Jul 04
0

Another shocking waste of time

By | landscape maintenance, machines | No Comments

New landscape foremen gain experience as they work in the field with their crews and you can expect them to surprise you. I often think I’ve seen it all, but it’s not true; I will never run out of blog topics.

Consider my recent visit to one work site. The foreman and his helper were behind on mid-season pruning and finesse work. Really behind so I was called in to help out. That’s my role as landscape supervisor. I help out and train workers as we go.

Polished heads, really?

After finishing line edging, I found both workers by the truck washing and polishing their line edger heads!? Completely shocked and annoyed, I asked them why we were polishing machine attachments at ten o’clock when there was tons of pruning and weeding to do. “That’s how I like it” was the foreman’s reply.

 

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A nicely polished head but what’s the use when your site is burning?

 

Luckily, I kept calm and left to resume pruning. But this sort of time wasting shows the crew’s inexperience. They wash and polish attachments that will get dirty again the next day instead of doing important work. Logistics can be done at the end of the day before the crew leaves the site. Ten o’clock in the morning is prime time for pruning and weeding.

Blind

The crew’s inability to see their time wasting and lack of focus is extremely shocking. Having extra people on site should have been a good hint. But no, they polish their attachments after every use and chat while their sites burn. The front entrance area was full of large weeds and it could have been cleaned up in the time it took to polish two attachments.

So, what is a landscape supervisor to do? Well, first I write a blog post about it to educate others about time wasting in landscape maintenance. Second, I went online to have some fun. I posted a question on several lawn care Facebook groups, asking their members how many of them washed their line edger heads after every use.

Results

Because the Facebook groups are populated by professional lawn care dudes who run their own shows they laughed hard. Not a single individual washed his attachments after every use. That’s because most of them run businesses; they don’t work by the hour for bosses. They hustle all day so they don’t have time to waste.

My way

Following the latest feedback research, I informed the crew what I would do. I would focus on the site by taking care of mid-season pruning and finesse work. Then, if I still worried about the condition of my attachments, I would polish them after loading up the truck at the end of the day. Maybe. In practice, I never polish my attachments. I lubricate them periodically; and I replace worn out parts.

Focus on real work, never waste time!

Jul 01
0

How I discovered Kelowna’s Japanese garden

By | gardening, Reviews | No Comments

It makes me smile every time I make a pleasant garden discovery. My last discovery happened thanks to my wife, a snow country girl from the West Coast of Japan. She checked tourist information sites for Kelowna because my son had fall league soccer matches there all weekend. And bang, there was a Japanese garden tucked behind Kelowna’s city hall. It was something like a five minute drive from our hotel and it was free! The sunny fall weather helped, too.

 

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Japanese gardens

Two important things about Japanese gardens. One, the Japanese love nature and it’s reflected in their gardens. Forget religion and various Zen trinkets. It’s just that they live on a small, crowded mountainous island so large private gardens are reserved for the rich.

Two, there is lots of room left for your imagination. It’s not like Western gardens where there is so much stuffed into the garden your eyes don’t know where to look first. I love this about Japanese gardens. They can do so much with some Azaleas, moss and stone. Spaces between plants are extremely important.

Kasugai

Kasugai is Kelowna’s sister city and it’s from that relationship that this garden developed. The garden is small; my kids burned through it in no time because they were thinking about lunch. I took a bit longer because I had research to do for my blog.

I noted the common Japanese garden features: gazebo to sit in, rock garden, lantern, bridge, pond and stream with koi carp fish.

 

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My favourite trees

As soon as walked into the garden, I noticed a specimen of my favourite tree, Albizia julibrissin. Unfortunately, in October the beautiful fragrant flowers are long gone. When you get up close the flowers tickle your nose. The fragrance must be experienced because I can’t describe fragrances.

The garden also sports another tree species I love. Davidia involucrata. In summer, when the round fruit is partially covered by the involucre, you understand the common names given to this tree. Ghost or handkerchief tree. I prefer ghost because the first time I looked up into this tree in a Vancouver daycare, the fruits covered in long white involucres looked like ghosts. I wonder if the kids ever noticed.

Stop by

If you have some time to kill in Kelowna, definitely stop by this free Japanese garden. It’s well worth the visit.

 

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Pro blogger Vas researching…..

