Get Rid of Your Lawn (or some of it)

You can save money and help the environment by reducing the size of your lawn, according to Jerome Belanger in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living.

Belanger points out, amongst other stats, that 28 to 40 billion dollars are spent a year in the USA on lawn care. According to the EPA, lawn mowers use 800 million gallons of gas per year. Running a gas mower for one hour is putting as much pollution into the air as 8 cars driving at 55 mph for an hour. Lawn mower accidents are nearly as many as involving hand guns.

Irrigation systems to keep lawns green use gallons of water and the electricity to run the system. Not to mention the irrigation system install price, repair and maintenance.

Have you considered landscaping sections of your lawn area and reducing its overall size? Relegating lawn to specific uses, such as for the children, the dogs, your golf practice and re-thinking how you use the remainder of the space in your yard is a first step.

Your lawn can be converted into a wildflower meadow that requires virtually no maintenance and if planted with perennials, will return each summer. You may need to add seed every once in awhile, but you have eliminated the mowing and you will attract hummingbirds, songbirds and butterflies. Not to mention, the gorgeous bouquets you or the children can gather for your dining table.

How about converting the space into edible landscaping and growing some of your own food? Edible gardens can be a thing of beauty to behold, with neat, trimmed beds and wonderful colors and the benefit of homegrown, organic foods for your table. Here at our house in Ortonville, we are converting a 48′ x 56′ space of lawn into a traditional Native American garden with corn, pumpkins and sunflowers. The pumpkins keep the critters from getting in the corn and the sunflowers. We will dry the sunflowers to feed the songbirds in fall, and harvest the corn for ourselves, our local food bank and our livestock. The pumpkins are just plain fun to carve, when they don’t become pies or bread.

You can also replace lawn with groundcover, such as sedum. An English Garden with its stone walls, paths and benches along with roses and lavender, maybe a fountain, would make a unique front yard. Those of you familiar with the children’s classic The Secret Garden, know what fun and wonder an English garden can be for the entire family.

How about a courtyard instead of lawn? How about a pond instead of a stretch of lawn? How about planting trees? Everyone knows that planting a tree reduces your carbon footprint.

Think of your lawn as having the potential to be an Outdoor Room.

If you are interested in converting any of your lawn into natural landscaping for you and your family to enjoy, please contact us.

Books about this subject:

• American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn by Ted Steinberg
• Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn by Frtiz Haeg and others
• Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community by Heather Coburn Flores
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living by Jerome D. Belanger

Cleaning Bricks

Cleaning, sealing, and sanding of existing brick paver sidewalks and patios should be performed every 2 – 3 years.

The sealing of bricks should not be done more often than this.  Excessive sealing could result in a build up of sealer and even produce a hazy or cloudy appearance to the pavers.

If this does occur we should be able to remedy the problem by diluting the sealer with a stripper or a thinner. This is something that the average homeowner should not try on their own.

While cleaning brick pavers use a power washer and “blast” the sand out of the joints. Now don’t go crazy with this. If you blast too much out, you could get down to the bedding sand, and this could cause the pavers to settle and become uneven — creating a costly repair.

Brick pavers don’t usually need chemical cleaning. Washing with a power washer works well, but if the pavers have stain from hard water or oil from vehicles, there are some good products that can usually remove the stains but not always or completely.

If your pavers are not sealed and the contactor used polymeric sand to fill the joints the pavers may not need sanding for 4 – 5 years. If you don’t have polymeric sand in the joints then your pavers will need sanding every year, and I suggest you spend the extra few dollars and upgrade to polymeric sand. As a contractor I only use polymeric sand.

 

The State of the Michigan Snowplow Industry??

Will the Michigan snow plow industry implode itself? Why are profit margins shrinking to dangerously low levels or disappearing entirely after the 2007/2008 season when we experienced 71.7 inches of snowfall, and our average is 42.4 inches? Didn’t we prove our worth as a valuable service?

As of mid-January 2009, we had already met the entire season average for snowfall; yet, our won bids came in lower than ever while costs continue to rise. In one and half months we have bought as much product and used as much labor as an entire average season. Couple this with salt vendors demanding cash up front for entire loads of salt, salt going from 100.00$ a ton to 170.00$ a ton in this short period, Michigan salt vendors running out of bulk salt, customers demanding black and wet pavement and seasonal contracts being split into five equal payments. Seasonal contracts that pay the same amount of money whether it snows thirteen times or thirty times.

How can this be happening? My husband has been plowing snow since 1981. His father, Don Porter, is often spoken of as the father of the snow plowing industry in Oakland County. He began pushing snow commercially on a large scale before anyone else. Snow plowing has always been worth it, but last winter began to change that.

From mid-November until mid-April snow plow contractors cannot go on vacation, they cannot plan outings, they may miss Holiday celebrations, they may not see their family for weeks at a time, they are on call 24/7, and when they work – it is hard, demanding, labor-intensive work. They are out in the worst of weather, driving on roads that the road commission hasn’t touched yet, often in the dead of night. It simply has to be worth it. It has to pay well and their work has to be valued.

But because of the economy, or so they say, bids this season had to be lowered in order to sell the job. We lost many bids and we sat right in the center of the bidding. We saw bids for so little money, we could not figure out what that contractor was thinking. Does that contractor not have liability insurance, not pay taxes, not buy any equipment, not have truck payments, what’s up? Why would that contractor not demand through the bid, value for their time and their employees’ efforts and sacrifices? Underbidding all the other contractors to such a degree will only hurt all the contractors, including the winning bid holder.

