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With more days in a row over 30 Celsius than we've had in 70 years, it amazes me the number of homeowners I see on a daily basis with their sprinklers on in the middle of the day.

Please don't do this. 

First; a substantial portion of your watering efforts are lost to evaporation. Secondly; you run a greater risk of burning your lawn in these excessive temperatures. And, third; depending on your timing you can promote turf disease.

The recommended time for watering is early morning when the lawn can dry more evenly and the temperatures are more bearable.

Also, if a lawn is emerald green during this stretch of weather, I would bet it is being watered too much.

While it may be more aesthetically pleasing, it is not necessarily beneficial for the overall health of the grass. Watering daily creates a lazy lawn where the root zone is not forced to delve deeper for water sources making it more susceptible to weed and insect infestation.

A similar green can be achieved by watering deeply once, or at excessive times like these, twice a week while leaving the mower height at 3 1/2 inches, which is approximately above your ankle. 

If you still need to have the absolute green, then consider over-seeding with clover. Clover is more drought tolerant, feeds nitrogen into your lawn, does not need to be mowed frequently, and due to its horizontal root system, is avoided by damaging insects, most notably Chinch bugs who love the heat.

If you adopt all these practices, you may still have some heat stress in high-sun areas and places close to heat sources like pavement and patio stones, but in the long run, your lawn will be much healthier in its recovery.

Always look on the blight side.

For as long as I can remember I have been telling everyone to raise their mower height going into the summer to 3 1/2 inches and water their lawns deeply once or twice a week in extreme conditions.
Really 1 1/2 inches of water is essential to maintaining some health in the root zone. No matter if you have a sprinkler system or some other delivery method, a good benchmark of how long 1 1/2 inches is in time is simple. Place an empty tuna or cat food tin on the area being watered and however long it takes to fill the tin is how long you need to water that zone for.

But as the scorching 30 c days pile up and the natural precipitation disappears to nothing more than a brief passing shower, the lawns suffer no matter what you do.

And if you haven't been watering and cutting properly, it's too late to start mending fences now, that ship has sailed.

With the earlier fluctuations in temperatures in May/June another problem reared its ugly head- most notably- Ascochyta Blight. Although proper cutting and watering may not have prevented this turf disease, it would have gone a long way to lessening the effects. With the ever changing and unpredictable weather these two practices have never been so important than they are now.

So what to do?

Patience is key. Grass is a very resilient organism and will recover with time and TLC.
In severe cases, bagging your clippings when you can eventually cut again is recommended. Kelp-based products have also been known to help in recovery.

Hopefully when it does rebound we don't forget and repeat the same mistakes next year.

Mow and water your lawn properly and we can stop having this discussion.

Spring?

It has been spring for about a week, yet it is the furthest thing from anyone's mind as Covid-19 continues to rampage. With it, many businesses have been affected and in our case, lawn care is not exactly at the top of customer's wish lists, so we have suffered as well.

As for service, we still plan to start on schedule (early April), falling into the category of property maintenance and exempt from mandatory shut down.

As a precaution all our trucks are manned by one or two technicians max, have minimal contact with any customers, perform all applications outside at safe social distances, are supplied with gloves, disinfectant, and masks to help prevent spread.

We also demand frequent and vigorous washing of hands and will monitor daily for changes in health to any of our employees as we continue to treat this pandemic with the
utmost seriousness.

We felt it our duty to clarify our small part in all this.

Stay safe, stay healthy.

Ford vs For-Our-Weeds

When last we spoke about the potential amendment to the Ontario Cosmetic Ban, the Ford Provincial Government was considering changing the existing laws and went as far, in an email to me, to promise "fairness and certainty for all."

I took this to mean, I would either be added to the exemption list or have the highly coveted new weed control Civits for the 2020 season.

Well, the amendment has happened and here is the proposed "fairness  and certainty for all":

1) Cemeteries added to the exemption list with golf courses, farmers, sod growers and federally owned land.

2) The Provincial classification system reorganized to mirror Health Canada and the PMRA.

3) OPAC (Ontario Pesticide Approval Committee) will no longer be the middle man, slowing the process for new products.

But let's be clear: no pesticide exemption for licenced professionals in the lawn care industry as I implored. No fast track for the new weed control Civitas used by every other province but Ontario. No policing of illegal products obtained by crossborder and mailorder shopping.

I guess the Ford government likes losing all the tax revenue from out of province purchases and the dwindling growth of a lawn care industry in serious trouble?

There is so much cheating going on with illegal products and there is no equal balance.

Fairness and certainty for all?????

Keep in mind that the information posted above had to come to me from another source and even the Ministry of the Environment is in the dark concerning time tables and implementation. All this means I have no recourse but to go into my season using Fiesta weed control instead of a more effective product and watch as my equipment and trucks rust from the excessive iron.

I also have to order "Class 11" signs although they may be obsolete by the start of the season and I have to contend with customers who are confused as I am about what's going on.

Further attempts to communicate with the Conservatives over these changes have gone unanswered.

Perhaps they have their hands full with the teachers? Perhaps they don't care? Who's to say?

All I know is there are still losers after these changes, not to mention confusion. Any guesses what category I'm in?

In dealing with any government you have to accept there will be broken promises and lies. It's just that, I'm so tired of the same ones over and over and over again.

This Ford is no Shelby Mustang.

Episode IV- A New Hope

Normally with a title like this you'd expect a retro discussion of the Star Wars saga, but no, this does pertain to lawn-care or the potential future of it.

Sometime ago we sent the PC Provincial government a proposal for an amendment to the Liberals poorly executed cosmetic pesticide bylaw.

In the proposal we outlined the discriminatory nature of the current bylaw.
How it is being circumvented by homeowners and lawn-care providers alike, and how in letting the bylaw continue in its current form was costing the province millions in lost tax revenue going state-side or to other Provinces as well as the increase use of the health care system with respiratory ailments on the increase.

We recommended that in an amendment, only licenced professionals be allowed to apply class 4 products which would eliminate lawn-care technicians with minimal training.

That annual reports of usage be submitted to prevent overuse and perhaps applications be restricted to spring only to limit overuse.

Well, our latest response from the Ministry of the Environment-which just so happens to be the fourth in our correspondence-assure fairness for all when government returns to session October 28th (just before Halloween, and that's scary.)

Good news? Bad news?

Are they going to allow those who worked hard to achieve a licence, and build their businesses, the opportunity to use the proper tools again or are they going to ban everything across the board?

I tend to put my trust in hope and common sense. Hope that my words have awakened the sensibility or reason and compromise. Common sense, that the government isn't going to do something as rash as denying all.

Do they really want to mess with the Farmers, the deep pockets of the Golf Industry and allow invasive species of weeds to run rampant across infrastructure? I would certainly hope not.

I also don't think people would stand for rolls of sod coming with weeds embedded, or the loss of curb appeal to Queen's Park and other government entities.

So let us place our energy in a positive outcome, and hope that the lawn care industry can begin to grow again instead of contract.

Lets hope next May when the weeds start to rear their ugly yellow heads we have something more potent than harsh language, and May the force will be with us.

The road to recovery

You are a conscientious lawn care giver. On top of your lawn service, you make sure your lawn is hydrated in tough summer conditions, you hang your Japanese Beetle pheromone traps annually, you even apply soapy water at the first sign of chinch bug stress near your gardens and sunny areas of turf. But that is not all; you raise your mowing height to 3 1/2 inches during the hotter months and if you do get crabgrass along the outer edges of your lawn you are quick to pull it up and seed the affected area come Labour Day, and....this post is not for you.

This post is for the homeowners who are away for long stretches during the summer months and those of you with busy lives where multitasking your lawn into the mix is not on the radar. Or maybe you are just one of those people who believe having a lawn service should be enough and your part was done once you paid the bill?

So here is what your lawn probably looks like at this moment; there are dead pockets and brown patches of grass, perhaps portions of your lawn are bare or soon will be once all the crabgrass dies. And because there are insect issues, weed seeds have been stirred up in your soil and the weeds are starting to spread as well. You were cutting your lawn short to avoid more frequent maintenance and inside of two days of heat your grass burned and never returned.

So what to do now?

Grass is resilient, and even when it suffers this treatment it is not too late to recover in the fall.
Fall fertilization, aeration and over-seeding are key elements  in the recovery process and can bring back your turf from the brink in many cases. In some instances a nematode application may be required as well to deter further damage next spring.

Perhaps the most important lesson in all this is to lean from previous mistakes and be more vigilant when it comes to your grass. After all it is curb appeal for your property. I have seen many a house for sale with a lawn in horrendous shape. It sends out a subliminal message that, if the homeowner doesn't have pride enough in their lawn then what is the inside of the house going to look like?

So moving into 2020 with lawn care, take it to heart and let next year truly be the year of hindsight.

Don't be doomed to more of this.

Your lawn: the red-headed step child

With the heat of the summer in full swing, the cold rainy spring is a distant blur in the rear-view mirror. And yet, many forget, all the rain did your grass a world of good.

In all honesty, for most, their home lawn is not a priority---and it shows. It doesn't take more than a few days of relentless heat and no rain for a lawn to start showing signs of heat stress---a vision sadly seen too often over the past few weeks.

Your grass is a living, breathing ecosystem. It acts as a filtration for your air, aesthetically pleasing, it adds to your curb appeal, and when treated properly, provides a soft cushion for your various outdoor activities.

All it needs in return is a little TLC. Proper cutting---which at this time of the year means three inches or about the height of your ankle after it has been mowed and don't remove any more than a third of the blade when cutting. Adequate watering---an inch and a half per week minimum...and that is all.

I get it. Life is busy and a endless rapid stream of multitasking. Who has time to tend to these menial tasks properly?

But your lawn will give you so much in return.

It will take the pounding of your feet and patio furniture, the rambunctious pet behavior, the incessant digging of animals great and small, the canine urine and fecal matter and still smile up at you with a pleasant green warmth.

So try to remember these things when the high heat turns brutal, and stop doing things like this to save a few precious moments.

Because somewhere down the line it will cost you.