Jun 24
0

Why eating lunch alone is bad for you

By | health and safety, Landscaping | No Comments

My regular work day includes a thirty minute lunch with no other formal breaks. When I first started with my current company, not having morning and afternoon breaks felt weird but there was an upside. I finished early. So, to ease my body into the new schedule, I would take quick micro-breaks to drink and eat a snack without sitting down. Now, in my fourth season, it’s all fine.

Lunches

I normally eat lunches alone because we don’t have huge crews and I need the mental break from physically demanding work. Unless my co-worker Allan is nearby, because I often poach some of his excellent Arabic tea.

Once, completely exhausted by lunch in hot weather, I collapsed in my truck and the workers turned me in to the boss. Vas sleeping, as if! I was meditating. Incredibly, this came up in my work performance review.

Not alone

And according to an article published in the Globe and Mail (“Eating lunch alone at work can have adverse effects“, Friday July 27, 2019) I have plenty of company. Almost half (42%) of working Canadians eat lunch alone every day.

Eating lunch alone isn’t really normal. It happens when people start working. Then, eating with colleagues seems like a gift we can’t afford to accept.

I find that as a supervisor in charge of field production, many workers don’t really want to spend an extra half hour with me. Unless, of course, it’s cold or rainy outside and my company truck is warm.

Adverse effects

I had no idea eating alone came with so many adverse effects. According to research mentioned in the article, “people who eat most meals alone may express feelings of loneliness and social isolation”. “Eating in solitude is more strongly associated with unhappiness than any single factor, other than having a mental illness.”

Benefits

There are many benefits to eating together and scoring free Arabic tea is just one of them. How about improved communication with co-workers, stronger relationships with co-workers, increased happiness, job satisfaction and greater productivity.

Considering the many benefits listed above, I think I will try to eat the odd lunch with our crews.

Jun 17
0

What happened when I tried organic birch water

By | health and safety, Reviews | No Comments

This blog post is proof that I will do anything to create new content, including the consumption of new products that may or may not be good for me. One such product is Sealand Birk’s new organic birch water imported with love from Denmark.

99 cents

I was cruising the snack aisles at London Drugs recently and my favourite coconut water wasn’t on sale. Then I saw the cool slim cardboard 250 mL cans of Sealand Birk’s organic birch water. It was on sale for 99 cents; regular price $2.99. I tested the original version but there are many other flavours: Elderflower, Ginger & Lime, Blueberry, Raspberry, Lemon/Mint and Rose. London Drugs only offered the original version.

 

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The Nordic birch forest trees get tapped in early spring when the sap starts running but before leaf-out happens.

This is what the Sealand Birk website says:

Discover the qualities and natural taste of delicious birch water, tapped from the tree. Sealand BIRK connects with your body and supplies not only great taste but also the true, organic sweetness of nature’s own hidden treasures.

Harvested from birch trees in Taiga forests of Finland and Lithuania. Birch water is a sweet, healthy and certified organic alternative to artificially sweetened beverages.

Low on Calories
Contains plenty of organic naturally occurring antioxidants, electrolytes, trace minerals, xylitol, fructose and vitamins that is easy for your body to absorb and enjoy. You benefit from nature itself.

Sweetened by Nature
The taste is fresh and you can experience it without any second thoughts: Sealand BIRK is naturally low on calories. The pure birch water is harvested in early spring at the perfect moment to maximize nutritious value. The taste is refreshing packed with nutrients and organically sweet.

Born on Organic
No preservatives, no additives. Sealand BIRK is born organic. There is no point in trying to improve on nature. Sealand BIRK is a new age beverage for the international consumer market

 

Vas survives

The first taste of the original version was interesting. It was like water with a hint of lemon. I wish I could describe it better but I’m a landscape blogger, not a food critic. The second can went down well and the next four were totally fine. At 99 cents per can it’s a steal but not at the regular $2.99. At that price I will buy coconut water again.

If you see Sealand Birk organic birch water on sale anywhere, give it a try. It’s an interesting drink.

Jun 10
0

Does your mosquito repellent actually work?

By | health and safety, Landscaping | No Comments

The headline above was the actual headline from an article published in the Globe and Mail on Monday, August 6, 2018. In it, writer Wency Leung reports on the results from a New Mexico State University study. But, first, a quick story.

Vas almost dies

The article above came out a few days after I almost died in the field while stump grinding. I was removing two tree stumps close to Kanaka Creek in Maple Ridge, British Columbia and I couldn’t believe the number of mosquitoes around me. I kept working but after a while, totally desperate, I called my boss to bring me repellent. Any repellent. I didn’t care. I was suffering.

