Lawns, Gardens & Landscapes

Your landscape includes your lawn, trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetable garden, and groundcovers. The lawn is likely a prominent part of your landscape. While the lawn may need watering and frequent care, it adds beauty to the community and a well-maintained lawn offers many benefits:

absorbs rain water runoff
decreases soil erosion
promotes neighborhood pride
reduces the urban heat island effect
increases property values
provides space for recreation and relaxation

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Drought Tolerant Plants

With ongoing drought, conserving water in home, business and public landscapes is important. One way to conserve water is selecting drought tolerant plants. As a rule, a drought tolerant plant is one that can survive on average rainfall with little or no supplemental water once established.

Friday, December 15, 2023

Outdoor Water Management in Turfgrass Areas

Irrigation heads on the lawn projecting water blowing out of the irrigation system.

As we are ending 2023, the temperature high and/or low could be consistently at or less than 32°F with a possible chance of snow precipitation. For turfgrass areas in December, the process of dormancy for both warm and cool-season grasses has already occurred. In regards to water use in dormant lawns in cooler temperatures, December is not the time to use irrigation in grass areas. The Photo above is from Pioneer Underground Lawn Sprinklers. https://pioneerunderground.net/sprinkler-winterization-omaha/

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Don't Let Leaves Smother the Turf

Leaves. Useful to the tree. Great for jumping in. Not much fun to clean up. Find out what you should be doing with those fallen leaves to let them help you and your landscape in the long run.

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Smart Gardening: Converting to No-Till for Home Gardeners

I often hear from vegetable or flower gardeners who are unhappy with their soil quality. They routinely incorporate organic matter in the soil each fall, but are still disappointed with their heavy soil. Why aren’t they developing beautiful crumbly dark brown soil that’s easy to plant and great for vegetable root crops? Routinely tilling your garden soil each fall and spring could be the culprit.

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Mulch in the Landscape

Mulch is very important to the overall health of our plants, but are all mulches created equal? Some may have more benefits than others and some may not be as helpful as we think they are.

Benefits of Mulch

Mulch, when properly applied, can provide a lot of great benefits to our plants, including: