People usually replace their lawns for either maintenance or environmental reasons.  The costs of lawn maintenance include fuel for power mowers, toxic emissions, fertilizers and pesticides, water consumption and your weekend time.  Hiring a lawn care service will save you time and energy but the environmental costs remain.

According to GIMME GREEN, a documentary that examines the American obsession with the residential lawn:

• Lawns are America’s most irrigated crop.
• American’s spend more than 40 billion dollars a year on their yards.
• Americans apply more than 30,000 tons of pesticides to their yards every year.
• Of the 30 most used lawn pesticides, 17 are routinely detected in groundwater.
• The EPA finds that nearly half of these 30 pesticides are possible or probably carcinogens.
• The National Cancer Institute finds that children in households using lawn pesticides have 6.5 times greater risk of developing leukemia.
• In order to maintain all the lawns in America, it would take approximately 200 gallons per person per day.
• If present consumption patterns continue, two out of every three people on earth will live in water-stressed conditions by the year 2025.

Yet even those who object to lawns from a maintenance or environmental standpoint acknowledge that lawns can contribute to the beauty of a landscape.  John Greenlee, author of The American Meadow Garden said, “I understand what design purpose a lawn serves.  It’s a cool, simple panel that allows your eye to rest.  It doesn’t have the cacophony of a perennial border, and so I get what that does, but at what expense to the environment?”

Homeowners sometimes decide to replace lawns that are difficult to maintain in steep, shady, or difficult to access areas and on poorly drained or compacted soil.   If you have one of these problem areas or want to reduce or eliminate your lawn for environmental reasons, here are some alternatives. 

Have you heard the news? Urban Gardens, Inc., a landscape design and consulting firm located in Denver, Colorado and owned and operated by Sarah Christian, is now featured on Houzz.com.  The new profile can be viewed at www.houzz.com/pro/sarah-christian/__public.   Called the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design” by CNN, Houzz has the largest database of interior and exterior home design ideas on the internet, with over 1 million images of professionally designed homes and 12 million monthly users.  Photos can be browsed by style such as Mediterranean or Contemporary and geographic location or searched by design element such as pergola or sandstone patio and saved to virtual ideabooks.  It’s the equivalent of clipping design magazines to a scrapbook making ideas easier to search, save and share.  Houzz is also an online community with articles written by the design community, product recommendations, and a user forum.  Houzz.com is available as a free iPad app as well.  According to the New York Times it is “one of the rare nongaming apps with an average iTunes rating of five stars, after thousands of reviews, and the ratings are well deserved.”

Photos of Urban Gardens’s featured projects are now being added to user’s ideabooks, questions are being asked about the projects, and the company is being searched as a local professional.  Additionally, when clients work with Urban Gardens, both the client and Urban Gardens may share their ideabooks with each other.  Sarah Christian, Owner of Urban Gardens, Inc. shared her enthusiasm about Houzz and said “Having the images to refer to helps clients articulate more clearly their likes and dislikes which results in a better end product.  A picture is worth a thousand words.”  Homeowners also seem to be enthusiastic about Houzz. …To read more, click here to view official press release.

Excluding the handful of people who find weeding cathartic, most of us would prefer to spend our time outside doing something other than weeding.  Yet whether we enjoy weeding or not, most find it a necessary chore.  There are two strategies for dealing with weeds.  One is to try to prevent or at least minimize weeds in your lawn and garden beds, the other is to remove and control weeds once they take up residence.

Prevention

Prevention keeps weeds from occurring or increasing in your yard.  When installing lawn, make sure you purchase sod from local growers that grow weed-free sod or seed from local companies that sell nothing but seed and make sure the label indicates that it is 100 percent weed-free.  Most retail seed mixtures will contain some weed seed.  Once your lawn is established, the best defense against weeds is a lawn that is healthy, dense and actively growing.

Many weeds thrive in lawns where there is insufficient nitrogen because they need less nitrogen than grass.  Some of the weeds that like these conditions include white clover, black medic, dandelion and crabgrass.

There are several factors in keeping your lawn healthy.  Water properly, in the late evening or early morning avoiding frequent shallow watering and using the frequency and duration recommendations of the Denver Water Board which will vary from month to month.   Mow bluegrass lawns to a minimum height of two to three inches.  Aerate in the spring and apply a pre-emergence herbicide.  The herbicide must be applied in March to early April before weeds emerge or the product will be ineffective.

Lastly, apply a nitrogen fertilizer.  A light fertilizer can be applied in the spring but fall is the best time and a heavier fertilizer should be applied at that time.  In your garden beds, weeds can be minimized with weed barrier fabric and mulch which limits light required for annual weed growth.

Control

Weeds should be removed from your yard so they will not reoccur.  It’s important to know there are different control methods for different types of weeds as they all have different growth patterns, reproduction patterns, food storage and even root systems.  Hand weeding is effective with small annual weeds if done before flowering but it is generally not effective with perennial weeds because a large part of the root remains in the soil and quickly regenerates another top.