Because I was alone with a rented stump grinder, I couldn’t really leave my work site. My boss eventually rescued me.

 

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This expensive gas station bottle saved me in the field.

 

 

The study

The study looked at all sorts of products from scented candles, skin patches, wearable devices to sprays containing essential oils. The result? Most of the products were useless except for the ones containing DEET and oil of lemon eucalyptus.

About mosquitoes

One of the study authors explains that “mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide we exhale, and to the molecules that are created when our skin bacteria break down components of our sweat.” When you stump grind for a few hours you generate a lot of sweat. That’s the way we like our employees to work.

“The insects have odour  receptors and they’re specialized in what they can smell.” The magic of DEET is that it “binds to specific odour  receptors of mosquitoes and over-activates them; and over-activation is as bad as blocking them completely.”

This is the key: “Without smell the insects  can’t switch from host-seeking to biting mode.” Aha.

According to the article, DEET has been used for over 70 years and is considered very safe.

Conclusion

Save your money and stay safe in the landscape by purchasing repellents containing DEET or oil of lemon eucalyptus. Next time I’m sent to work by Kanaka Creek I will be ready.

Jun 01
0

Mulch police

By | Mulch | No Comments

Sometimes strata council members can make your life very difficult. Just as you think your landscape maintenance program is on auto-pilot, things fall apart. One such case involves mulch.

The setting

Imagine a regular strata site with decent soil. Now, the landscape president decides to install a thin layer of reddish mulch in all edges, mainly by sidewalks. It sounds OK but there are problems with it.

One, the colour doesn’t match the dark site soil and, two, the layer is very thin and barely covers the edges. Now, how do we maintain the site without disturbing the mulch?

Freak out

I didn’t even know about the new mulch install until I substituted for our regular foreman. We did our regular clean-up blow until the strata president tracked me down and started fuming. Something about blowing too aggressively and not owning brooms. I was confused at first and then I clued in. And I knew that one day I would strike back with a blog post.

Procedure

Foul language and complaints shouldn’t be directed straight at the field workers. Everything should go through the strata management company. And yet, as a supervisor, I had to take the verbal abuse and calmly reply to a man who made a mistake with mulch.

Too thin

Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott informs us that a thin layer of mulch does nothing for weed suppression. If anything, a thin layer of mulch encourages weed growth by conserving moisture and allowing enough light to reach the weeds. You can either install several inches of mulch or not do it at all. As it is, you’re making it nice and cozy for weeds to grow.

Colour mismatch

Since only the edges got a sprinkle of red mulch, there is noticeable colour mismatch which I find annoying. But again, the strata member is in charge and he did the work himself.

Maintenance

The thin application of red mulch makes maintenance work extremely difficult. For example, there are Spirea japonica shrubs by the sidewalk and they have to be sheared to eliminate sidewalk obstruction. Now, before any shearing happens we have to put tarps down otherwise any debris removal would also risk removing more red mulch. This would inevitably expose the workers to the strata member’s colourful vocabulary.

The fall was an absolute nightmare. Normally backpack blowers would blow out leaves from the building and onto the curb lawns but not here. Here there was great risk of removing the eleven red chips remaining by the strata member’s sidewalk. (I’m kidding.) We literally had to rake out the leaves around his unit. Otherwise he’d bury us in expletives.

Lessons

  1. Strata members can make your life difficult.
  2. Verbal abuse isn’t OK.
  3. Put down several inches of mulch or don’t do it at all.
  4. Thin layers of mulch actually encourage weed growth.
May 31
0

Close calls in the landscape

By | health and safety | No Comments

I know, safety is not a sexy topic and this blog post will not likely stress Google analytics.  My most read blog posts are about making side-hustle cash from landscaping and about immigrant landscapers. But still, it’s amazing how many close calls there are in the field.

It really doesn’t take much to get injured in landscape maintenance. I witnessed two such events and I want to publish them here as a warning. (Disclaimer: don’t worry, nobody died.)

Hand aeration

We aerate lawns with machines to allow more water and oxygen to reach the root zone. It’s a common spring task built into contracts. But when the lawns are very small or difficult to access, we use hand aerators. It’s a simple tool which punches holes as the worker forces it down into the lawn.