Eventually, customers will come to expect a very high level of service for a very low amount of money, and contractors will not be able to find employees willing to work under such conditions for such low amounts of money. Established contractors with years of experience and above the board businesses simply will not take on snow plowing contracts.

Part of this problem is the growth of snow plow contract brokers. These are large firms that have teams of salespeople who sell a seasonal contract at one price to the customer and then in order to make themselves money, hire a subcontractor at a significantly lower amount of money. Often these salespeople are presenting one image to the customer, such as black and wet pavement at all times, and another to the subcontractor, such as “Yes, we know there is a salt shortage and salt should be used conservatively.” These brokers often promise subcontractors work and then fail to deliver but not until the bid season is over. The subcontractor may have been working for the firm for several years, delivering a high level of service, and expanding their capital investment to meet the demands of the contracts. But when the firm loses the contracts, there is no real sense of loyalty to the subcontractors. This puts the subcontractor in a desperate position and nearly forced into accepting a contract, any contract, that is bid too low.

As the broker will point out, “You subcontractors are a dime a dozen and there are many willing to work for very little pay.”

And since it is the subcontractor who has purchased hundreds of tons of salt with cash, the snow blowers, the trucks, the liquid chloride applicators and storage tanks, the snow plows, the shovels, they must continue to service the contract, desperately needing that last payment in May while the broker pressures them with threats of the loss of the contract if the unreasonable expectations are not met.

What these brokers fail to understand is that the subcontractors, who are capable of delivering the service the customer demands, will no longer be willing to work for, what my Grandmother would call — peanuts.  Yes, right now because of the economy, we have a plethora of guys with trucks and a plow who will take any peanut you throw their way,  any bid to keep their business going through the rough times.

The economy will not stay down and what then? Is the snow plow industry counting on salt being cheaper, fuel staying at current prices, liability insurance suddenly dropping? Are we counting on a new group of illegal immigrants who will work for cash, under the table, plowing snow and shoveling sidewalks? Is that where we want to take our industry? Our American sons and daughters running hysterically when we offer them a career as a snow plow contractor?

Work our rears off, and never make enough money to support our families? Forget it! Break our backs and only hear complaints? Forget it!

It is up to the Michigan snow plow industry to determine its future as a viable option for Michiganders as a profitable business venture. It is up to each and every contractor to determine what contracts will pay next season and whether those contracts will prevent the industry from implosion. Why is your time and effort and sacrifice only worth a handful of peanuts?

 

Jennifer Porter

Ten Dollar Hole for a Two Dollar Plant

Spend ten dollars on a hole for a two dollar plant. Spend money for the proper soil amendments when planting new plants. The proper soil preparation is costly at first but will pay for itself over time.

Make sure the plants have the correct moisture level at planting time. Water them when dry before planting. Watering the plant after you have back filled may not guarantee the proper water exchange to the plant.

Make sure the soil ball of the plant is well moist throughout the first year after planting to help ensure the root system will grow and expand into the existing soil, giving the plant a more secure future to thrive.    

If you are going out of town after you have planted, make sure you have someone come and water — even if it will rain. And make sure they water enough. Keeping your new plants and trees properly watered their first year is well worth the time and ensures a good start for your investment. Plants and trees have different watering requirements, make sure you ask the nursery or your landscaper. Knowing how much will also prevent overwatering.

Ajuga Reptans

Spring Chores and Mulch

Get ready for planting season.

Soon the weather will break and that’s when you want to inspect your plantings for winter damage. During the visual inspection look closly at the plant’s stems / branches you will see the damage cuased by freezing, this will have a diferent color than the healthy stems. Using your pruners clip the damaged stem approximately 1/2 inch below the damaged stem. If you are not sure how much to prune off it is always better to be conservative on what / how much to prune, remember to always be mindful of the plant’s shape. Prune any damage you may find including damage from rabbits or mice.

Fertilize all your plants with a good balanced fertilizer. One of the best fertilizers you can buy is “osmacote”.

Prepare the beds for new mulch or by “tilling” up your existing mulch using a garden hook. You don’t have to add new mulch every year, if you do add mulch make sure the depth of the mulch does not exceed 4″. Too much mulch can be very damaging to your landscape.

Excess mulch can suffocate your plants and also create a hard pan — not allowing water to flow through the mulch to plants. Mulch is added to the beds to give plants a moisture retention and warm the soil. Good quality mulch can also add nutrients to the soil as it decomposes. I prefer to use Pine Bark mulch. I like this mulch for the rich color and more consistent size. It also adds some acidity to the soil.

Pine bark mulch costs around $40.00 per cubic yard. 

My second choice of mulch is shredded hardwood bark mulch. The only thing I have found with this mulch is it can become hard packed more easily then Pine Bark mulch. Hardwood mulch costs around $35.00 per cubic yard.

These mulches should be easily found at the local landscape supplier. One cubic yard of mulch will cover approximately 150 – 200 square feet @ 2 1/2 – 3″ thick.

You should expect to pay $35.00 – $45.00 per cubic yard to have it installed by a landscape professional.

Prune Trees in Spring!

Spring is around the corner. Don’t wait to prune your trees.

Make sure you prune any Oak trees now before the warm weather hits. Oaks should not be pruned in warm / hot weather or when the sap is running.  Oak trees can get Oak Wilt  if they are pruned in the wrong time.

Ornamental trees are much easier to prune when the leaves are off as you can see the structure of the tree. Take the time to study the structure of the tree then remove the unwanted vertical branches.

For weeping trees prune the lower branches up off the ground, thinning as you go.