. (Remember, after first contact, wash with cold water, not hot!) You can blow a hair dryer on the rash also for temporary relief, but be careful not to burn yourself. There are over-the-counter remedies like calamine lotion, or antihistamines like Benadryl or a wash called Tecnu Extreme. There are natural remedies like jewelweed or common remedies like rubbing alcohol. Everyone reacts differently to the rash and the remedies, so basically you just need to find something that works for you.

What if you don't want to attempt the poison ivy removal yourself? The website poison-ivy.org contains a wealth of information on poison ivy, as well as a list by state of professionals who will take care of your poison ivy problem for you. They also publish pictures (not for the faint of heart) and individuals' personal poison ivy stories.

Can you identify poison ivy? Take the poison ivy quiz!

More information:

Poison Ivy Rash Treatments

Sustainable Gardening

Tulsa Mosquito Control - Attracting Dragonflies

Kathy Wilder — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:56:00 GMT

Did you know that dragonflies are some of the fastest insects in the world? They can fly up to 30 mph. Probably because they eat so much! What do they eat? Mosquitoes (90% of their diet), aphids, flies, wasps, ants...basically, anything on your property that you would want eaten! Dragonflies are voracious carnivores. Think of them as cheetahs of the air. 17th-century Japanese warriors called them "invincible insects."

Did you know their eyes have 30,000 lenses, for complete 360-degree vision? Wow!

So how do you get some? Here's the short story:

1. Plant a variety of trees and shrubs around the perimeter of your property.

2. Plant a variety of blooming plants.

3. Provide a protected water feature with nearby perches.

Here's the long story:

1. Trees and shrubs provide hiding places for dragonflies. Although dragonflies are predators, they themselves must worry about predators, also. Birds, frogs, lizards, spiders and fish think dragonflies are pretty tasty. So the things you do to attract them must also protect them.

2. Blooming plants attract bees, butterflies, and other pollinators that dragonflies like to eat. You might try black-eyed susan, joe pye weed, swamp milkweed, butterfly bushes, anise hyssop, yarrow, turtlehead, tickseed, coreopsis, hollyhocks, or aster (which comes in a myriad of colors/varieties.)

3. A water feature is the number one priority for attracting dragonflies. If you already have a pond, fabulous! Take out the fish and put in some plants and water lilies. Dragonflies spend a good deal of their lives underwater, from months to several years before they emerge to become the winged wonders that we know. Fish are likely to eat the eggs and juveniles.

No pond? Don't worry - any large container will work. Or, you can buy a pre-made plastic pond and plant it in your yard. Place it where it gets some midday sun, and where it's protected from wind. It should be at least 24" deep in the middle and shallow toward the edge. You'll need underwater plants, and some that stick out, so the babies can crawl out when they're ready. You need varying depths and places for the juveniles to hide from predators, so put some rocks in the pond, some sticking out. Plant some foliage and grasses around it to help shelter it and provide "perches."

If you're really interested in starting a dragonfly-friendly area in your yard to help with mosquito control - or just to watch these beautiful creatures - the following articles give some very good advice!

Attracting Dragonflies to Your Yard - National Wildlife Federation

Watching the dragonflies frolic - home-herb-garden.com

A Guide to Providing Habitat to Attract Dragonflies - Sage Environmental Services

Invite Dragonflies Into Your Garden - HGTV

Lawn Care Tips for Tulsa Area and Broken Arrow Water Rationing 2012

Kathy Wilder — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:18:00 GMT

I guess we all knew it was coming, but that doesn't make water rationing any easier. Watering every other day isn't really a problem, but the midnight to noon thing is difficult if you don't have automatic sprinklers (and if you do have them, I hate you.) (Okay, not really, I'm just jealous!)

For those of us who work days, we're going to have to be a little creative. And I don't know about you, but I have trees dropping leaves already, and I don't want to lose them, especially since I lost a large Dawn Redwood to drought last year.

Of course, on a positive note, technically, early morning is the best time to water. And think of the money we'll save on our water bills!

Even though this is voluntary, I urge everyone to comply so we don't end up having to do our laundry between midnight and noon!

Here are a few suggestions: (and if anyone else has anything to add, please do!)

