NOFA's Organic Lawn & Turf Course adds NJ stop Aug. 18

One of the aims of NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association), headquartered in Stevenson, CT, is to spread the word about organic growing methods and discourage the use of synthetic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Its members — which include include farmers, homeowners, grounds professionals and land care professionals — stress the importance of soil health and landscape diversity.

NOFA has traditionally confined its educational efforts to New England. On Aug. 18 it will move a bit further south by offering one of its three, one-day Organic Lawn & Turf Courses at Duke Farms, Hillsborough, NJ.

The other two are set for Aug. 07 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, (in conjunction with the NOFA Mass Summer Conference) and Aug. 20 at Manchester Community College, Manchester, CT.

To learn more about the NOFA events or to register, click here. — Ron Hall

Vote for one of our own in Emerging Entrepreneur contest

Here’s a chance to help one of our own receive positive national recognition. Kelly Giard, founder of Clean Air Lawn Care, is one of five finalists in the Emerging Entrepreneur contest sponsored by Entrepreneur magazine. The winner will be determined by votes on the Entrepreneur Web site.

I chatted with Giard at some length this past winter and was impressed with his environmentally friendly approach to lawn maintenance. He and his creative young team, based in Fort Collins, CO, are creating a nationwide network of companies dedicated to using biodiesel and battery-powered lawn maintenance equipment (charged with solar power).

Yes, his idea might have been a bit ahead of available technology when he started his company a couple of years ago, but recent introductions of battery-powered riding mowers by several major manufacturers suggest that Clean Air Lawn Care has a bigger and brighter future ahead of it.

To learn about Giard and his company, click here.

To see a video of Kelly and to vote for him, visit the Entrepreneur Web site here. — Ron Hall

Garden tours offer great ideas and nice surprises

Steve Tusen is a neighbor I didn’t know, not until this past Sunday that is. Steve’s Garden Railroad was one of 10 local gardens selected this year’s Garden Tour & Tea in our small city of Port Clinton on Lake Erie's south shore in Northwest Ohio.

My wife Vicky’s garden was one of the 10 selected for the Tour hosted by the local public arts council. This is the second year the council selected her garden. She was honored and she enjoys sharing her garden with friends and other visitors. But she also loves to visit other gardens. So when she, as part of the Tour, saw Steve’s Railroad Garden she hurried back to get me, knowing my love for electric trains.

Living just blocks from our home, Steve has quietly put together an incredible Railroad Garden, complete with miniature, hearty plant material. Over the years he has trained and assembled a collection of more than 50 bonsai trees and shrubs, many of which have been incorporated into his backyard, G-scale, electric train layout. While he takes the train and its rolling stock in for the winter, he leaves the track, which is brass, and the plant material in place. Both survive northern Ohio’s bitter winters nicely, he says.

Steve worked for 36 years at a nearby auto parts manufacturing facility until it closed suddenly about 3 years ago. Soon thereafter he took his skills and love for horticulture (Steve is a Master Gardener) to the Mulberry Creek Herb Farm in nearby Huron, OH. Mulberry Creek Herb Farm specializes in producing and selling certified organic herbs and miniature perennials.

He says he has been creating bonsai for about 17 years and he began building his backyard garden railroad about 13 years ago. Each year he produces more bonsai and also adds to the detail of his railroad, which is one of the biggest secrets in our small city, although Steve in a genial, generous kind of guy, and freely shares what he’s learned, both the good and the not so good, in creating miniature plants and also building an outdoor model railroad.

Even if you’re a professional landscaper (and especially if you’re a professional landscaper), don’t pass up an opportunity to tour local gardens or talk with local gardeners. My guess is that you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you see and learn. — Ron Hall

Mow higher for healthier grass and healthier environment

Why is it that people, including some professional cutters, keep mowing lawns so short?

Travel through just about any neighborhood and you will see turfgrass on most properties mowed to within a half inch of its life.

Yes, pros that mow by the calendar (billing so many cuts per season) are sometimes at fault, but homeowners are mostly to blame. For some reason (We happen to think it's a kind of therapy for many) they crank up their mowers once a week regardless of the height or health of the grass. They don’t realize that if they let their grass grow another inch higher they would have better looking lawns with fewer weeds in their yards. Beyond that they would be doing their pocketbooks and the environment a big favor.

The U.S. EPA says that Americans spend more than 3 billion hours annually using lawn and garden equipment, and that a gasoline-powered push mower emits as much hourly pollution as 11 cars and a riding mower emits as much hourly pollution as 34 cars

The U.S. EPA and lawn & garden manufacturers are working to address the question of emissions. Beyond looking to technology and installing catalytic converters on mowers, the best way to reduce emissions is to mow turfgrass only when it needs mowing, and not according to a calendar.

Follow these 3 easy tips and you will save time, reduce emissions and have healthier turf with fewer weeds:

— Never cut more than one-third of the turfgrass at a time
— Keep your mower blades sharp
— Set your mower high

Here are the recommended heights for the various species of turfgrass (consider a higher cut during periods of dry weather):

Fine-leaf fescues — 2 in. to 3 in.
Turf-type tall fescues — 2 in. to 3 in.
Perennial ryegrass — 2 in. to 3 in.
Kentucky bluegrass — 2 in. to 3 in.
Zoysiagrass — 1.5 in. to 2 in.
Buffalograss — 2 in. to 3 in.
Common Bermudagrass — 1 in. to 2 in.
Hybrid Bermudagrass — .75 in. to 1.5 in.
Centipedegrass — 1 in. to 2 in.
St. Augustinegrass — 2 in. to 3 in.

