Monthly Archives

October 2018

Oct 26
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“The science of gardening” course review

By | Education | No Comments

Because I follow Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott on social media I knew that she was in the studio recording her Great Course called The Science of Gardening. Then after several months I checked the Great Courses website and the course was available. There was just the small problem of cost. The course list price is over $200US which is way over my budget.

Soon after this I opened my copy of Fine Gardening magazine and inside it was a priority code which lowered the cost to $59.90US. So I bought access to the course on the same day and it was well worth the price.

I believe all gardeners and landscape professionals should go through this excellent course. Here’s why.

a) Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott is based in the Pacific Northwest which makes her a great local resource. I own several of her books and often refer to her extension publications. If you are a gardener or landscaper you must know her. Period.

 

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Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott

 

b) The course is made up of 24 lectures and each lecture runs at around 30 minutes. The key selling point is that everything is science-based. There are many myths in gardening and Linda destroys many of them. This should save gardeners a lot of money.

Take, for example, the sale of deer-resistant plants. Home owners install their new plants but deer eat them up anyway. That’s because a very hungry deer will eat whatever she can get (feeding pressure). There are no pest-proof plants.

 

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Another myth is landscape fabric. Long sold as guarantee of a weed-free landscape, it actually doesn’t work. In the course Linda covers two beakers with two different landscape fabrics and they both don’t allow any water in. So much for the promise of water and air movement between the fabric and the soil below. Landscape fabric is a waste of money. Now you know.

c) The studio lectures are nicely interrupted with field visits which gives the student a nice mental break. Linda also gets her hands dirty demonstrating various things like bare root planting and pruning.

d) My favourite lecture is number 17 CSI case studies where various interesting landscape issues are presented and analyzed. This was by far the most interesting lecture.

e) If you need CEUs toward your Landscape Industry Certified re-certification this course will be good for 12 credits. I haven’t checked with the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) yet if they will recognize this course.

Conclusion

The Science of Gardening is an excellent science-based course that’s well-worth the $60US cost. Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott is an excellent Pacific Northwest professional and I’m convinced that all gardeners and landscapers should be familiar with her work.

Oct 19
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How I became a top 10 landscape writer on Quora.com

By | Education, gardening, Landscaping | No Comments

Quora.com is a fun site where you submit any question you want and wait for someone to answer it. As you read the answers, you are asked to upvote the one you really like which in turn helps the writer.

Lately, I’ve been hanging out on the site answering basic landscape questions. Then, recently I received a notification from the site. I was now officially a top 10 landscape writer. I had no idea they kept track.

So let’s take a look at some question examples and my answers. If you have a burning question, you can ask on Quora.com or message me through this blog.

 

1. What is an interesting book about flowers or plants?

The Hidden life of Trees is the best book about trees right now. It will blow your mind. You will never look at trees the same way.

Braiding sweetgrass is the best book I’ve read on native use of plants in the US and Canada. Absolutely amazing.

Lab girl is a great book by a Ph.D. researcher; chapters alternate between plants and personal life. Also a great look at women in academia and what a struggle it is. First time I read about “resurrection plants”.

The triumph of seeds is also amazing. How do seeds survive for hundreds of years and then, one day, decide to go for it?

2. Why is tree trimming important?

Tree trimming is an amateur phrase, I’m sorry. Always say tree pruning. Trimming sounds suspicious and it usually is. I prune trees.

Most trees know what to do but in our cities and multi-family complexes with limited space, pruning is often required because of obstruction issues. Say, a resident has to duck to get out of her apartment on her way to Starbucks.

Pruning is also important for young trees so they can be trained to look great in the future.

Pruning is also required when we find diseased, dead, damaged or crossing branches.

My e-book on Tree maintenance is available on Amazon for less than a cup of coffee, just search by title or by name: Vas Sladek.

3. How do I maintain a lawn mower for perfect lawn mowing?

Check your oil levels weekly, change spark plugs and change blades often for a great cut. Sharp blades are critical. Otherwise you are shredding grass blades.

Check your wheels so they don’t wobble. Tighten as required. Anything else, visit your nearest dealer.

If you can, use Aspen fuel, which is allegedly gentler on machines. It is also 99% hydro-carbon free which means you don’t pollute your home with poisons. See www.aspen.se

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4. It’s been raining for two days right after my lawn got aeration. Do I have to aerate the lawn again?

No! The point of lawn aeration is to allow more water and oxygen into the root zone so rain after aeration is perfect. You should only have to aerate once a year although some companies also do fall aeration.

5. What exactly does the choke setting “do” when I start the cold motor of a riding mower?

When your small engine is cold, the choke restricts air flow so the engine is getting a richer gas mixture and therefore starts easier. Once your engine is on, you should take the choke off.

Warm engines will start again easily without a choke.

There you go. If you have a burning question, go to Quora.com and ask away. You can also share your knowledge by answering some questions.

Oct 12
0

Are you afraid of chainsaws?

By | Company News | No Comments

I have an uneasy relationship with machines but I’m not afraid of them. Years ago when I was a candidate in the Landscape Industry Certified program at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University I was literally shaking when I hit the chainsaw practical station. The attendant noticed and asked me if I wanted to walk away. No, never!