Buy a soaker hose. My husband bought one at Atwoods really cheap! Can't remember how much is was, but I'd say $10 to $15. It's pretty long, too. Put it where you want it, turn it on low in the morning, and come home at lunch to turn it off. If you can't come home at lunch, turn it on at midnight and turn it off before you go to work in the morning.

Buy a deep-root waterer. If you have trees dropping leaves, especially smaller trees, you need one of these! I ordered one from Lowe's website for $19.95. Nothing fancy, but it works great and has a lifetime guarantee. You just hook up the hose to it, and stick it in the ground. Leave it in place 'til you see the water bubble up, then move it. I used the soaker hose a little while to soften the ground first, then stuck the deep-root waterer in the ground, moving it at about two-foot intervals around the drip-line of the tree, leaving it in each place for about 15 minutes. Warning: the first time I pulled it out of the ground, a geyser of mud erupted all over me. Yank it out quickly and watch where you point that thing - it's like a pressure washer!

The trees under the most drought stress are those with small leaves, like river birch, dawn redwood, willow, and cypress trees. The picture at the top is a young dawn redwood in part of our back yard where we never water, and the grass was brown. After using the soaker hose around the tree a little Saturday, and the deep root waterer Sunday, the grass around it magically turned green! (Good reason not to skip your fertilizer, even if your lawn is brown.)

Both the soaker hose and the deep-root waterer conserve water, because they're close to the ground, eliminating a lot of the evaporation that goes on when your sprinkler is spewing water into the air.

Focus on watering the plants you want to come back next year, because that's where your investment is. Your annuals are something you buy every year anyway, but it's very expensive to replace a tree or ornamental shrub. If it's a large tree, it's very expensive to remove it, too, and then you have to spend more money on a new one!

If you don't have a soaker hose or a deep root waterer, set sprinklers where you want them the night before, and turn them on as soon as you get up. Turn them off when you get in your car to go to work.

NOTE: If you have dogs or other pets outside, try to bring them in half a day - maybe go home at lunch and put them inside for the hottest part of the day. If you simply can't, be sure they have plenty of shade and fresh water, and check on them as soon as you get home. You can buy a baby wading pool at the Dollar Store or Walmart, and that will really help cool them off.

Our little garden friends like birds, bunnies and toads are suffering, too. A birdbath is heaven for them! I set out some pie pans with water for the toads and bunnies, and they use them!

If you have wading pools, pie pans and bird baths, be sure to change the water frequently (every other day) so you don't have a mosquito haven! If you don't have time to change it, just spray some water in it or stir up the top to drown any mosquito larva.

Even this usually hardy maple tree is showing signs of drought stress!

Lawn Care Tips - How to Get Rid of Moss in Your Lawn

Kathy Wilder — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:41:00 GMT

How to Get Rid of Moss in Your Lawn

Why do you have moss? Many people think that moss is moving in, taking over, killing their grass. Big Bad Moss. On the contrary, moss is simply filling in places where the grass won't grow. More than likely, the reason you have moss is that you have less than ideal growing conditions for grass in those areas.

Some of the factors that invite moss into your lawn are:

Heavy shade - even shade grass needs some sun. Deep shade will cause it to thin out and die.

Low fertility - moss loves low fertility.

Acidic soil - a low pH will hamper your grass, but is very appealing to moss

Compacted soil - your grass' roots can't grow into the soil if it's compacted. But moss doesn't really have roots, just tiny filaments that anchor it to the dirt. It absorbs moisture through its "leaves."

Constant moisture - drainage problems or simply overwatering in shade areas encourages moss growth, but can cause disease problems for grass.

No air circulation - poor air circulation also causes disease problems for grass.

What you can do to restore grass to those areas:

Get rid of the moss - This is easily done with a steel rake. Just rake it up and throw it away. "Moss killer" will kill the moss, but unless you do the following to restore good growing conditions for your grass, the moss will just come back.

Correct the shade problem - This is the kicker. If you cannot correct the shade problem, you may not be able to grow grass in those areas. Sometimes, simply pruning surrounding vegetation and low hanging tree limbs will create dappled sunlight that will work fine for shade grass like fescue. Pruning will help with air circulation, also. But if your deep shade is caused by buildings or hills or something you can't prune, you're out of luck on the grass. Fortunately, there are many beautiful ground covers that grow well in the shade, and there are several other alternatives, which may appeal to you more than mowing grass! See our page "The Dreaded Shade Areas" for ideas.