One of my co-workers was rushing and having too much fun at the end of the day and as he furiously punched holes, he slipped and drove the metal tool into his foot. It hit above the steel-toe portion of his rubber boot and he was in serious pain. So much pain, he refused to be photographed for a future safety blog post. It took some time for the bruise to heal.

 

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Weeding

I know what you’re thinking, how can anyone get injured while weeding. But, again, it was late in the day when people are tired and distracted. The young female worker was weeding a nasty tree well full of small weeds. As she bent down to hand pick the weeds, firmly focused on the green mass by her hand, she completely missed a lower tree branch. Then her eye collided with the wooden stub. Sadly, she also declined to be photographed for my future blog on safety.

Luckily, her vision wasn’t affected but it was a close call. Not many workers wear protective goggles on site all day. You would never think of weeding as dangerous.

Conclusion

Stay alert in the landscape and watch out for hazards. Most injuries occur just before lunch when people are tired and their blood sugar levels are low. But as we’ve seen above, the end of the day can be just as bad for injuries. That’s when workers are tired and distracted by their after-work activities. Stay safe!

May 25
0

Trees lose when the game is Trees vs Construction

By | Trees | No Comments

At last year’s CanWest Hort Expo I attended a lecture by local tree expert Dr. Julian Dunster. During the lecture he made a key comment about trees in construction zones. There is so much disturbance on some construction sites that it’s better to remove all trees and start over.

But in practice people fight to preserve all trees on construction sites. I was in that camp myself until Dr. Dunster showed that most trees on severely disturbed sites will not survive for long. It may be best to start over by removing the existing trees and planting new ones.

One recent example

I recalled all of this when I saw a picture someone had posted in a Facebook group. Take a look. What do you see?

 

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It’s not a pretty picture and it fits Dr. Dunster’s lecture comments. It’s possible that the people in charge of this project couldn’t get a tree removal permit or that it cost too much.

Structural roots

I’m not a construction expert but I do know that there must be a foundation in place for the structure on the left to go up. Now, considering the size of the tree, I’m almost certain that big, structural roots had to be cut before the foundation could go in. And when this happens, the stability of the tree is compromised.

Compaction

I don’t see any orange exclusion fencing around this tree which means there was a lot of construction activity around its root zone. This activity leads to soil compaction which is a silent tree killer.

Why? Because compacted soils prevent surface water from percolating down to the roots where it’s needed. The water just runs off compacted soils.

Also, the fine roots just under the surface which collect water and nutrients for the trees can’t do their job in compacted soils.

Conclusion

I believe this site should learn from Dr. Dunster’s experience and remove the tree so a smaller specimen can be planted instead. I can’t see this tree surviving for long. Start over.

May 14
0

Bonsai response in plants

By | Plants | No Comments

“Bonsai” response is a term I learned from my mentor Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott. It happens when plants are under stress. In this blog post the stressor is lack of water but it could be something else.

The plant sends out new shoots from the base, trying to bonsai itself in response to the stress.  I learned this while going through Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott‘s new Great Courses course “The Science of Gardening“. You can read my blog post review of the course. All I will say here is that it’s highly recommended, if you can get it on sale. The regular price is brutal so forget it, unless you have deep pockets.

Site example

As soon as finished the course, I ran into a perfect example from one of my work sites. I normally float around amongst our work crews, helping and training. But, in 2018, we needed someone to take care of a small site so I did it once a week.

In spring we installed new beds on opposite corners. We planted Berberis thunbergii, Sedums, Pennisetums, Carex, Spireas and Japanese willows (Salix integra); and everything got mulched with river rock.

All of the plants developed nicely and the river rock kept weeds in check. But then summer hit and the differences were clearly visible. On the left corner lives a home gardener who waters regularly. On the right corner lives a busy family. Both have garden hoses close by. Let’s talk about the right side.

The tips of the Japanese willow shoots were turning brown so I watered the bed every week. My boss doesn’t normally like to do this but, hey, he wasn’t there and I have research to do for my blog posts.

Then I started noticing new shoots developing lower on the main stem. This was clearly the plant’s bonsai response to water stress. The left bed specimen didn’t do this because the home gardener watered regularly

I didn’t prune off the bonsai shoots until winter 2019. We will see what happens in spring.

 

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Salix integra watered by home owner. Stem and crown look normal.

 

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Salix integra ignored by home owner. Note the stem growth in response to water stress.