Try mowing a bit higher, if for no other reason, than as an experiment. We think you will be very happy with the way your property or properties look after a while.

The LM Staff

We're doing better than most...so far anyway

For $3,300 you can buy a report from Packaged Facts telling you that the lawn and garden industry is cranking along relatively well in this sick economy, especially compared to other industries. OK, so the landscape/lawn service industry is not going gang-busters like it was in the 1990s and earlier this decade. To my knowledge, nobody in the industry has yet had to slink to Washington D.C., hat in hand, begging for a handout, right?

That said, here are some interesting tidbits — read into them what you want — culled from an online article by Media Post Publications:

— the lawn and garden market now stands at $24.12 billion, a decline of -0.1% this past year.

— spending on lawn care has been dropping since 2004 when total sales rose 4.9%. the '05 sales rise was 3.6%, with 1.6% in '06 and a half of a percent in '07 and '08.

— lawn treatment services (fert/pest controls) are expected to decline 1% to 2% the next three years then rebound slightly.

The biggest positive in the article was the growth of the "organic" segment of the industry that until recently was growing at a double-digit rate. This year it's expected to post 5% growth and reach about $485 million in sales.

For a more industry-focused view of the landscape/lawn service industry, read the '09 State of the Industry report in the June issue of Landscape Management magazine, almost certainly the source for some of the data used in the $3,300 report.) — Ronnie Hall

Joe says get ready for the 'blue-collar' revival

I like the name “Joe”. Everybody that I’ve known by that name has been a regular guy, hard worker, dependable, uncomplicated.

So it’s not surprising to me that a guy named Joe Lamacchia wrote a book titled “Blue Collar and Proud of It.” I’m happy to report, though not surprised, that Joe is a landscaper. He owns and operates Joe Lamacchia Landscape in the Boston area.

Joe’s proud of being a blue collar guy and being a landscaper, and he writes that America is going to need a lot more blue collar types — guys and gals — once this blasted recession starts loosening up.

His message to young people is that there will be no shortage of career opportunities for people that enjoy working with their hands and are willing show up everyday with a lunch pail and eager to put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wages.

Joe predicts that the services of trained, skilled tradespeople will be in ever greater demand as the U.S. population ages. And who do you think is going to install, maintain and repair all of the water- and energy-efficient systems that will give the green generation its complexion? You got it — the plumbers, electricians, roofers . . . and, of course the landscapers, says Joe.

Check out the Web site http://bluecollarandproudofit.com and let Joe know what you think. — Ron Hall

Mortgage companies not good neighbors make

My wife, Vicky, and I live on a brick street shaded by massive silver maples in a city of approximately 6,000 people in northern Ohio. Apart from the silver maples, which occasionally shed a huge limb and crush a car during a storm, peace and tranquility reign in our neighborhood of 70- to 90-year-old, wood-frame homes. Several of our neighbors use lawn service companies to maintain their properties, but most of them do their own mowing and cleanups. The lots are small, some as small as 50 X 100 ft., so there generally isn’t much to mow or maintain.

The property adjacent to our property, however, is twice the size of ours, and one of the worst eyesores in the city. The couple that lived there for more than 30 years is gone. The woman died of heart failure perhaps five years ago, and her husband suffered a stroke three years ago and was placed in the county home by his children. We miss them. They were good neighbors. Nobody has lived in the home since, and that's the heart of the problem.

Nobody apart from the neighbor on the other side of the property and myself have mowed the lawn, trimmed the shrubs or removed the weeds since then. We shared this chore for more than two years. For all practical purposes the house and property seemed to have been forgotten. Apart from a “for sale” sign placed in the front yard of the property for several months the first year of the home’s vacancy, there’s been no activity there. None. That was until this past April when a contractor showed up and informed us, the nearest neighbors, that he had been hired by a mortgage company (he wouldn’t tell us the name of the company) to maintain the property. He gave us a phone number to call if anything, such as vandalism, happened to the property.

He also informed us that his company had been contracted to mow and maintain 600 properties, most of them, we surmised from our brief conversation, wards of banks or mortgage companies.

He also informed us NOT to mow the property anymore.

“The mortgage company doesn’t want ANYONE on the property,” he said as friendly as he could.

More than six weeks later, nobody has mowed the property, that is apart from a scout leader and his son, who cut the front yard two weeks ago, an act of community service. Even they viewed mowing the back of the property, trimming overgrown hedges and cutting down the huge weeds growing alongside the property’s fence and house as more of a job than they cared to tackle.

When we called the number given to us by the contractor to report a gutter falling from the house and also the disintegrating condition of the property, we were assured both would be taken care of. The lady answering our call again warned us NOT to mow or ENTER the property. And no, she would not tell us the name of the mortgage company responsible for the home.

If you’re a contractor and you’ve read this far, share your experiences in maintaining foreclosed properties owned by banks or mortgage companies.

Has it been a profitable experience? Or a pain you know where?? — Ron Hall