Do a soil test to check for low fertility and acidity - according to the results, apply the necessary lime to raise the pH level, and appropriate fertility.

Aerate if necessary - compacted soil is the result of air pockets being forced out of the soil either by flooding or by heavy traffic. Soil needs pockets in it for proper air, water and nutrient exchange. You can rent a core aerator or use a liquid aeration product. At GreenGrass, we offer a liquid aeration product called GreenAer, which is part of our regular lawn care program.

Improve drainage if necessary - areas in the shade dry more slowly than those in the sun, so be careful not to overwater (unless, of course, it's 111° outside...) If you have real drainage problems that result in areas which constantly hold standing water, you will have to address those issues. If a drainage problem is just caused by compaction, the aeration will help.

Seed the areas with fescue in the fall. Fescue is a cool season grass, and its growing season starts in the fall. The best time to seed fescue is late September to mid-October. All fescue should be overseeded every year to keep it thick and healthy. Our climate in Oklahoma is really too hot for fescue, so you are likely to lose some of it each year, especially in 100 degree weather! See our seeding fescue page for more info!

Wait a Minute! I LIKE moss! How do I get some?

Moss can be lush and beautiful and looks right at home next to ferns! Be sure you have conditions conducive to moss growth as outlined above. Partial to full shade is a must for most mosses. It's best to find some moss somewhere else and pull up a patch of it (find one growing in conditions similar to yours.) Scratch up your bare dirt, wet it, and press the moss into it. Some small, light rocks on top will hold it in place. Keep it moist until it's attached (tug on it lightly to be sure it doesn't come up.)

If you can't find any local moss, there are several websites where you can order it, like Moss Acres and Mountain Moss. You can even buy beautiful stones containing moss and make a little desk or coffee table garden - check out Moss & Stone Gardens.

Want to grow moss on rocks, pavers, or flowerpots?

Marie Iannotti from About.com offers the following Moss Recipe:

2 cups buttermilk or plain yogurt
1 to 1 1/2 cups of chopped up moss, either fresh or dried

Mix until creamy and spreadable. If it's too thick, add a little water. If too thin, add some more moss. Let the mixture sit for a day or two to start the process. Then, paint it onto the surface where you want moss. It may take 6 weeks before you see moss, and you may see mold before that, so be patient!

West Nile Virus in Tulsa - Mosquito Control & Repellants

Kathy Wilder — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:09:00 GMT

West Nile virus rears its ugly head this year, after only one case in Oklahoma in 2011. Already, we have 8 cases in the state, 4 of them in Tulsa county. While health officials assure us that the chance of contracting the disease is very low, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful. After all, even if only one in 100 mosquitoes carries the disease, there are 4 people in Tulsa to whom that made no difference. Let's send them all some good thoughts to recover quickly!

Everyone recommends using a repellent containing DEET. DEET was actually developed by the U.S. Army after experiencing jungle warfare during WW II. While DEET is very effective, some people are sensitive to it, and it may cause skin irritation, and it may dissolve your clothes. DEET is a solvent and can melt breathable fabrics like Gore-Tex. Yikes! The EPA has reported instances of "potential DEET-associated seizures," although the chances of that happening are one in 100 million. Scary, but we have to remember that DEET has probably saved countless lives. Some alternatives to DEET are:

Icaridin which is colorless and odorless - other names for it include picaridine, KBR 3023 and trade names Natrepel 8 hour, Bayrepel® and Saltidin®. According to WHO (the World Health Organization,) icaridin has excellent repellent qualities, often exceeding those of DEET.

Bite-Blocker® is a plant-based repellant made from coconut oil, soybean oil and geranium oil.

Oil of lemon eucalyptus

Avon's Skin-So-Soft® bath oil

If you opt for a natural product for mosquito repellent, bear in mind that you may have to apply it more often! Something as mild as Skin-So-Soft® may need to be re-applied every 30 minutes!

The Mississippi State Department of Health has an excellent page on their website about mosquito repellents and repellent safety.

