Healthy Baby Grass

With that question, comes another question.  What type of grass seed are you putting out?  There are only so many really different types of grass that can be planted.  To name a few…Fescue, Bluegrass, Rye, Bermuda, Zoysia, St. Augustine.  Let’s start with the grasses that grow well in my area, Nashville, Tn.

Fescue is a great cool season grass that stays green yearround, but struggles in the dead of summer.  This grass should be planted in the Fall of the year.

Bluegrass and Rye are also both cool season grasses and should be planted in the Fall of the year.

Bermuda and Zoysia love the heat.  They thrive in the heat of the summer and go dormant in the cool of the winter.  These grasses can be put out by seed, and should be done about late June, into July.  Zoysia is much more common installing plugs or sod to get the best coverage the fastest.

St. Augustine does not grow in Tennessee.  It is only a southern turf.  In South Carolina they call it Charleston grass.  This one is nearly impossible to get by seed.  It always has to be put out by plug or sod.  This can be done almost yearround.

What is a plug you ask?  A plug is a 2 inch circle of grass, dirt and roots of the plant that is plugged into your soil.

Why is Fall the best time to plant grass seed?  The temperature is getting cooler in the Fall, Fescue takes about 2 weeks to germinate, so the plant has enough time to establish itself before the frost begin to come.  Then when the plant goes dormant for the winter, it continues to use all the rain from the winter to develop strong roots for the next season.  When planted in the spring, it is growing on the top and sometimes forgets to develop roots.

Happy Seeding

Example of Paver Installation

I have previously talked about the difference in a concrete patio, and a paver patio.  Today, I want to give you a brief overview on how to install a paver patio or sidewalk.  Please feel free to send me an email with any questions.  There is only so much info I can put into one blog!

The first thing you need to do is pick out the spot you want to put your patio.  It is very hard to install one if you don’t know where you are going to put it!  Usually, the upside down spray paint works well to help give a visual as you are working.  Reapplying the paint as the day goes on will be key to minimizing mess up time.

The second thing is decide whether you are going to dig down in the dirt to allow the pavers to be level with the current ground level, or if you want to lay the pavers high, and backfill dirt around the edges when the project is completed.  If you are going to dig, then now would be the time to do that.   Remember you will have to compensate for not only the depth of the paver, but also the fill rock underneath the paver.  If you dig too much dirt out, do not backfill with dirt!  Only backfill with rock.  Dirt will settle and end up causing your patio to be lumpy or unlevel.

The next thing will be to level the under rock for the pavers to sit on.  I use finely crushed limestone rock.  They call it quarter down, because the largest rock is a quarter inch and it goes down to a dust.  Some parts of the country it might be cheaper to get the DG (decomposed granite).  Whatever type of rock you use, make sure it is rock and NOT sand!  Sand will always give and take under the paver, leaving you with a mess down the road.  If your patio is of any good size, you will want to rent a machine vibrator.  If your patio is smaller, than you can get a manual tamping rod.  Either way, you want to level and compact the gravel that is the base for the pavers.

It is now time for the pavers.  There is no secret or trick to laying out the pavers.  If your gravel is done right than that only thing you have to do is make sure the pavers touch each other.  Install them in whatever pattern you so choose, and watch your patio take shape.  If you are worried about the edges being tight, there is a really cool edging product, made just for pavers.  I rarely use it, but I keep some with me all the time for emergencies. A standard hammer and chisel and a little practice, is all you need for breaking the blocks to fit around the edges.  A tile wet saw, a chop saw, even a circular saw with a mason blade can be used for cleaner cuts.  If you have the machine vibrator, I have seen people vibrate the block a little before grouting the edges.  I never have though.

The next to last step is sanding in the edges (grouting).  You can get whatever color sand you desire, and use a broom and sweep the sand into the cracks.  This is a process that usually takes me a couple days to complete.  I sweep, than I wet with a hose, or let it rain…then I sweep, and use a hose.  No matter your technique, you want all the edges completely filled with sand.  This is what holds everything in place.

The final step is the dirt and landscaping around the edges.  This is the easy part!

Well, now you know what it takes to install a paver patio or sidewalk.  Good Luck and

Happy Paving

Selective Herbicide

Non-selective Herbicide

This is really good question and can mean the difference in a weed free lawn and a grass free lawn.  Many people, including one of my employees, do not know the different between Round-up, and Weed-B-Gon.  To start off, Round-up is made exclusively by Monsanto, Inc.  They are a rather large company out west, that specialize in this product.  They are developing certain crops that are round-up resistant to help farmers save time and money growing crops.  I think it is pretty cool.  I have heard many of you think this company is the devil.  Weed-b-gon is product made by Ortho.  I have never been to Ortho like I have Monsanto, so I don’t know much about the company, except for the product.  Ortho makes a tremendous amount of different products for the home and garden.