Use chemicals only on individual weeds as liquid spot treatment is more effective and environmentally friendly than “weed and feed” type applications that are applied to the entire lawn.  When applying liquid chemicals to weeds with a sprayer, spray just until the foliage is moist.  Dry granular formulations should be applied to wet grass and weeds.  Use herbicides when temperatures are above 65 and not expected to rise above 85 degrees within 24 hours of application.  Spray weeds when there is little or no wind to minimize the danger of herbicide drift and avoid watering for 24 hours after application.  Broadleaf weed killer should be used for broadleaf weeds.  Roundup^®  is an effective weed grass killer but it will kill both the weed grasses and lawn so it should be used only to spot-spray individual patches of undesirable grasses.  After weeds have been removed, you should re-seed or sod the empty space to prevent another weed infestation and any soil left exposed in garden beds should be remulched.

In spite of our best efforts, some weeds will still occur.  Some species are very aggressive and can be resistant to the herbicides we use.  Perennial weeds are some of the most difficult to control but are most effectively controlled with a late summer/early fall herbicide application when they are green and actively growing.  Herbicide mixtures, containing three or four different herbicides, often provide better control of difficult weeds.  Identifying the type of weed is key to selecting the most effective herbicide product.

There are also some organic methods available such as corn gluten meal which can be used as an organic pre-emergent herbicide with fertilizer to suppress seed germination and help green up your lawn.  Vinegar can be used to kill weeds but will also kill lawn and require repeated applications.  Boiling water from a tea kettle will kill annual weeds and kill or control perennial weeds.

. . .

“A man’s children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season.” – Unknown

Sources:

“Weed Management for Pros”,  by Dr. Tony Koski

CSU Extension.edu, No. 3.101:  “Control of AnnualGrassy Weeds in Lawns”                       �
Plantalk Colorado, No. 1525:  “Controlling Broadleaf Weeds in Lawns”                            �
Plantalk Colorado, No. 1530:  “Controlling Weedy Grasses in Lawns”

About Urban Gardens, Inc.:

Urban Gardens provides landscape design and consulting services to residential clients whose projects range from historic renovations to new subdivisions with a blank slate. Sarah Christian owns and operates Urban Gardens in the internationally recognized Stapleton Development in Denver, Colorado. She received her Masters degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado at Denver in 1995 and has worked in Colorado since that time. She is licensed by the state of Colorado and is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. You can visit her webpage at www.urbangardensinc.com

WHY  WATER?

Unlike some parts of the country, Colorado can experience periods of especially harsh fall and winter conditions characterized by dry air, low precipitation, little soil moisture, and fluctuating temperatures.  When we experience extended dry periods, there is not enough soil moisture which puts the root system of trees, shrubs, perennials and lawns at risk if not given supplemental water.  Plants that are affected may appear normal in the spring but die when temperatures rise in the late spring or summer because their resources have been depleted.  Lack of winter water may also make plants susceptible to insect and disease problems.

WHEN TO WATER?                                                                                                   

Monitor soil conditions closely from November through March and water during dry periods when there has been no snow cover for two weeks.  You need to water when air and soil temperatures are above 40 degrees F, the soil is not frozen and there is no snow on the ground.  You should also water mid-day so the water can soak into the ground before freezing nighttime temperatures occur.  Don’t forget to disconnect the hose when you are finished watering.

WHAT TO WATER?  

Newly planted trees or plants, transplanted plants, evergreens and broadleaf evergreens that loose moisture through their needles/leaves, and shallow rooted trees are especially vulnerable.  Lawns, especially newly established ones, can also suffer winter damage and will need occasional supplemental watering to avoid susceptibility to winter grass mites and desiccation.  Even established plants should be watered in times of winter drought but can go longer between watering than the categories mentioned above. 

HOW MUCH TO WATER?                                                                                                  

Most trees, especially when they are establishing their root systems during the first five years after planting, should get ten gallons per inch of trunk diameter.  Smaller shrubs (under 3’ tall) should receive five gallons and larger shrubs (over 6’ tall) should receive 18 gallons of water.      

 WHERE TO WATER?

Water trees to a depth of 12” using a deep root watering device and apply water to all areas beneath the tree and its dripline.  Shrubs should also be watered around the base and within the dripline.  For newly planted perennials, check the soil conditions 2-3” deep and water around the root ball if the ground appears dry.                                                     

WHAT ELSE TO DO?                                                                                                           

Winter mulching is another helpful practice to combine with watering.  Plants in exposed areas, generally warmer south and west exposures, are subject to freeze-thaw conditions which open cracks in the soil that expose roots to cold and drying.

SOURCES:                                                                                                                                         Colorado State Extension Fact Sheet 7.211 – Fall & Winter Watering  http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/Garden/07211.html                          

Planttalk Colorado™ – Script 1706 – Winter Watering                                                                                     http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1706.html