GreenGrass offers a Mosquito Control program, so if you'd like to have your yard sprayed for Mosquitos, please feel free to check out our Mosquito Control page or request a free Mosquito Control estimate!

A Little Mosquito Trivia

If you want to go some place where there are no mosquitoes, I'm afraid you'll have to move to Antarctica. Mosquitoes are actually a family of flies called Culicidae, and there are 3500 species of them. The West Nile virus-laden critters we're dealing with are Culex mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes are immune to the viruses they carry. West Nile virus is an arbovirus (ARthropod-BOrne)

One of the best mosquito repellents was introduced in the 1880's - window screens!

Mosquitoes cause millions of deaths in the world each year.

Although mosquitoes can carry yellow fever, malaria, dengue fever, Rift Valley fever, and the parasite that causes elephantiasis, EEE and WEE are considered to be two of the most dangerous mosquito-borne diseases in the U.S., due to the high mortality rate. Eastern equine encephalitis and Western equine encephalitis can cause disease in humans, horses and some bird species.

Dragonfly nymphs are perhaps the most valuable natural predators of mosquitoes, since they gobble up mosquitoes in all stages of development.

Bats and purple martins eat a lot of insects, but the actual amount of mosquitoes they eat comprises a very small part of their diet.

Only female mosquitoes bite.

Lawn Care Mistakes - 16 things NOT to do

Kathy Wilder — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:11:00 GMT

We always try to educate our customers on the proper care of their lawns. But we mostly tell them what to do, not what NOT to do. Here's the short story:

Watering too little
Watering too frequently
Hand-watering the lawn with a hose
Mowing too little
Mowing too short or too high
Mowing with a dull blade
Weed-eating against tree trunks
Killing bermuda runners and seed heads
Leaving objects on the lawn
Seeding fescue in the spring
Seeding bermuda
Pulling weeds
Skipping fertilizer during a drought
Using Roundup in your lawn when it's green
Expecting grass to grow where the dogs run
Scalping or dethatching at the wrong time

And here's the long story:

Watering too little, too frequently, or hand-watering the lawn. Your lawn needs
1 1/2" to 2" of water per week, year-round. Watering deeply twice per week is MUCH more beneficial than sprinkling it daily. Hand-watering your grass is useless unless you stand out there all day. Read all about proper watering.

Mowing too little, mowing too short or too high, or with a dull blade. You should mow frequently enough that you mow off only 1/3 of the grass blade each time, and you don't have to bag the clippings. Mowing off more of the grass blade at once will result in a brown lawn after mowing. Fescue must be mowed much higher than bermuda, or it will not survive in the summer. Mowing with a dull blade will tear the grass, not cut it, and result in a brown lawn. Read all about proper mowing.

Weed-eating against tree trunks. Randy Pirtle, OSU County Extension Director, says "One of the leading causes of death to trees in the landscape is what we refer to as weed-eater or lawnmower 'blight'.” In other words, keep your lawn mower and your weed whacker away from tree trunks! To make this easier, mulch around your trees so you don't have to get near the trunk. Put down mulch 2-3" thick, keeping it a few inches away from the trunk. Problem solved!

Killing bermuda runners and seed heads. What? You have no idea how many people think bermuda runners and bermuda seed heads are weeds! And they spray them, trying to kill them!! Bermuda is a warm-season grass that spreads by underground rhizomes and above-ground stolons. These are bermuda stolons (or "runners"):

The picture bottom right shows bermuda seed heads:

Note: If you are mowing properly, you won't see the seed heads. If you don't edge, you will see stolons along the curb, on the driveway & sidewalks, etc. (and, of course, in your flowerbeds!)

Leaving objects on your lawn. Whether it's trash cans, or a trampoline or a garden hose, it will kill the grass.

Seeding fescue in the spring, seeding bermuda. Fescue's growing season starts in the fall and therefore it should be seeded in the fall. Bermuda spreads, so if it's mowed, watered, and fertilized properly, you should never have to seed it!

Pulling weeds. Weed seeds can lie dormant in the soil for 40 years and longer! When you pull a weed, you disturb the dormant seeds, and give them an excuse to germinate. That's why you always see them in the flowerbeds where you dig all the time! Weed roots also have root hairs, so when you think you got the roots, you didn't really. (Also, if we can't see them, we can't spray them.)