Let’s start with Round-up.  Round-up is made of glysophate as its primary ingredient.  Long story short, it is a high powered salt water.  It works really well.  Round-up is called a non-selective herbicide.  Ever heard that term before?  Non-selective means that it does not care what it is, it will try and kill it.  Herbicide is the medical term for weed killer.  Just like fungicide, miticide, insecticide, etc.  Now, something that people are mistaken of is Round-up does not do anything to the soil.  You can soak the dirt and as soon as it dries you can plant flowers in that same spot.  Also, Round-up does not prevent seeds from emerging.  Round-up is a foliage killer, meaning that the chemical has to touch foliage in order to kill that plant.  Plants take in their nutrients and such through their ‘skin’, so that is where the round up needs to touch them.  Round-up will kill just about everything it touches, so do not spray anything that you want alive.  (In my opinion, usually a little overspray on a shrub will do nothing to damage the shrub!).

Now for Weed-B-Gon (wbg).  Wbg is made of the active ingredients Triclophy and Dicamba.  That means nothing to even me, except that it is different than Round-up.  We call Wbg a selective Herbicide.  Selective means that this product will target certain types of weeds and leave other plants alone.  This product is designed for you to spray all over your lawn, it will target the broadleaf weeds, such as dandelions and clover, and leave the good grass alone.  It can damage flowers in the flower bed if you get too much on them, and can burn the grass if you over concentrate an area.  This product is not designed to use on driveways, or anywhere that you are wanting complete kill of everything.  That is Round-ups job.

So now you know the difference between and selective and non-selective herbicide.  Don’t be scared of these products, they do not harm the environment if used properly, and are virtually harmless to animals once they are dry.

Happy Spraying

Look at the Beautiful Stripes!

That is a question I have gotten for years.  I have been mowing lawns for about 21 years now and have owned and used many different types of mowers during that time.  Yes, my favorite is the standard zero turn rider mower.  I personally like the Exmark brand, but other brands have succeeded in matching quality and efficiency over the years.

So, how do you ‘stripe’ a yard.  Well let’s begin by explaining what a ‘stripe’ is.  A stripe is where you make your lawn have a light and a dark pattern, every other row of the mower.  Most people really know this by watching baseball fields, and golf courses.  Baseball fields usually have the most dramatic stripes.  Football will typically stripe every five yard blocks, making it not quite as noticeable.  Most homeowners, once they know the technique, can stripe their own yards with their own equipment.  However, a few factor come into play that we are going to discuss.  Things such as type of grass, type of mower, type of blades, angle of the sun can affect how a stripe looks.

Let’s begin with the type of grass.  I will qualify this with I live in Nashville, TN and have all my life, so I know this area extremely well.  We can grow Fescue, Rye, Bermuda, and Zoysia really well here.  The different types of grass make a huge impact on the type of stripe you can get in your yard.  In my opinion, Fescue makes the best stripe for me.   Rye is not a good permanent grass so I will leave it alone.  Bermuda and Zoysia have to be mowed every couple to days to get and keep a good stripe.  Just like the ball fields on TV.  I don’t know anything about St. Augustine grass, so please someone give me feedback on that wonderful southern grass.

The type of blades are huge to creating great stripes.  To create good stripes, you must have suction or a vacuum effect under your mower.  Some of the older, less powerful mowers are going to struggle with this.  They are designed to just barely exit the clippings outside the deck.  You will just have to experiment with your own mower.   One thing that many of the commercial cutters have done, is started using ‘high lift’ blades.  These are nothing more that blades that have a very dramatic tilt behind the cutting part of the blade that creates a huge amount of vacuum under the mower.  In a minute we will discuss why this is important.  I had a neighbor years ago that put high lift blades under his older, less powerful mower, still only mowed his yard once a week, and the mower would not cut the grass.  It would bog down and not go for all the suction it was creating.  He ended up putting regular blades back on until he bought a new mower.  If this happens, you can cut the grass more often so the grass is not so thick.

The type of mower does not affect the stripe at all most of the time.  But the secret to the stripe is once you cut one straight line, you must immediately come back the opposite direction on the next row.  What you are ultimately doing in laying the grass down in one direction, then coming back and laying the grass down in the other direction.  Obviously a zero turn mower makes this process extremely easy, but even a regular mower can do this.  Over the last couple of years, commercial mowers have become so powerful that the suction of the deck stood the grass straight up and would not lay it down.  They created a roll bar attachment for under the mower that rolls on the ground and lays the grass down behind the mower.  Dixie Chopper uses little chains to do the same thing.  Ever seen that before?

One last thing that is just been my personal experience.  Once I stripe a yard, the angle of the sun can make a huge impact on how the stripe looks.  That goes back to laying the grass down for the sun to see each stripe opposite.  I can walk to the side of the yard where the sun is in front of me and the stripe is not there at all, then walk to the opposite side where the sun is behind me and I see a golf course.  The more often I cut the grass, the better the lines look.

If anyone has had some new revelations about the stripe or you have any questions, please write me and let’s discuss it.

Happy Striping