I did everything correctly but I forgot to put a log in place which made it difficult to cut anything. Oops. Luckily it wasn’t a deduction. I found a log and passed the station. Walk away, don’t make me laugh.

Now, fast forward to 2018 and read about a perfectly good day I had with an old warrior chainsaw. The chainsaw is very old but a new chain made it usable. The bonus was that I got to change the chain myself which was extremely therapeutic.

It’s hard for an ISA certified arborist to admit that in my nightmares my chains always break and fly off. So putting a new chain on correctly made me relax. After all, I installed it myself.

The other bonus was that I was flying solo and allowed to practice. There was nobody watching.

Dead birches

My task was fairly easy: take down six dead birches (Betula papyrifera).

 

Oct 10
0

Blow like a pro

By | landscape maintenance | No Comments

It’s October, 2018, and leaf season is here. Landscape contractors rely on their backpack blowers to clean-up leaf avalanches on their sites. If you drive around you’re bound to see a few a rose-cheeked landscapers blowing for hours.

I personally don’t stress about leaves. I love fall and I clean up the leaves as well as I can. Then I return the following week for more.

Aside from leaf clean-up blowing, there are two more blowing techniques every landscaper must know.

 

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Pre-blow

Early in leaf season when the leaf drop isn’t overwhelming, a pre-blow can be a great time saver. Pre-blow involves a quick blow of your site where leaves are blown onto lawns and then mowed. This eliminates time consuming leaf pile pick-up with rakes.

Simply mow over the leaves and bag everything. Then all that’s left to do is a final touch up blow. The only issue is judging the right amount of leaves. If the leaves really accumulate after your pre-blow, the mower will struggle to shred them when you mow. Don’t kill your mower. That’s why this technique is best used early in the leaf season. I think it could be used more in landscape maintenance.

 

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This is a well executed pre-blow. There isn’t enough leafiness to overwhelm the mower engine or to start raking piles.

 

 

Final blow

As the name suggests, this is the final courtesy clean-up blow. But I’m finding that many new employees only concentrate on the actual clean-up. With proper training they would know that their final blow also doubles as the final check.

Yes, foremen are responsible for checking their sites in theory but it’s not always easy in practice. That’s because some strata sites are huge and asking the foremen to walk the entire site at the end of the day can be too much.

So the worker doing the final blow is responsible for checking everything over as she goes. That includes missed debris piles, full green waste tarps, empty tarps, open gates and missed hand tools. It’s up to the worker to alert the foreman so we avoid calls to the office later.

Lawn care mistakes must also be corrected. Mistakes happen. Nobody goes home until missed lawns are mowed and huge mohawks eliminated.

Again, I find that new workers aren’t trained to perform final site checks when they blow. Once they get into the habit everything runs smoothly.

When a missing hand tool is discovered on site later, it means that the area wasn’t blown or the worker only occupied himself with blowing, not checking.

 

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This missed tarp was discovered during the final blow.

 

 

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This yard didn’t get mowed at all.

 

Conclusion

Consider training your landscape workers to perform pre-blows and final blows with site checking. Your whole operation will be smoother.

Oct 05
0

How you can have fun with a stump grinder

By | Landscaping, Trees | No Comments

If you read my blog posts consistently you will know that I’m not really a machine kind of guy. But as I found out, learning to use a new machine can be a fun way to spend your day and it stretches you a bit. This is exactly what happened on my stump grinding day.

 

The goal

 

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The goal for the day was to annihilate the two stumps, level off the bed with new soil and install a row of cedars (Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’) to separate the two units.

 

Step 1

I rented the stump grinder at Home Depot. It’s cheaper if you can fit all of your work into four hours. Otherwise you will have to pay for the whole day.

Because the machine is heavy my boss had suggested asking a passerby for assistance. Unfortunately, I only saw teenage girls heading to school and it would have been suspicious asking them for help with a stump grinder. So I called for help.

There is only one trick to the machine. When you’re ready to stump grind, activate the black lever on the left. It locks the left wheel in place allowing you to rock the machine blade side to side over your stump. That’s it.

I really enjoyed doing this by myself without anyone kibitzing and it worked out. Only later I learned that a little boy in the window had a blast watching me.

 

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The stump is disappearing nicely.

Once the stumps are erased, you will have to rake up the wood debris and remove it. Also, don’t forget to clean up the machine or the Home Depot attendant will have a fit.

 

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Ready for soil install.

 

Cedar hedge

 

Digging through the middle of this bed was actually very hard because I ran into heavy clay. Soils in the Lower Mainland are mostly clay but it’s hard to tell because new developments sometimes have engineered soils installed. And they don’t look anything like the native soils.

New cedars installed in spring will require consistent watering so they can get established. Both units were alerted but sometimes I wonder. I reminded them to slow soak the cedars; quick spray from a hose isn’t really watering.

The new grass seed, on the other hand, will need gentle sprays to achieve germination in one week or so.

 

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All done. Stumps are gone, the area is level with new soil and a new hedge is in. The lawn will require at least a week for germination.

 

This was a fun day for me because I got to transform a bare area into something new. And in the process I got to practice stump grinding which means that next time I will be super confident. Both residents were delighted with the change and promised to water religiously. God help them.