Skipping the fertilizer during a drought. It seems logical that when your grass is dormant and brown it doesn't need fertilizer. Couldn't be farther from the truth! Your grass is stressed when it's dormant in the summer and needs nourishment - its root system is still active. When the rains come, it will spring back to life so fast you won't believe it...IF it's been fertilized.

Using Roundup© in your lawn when it's green. Roundup© is a great product, but it's designed to take out anything actively growing. While it will kill weeds, it will also kill your grass. Any product containing glyphosate will do the same. ALWAYS read the label on weed control materials.

Expecting grass to grow where the dogs run. Won't happen! Dogs running and lying in the same place day after day will compact your soil until it's hard as a rock, and nothing will grow there. Same goes for heavy traffic areas or the place under your child's swing. There are solutions for compaction, but unless you change the circumstances, they won't help.

Scalping or dethatching too early or too late. Scalping or dethatching bermuda or zoysia lawns should be done late enough that there is no longer a chance of frost, and early enough that the grass has time to recover before winter, and never when it's stressed from heat or drought.

Tulsa Lawn Care & Drought - Keep it Green or Let it Go Brown?

Kathy Wilder — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:48:00 GMT

Is anyone else tired of hearing the same weather forecast for weeks on end? "100 degrees plus and a 2% chance of rain on Tuesday the week after next, which could be in the form of a downburst which will knock out your power." Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but not much!

Lawn care, at this point, is difficult. Many lawns have gone dormant, because their owners have given up on watering, or because they don't want a huge water bill ruining their budgets, or their city has instituted water rationing. Other homeowners are trying to water but can't seem to get enough water on their lawns to keep them green. Some are undecided and don't know whether to keep watering or not. The picture shows the difference between a watered lawn and an un-watered lawn in this drought.

If you want to let your lawn go dormant:

Bermuda and zoysia lawns ONLY will go dormant in a drought and recover when it rains. Fescue lawns will simply die without water. You can reseed fescue late September to early October, but if you let all your existing fescue die, you'll be starting from scratch trying to re-establish it.
Try to water a little, like half an inch, at least every other week. If your lawn gets no water at all, it will have a hard time recovering and might sustain damage.
Don't forget the fertilizer on your bermuda & zoysia - the root system of your grass is still active, and fertilizing now will help it recover more quickly when we do get rain.
Be sure to water your expensive landscape ornamentals and young trees. Remember, mulch is your friend. Even large, established trees may be having a hard time, although damage might not be visible until next year, or even the next. Trees can be very slow to show drought damage.

NOTE: I had a beautiful, large Dawn Redwood next to my driveway that started dropping leaves last year. By the time we noticed and started power-watering, it was apparently too late. It did not leaf out this year. Dead!

I found a video from Salisbury Greenhouse about deep root watering for your trees. Wish I'd had one of those gadgets! I also checked online and and found a deep-root waterer from Lowe's for $19.98, but they were out of them in the stores, and I had to order one. They don't look as fancy as the one on the video, but I've never used any of them, so can't recommend one over the other. I'll let you know how it works out when I get it!

If you want to try to keep it green:

Instead of a sprinkler, consider turning on the hose and just putting it on the ground. When that area is saturated, move it to another area. In this heat, evaporation is quick, and small water droplets sprayed high in the air can disappear before they hit the ground. A soaker hose would work, also.
Spraying your grass with a hand-held nozzle on your hose is a complete waste of time and water, unless you stand there for 30 minutes for each area of your lawn.
If you have automatic sprinklers, be sure you're getting full coverage, or you might have some brown spots that are simply not getting watered.
Mow fescue as high as you can, or don't mow at all if it isn't growing.
It's okay to keep your bermuda a little higher than usual, but be consistent. Don't mow it high and then mow it short the next time, or it will definitely look brown.
Water as early in the day as you can. But if the only time you can water is in the evening, that's definitely better than not watering at all.

And on a completely different note...have anyone ever seen an asparagus fern bloom? I always plant them in my shade garden as annuals, but this year they all came back, and they are flourishing and flowering! Adorable little flowers. I've never seen these ferns flower before - maybe they need to be there for two years?