Last round of Lawn Fertilizer

Today, I started the last application of lawn fertilizer, that we do in the season. The leaves are coming down and we have to get it on the lawns before all of the leaves are down and ready to be picked up.

I am using a fertilizer from LESCO, 13-0-6, which means that there is 13% Nitrogen, 6% Potash and the rest is lime. This is a fertilizer lime mix, that we have been using the last few seasons. It saves us time as we used to apply the fertilizer and then apply the lime. now it is just one application for both.

Guillerme is helping me out today and will be helping me out again when I go to Olin College to fertilize their campus and soccer fields. the rest of the time I will be going "solo" as Guillerme is needed on the other crew to help out.

Rain is forecast for tomorrow and again this weekend, with this weekend having a "Nor Easter". that is when the winds come in from the North and East over the ocean. This produces a lot of wind and chilly temps.

This time it should take me over a week to do all of the lawns and the college. Going "solo", slows the process down and this will be the last time I see some of the properties this season.

Quick Trim for a graduation party in Southborough

It was raining to hard in the morning to go out and do fertilizing and spraying of the broad leaf weeds, so I slept in and went into the shop around 10:30 AM. I went in because, the Permagreen power Spreader needed some maintenance done to it and also because I was out of fertilizer and needed to make a trip up to LESCO in Marlboro to get more.

But when I called Rob, he told me that a property owner in Southborough, was having a graduation party, for their daughter on Saturday and it needed to be trimmed up and weeded to look nice for the occassion. So he was happy that I came in and he called Guillerme and Fabio to come in and help me out.

This property takes a full day with 3 guys to trim and weed. So I explained this to the owner and he just wanted us to work out in the backyard, because that is where they had a tent set up, for the occasion and that was where everyone would be hanging out during the party. Good thing I had some of my CRAVE energy drink, to give me the energy for the afternoon workload. It just keeps me going all afternoon and there is no "crash or jitters" like I would have with coffee.

So we spent about 5 hours "fluffing up" the back beds, by weeding and trimming the bushes and then raking out the mulch so it looked like it was just ut down. Fabio did a little shearing of some bushes and I did the majority of the hand clipping that is required on the other ornamental bushes. The owners were very happy that we came and did a great job for them and they asked that we return as soon as we could to finish the job.

Getting Ready for Graduation Ceremonies

The college graduation ceremonies, are going to be occurring next week on the 2 college campuses we take care off. So, today we had to go and spray a herbicide at the campus at Olin College. There are to be NO dandelions visible during the graduation ceremonies as they are very proud of their campus and want to show it off to the families of the graduating students.

We used a product that we buy at LESCO called "Speed Zone". We use this because it has the "2-4-d" herbicide chemical in it. It is very effective on dandelions and clover and broad leaf weeds that are in Lawns. We are also going to be adding "sticker" to the tank mixes, which is a product that makes the Speed Zone mixture a bit sticky, and adheres better to the waxy leaf's of the weeds.

This is going to be an all day job for 2 guys and myself. It takes a long time because we are always mixing the tanks with water and sometimes the location of the water is far away from where we are working. I will be riding the Permagren, sprayer and Rich and Guillerme will be using 3 gallon backpack sprayers.

Southborough cleanup continued......

Today, I am back at the property in Southborough, but this time there is only Rich with me. Rich will be mulching, while I repair some bricks that were torn up by the plows during the winter. I will also be trimming the Crabapple tree's in the front of the property and "tipping" back the White Pines going up the driveway.

(pic is close up of weeping cherry)

Once I am finished, I will leave Rich to continue mulching and go to Framingham to pick up 2 yards of loam, so that we can fill in the area's damaged by the snow plows this winter. We will be putting down some seed also. What we are using to day is Shade Seed from Lesco. It is comprised of; 44.2% Lacrosse Chewing Fescue, 34.65% FoxFire Creeping, 9.92% Shamrock Kentucky Bluegrass and 9.88% Gotham Hard Fescue.

Hopefully the owner will water this in every day so that she has a chance of seeing some growth before the house is put up for sale. Still kinda cool around here, though. We ended up not having enough to finish the job and will return once again, tomorrow to finsh this project.

First Application of lawn fertilizer, for the season.

Today, I am at Olin College in Needham, Massachusetts, applying the first fertilizer application of the year. This is a large campus and I will be using forty, 50 pound bags of fertilizer to cover all of the lawn area's around the campus.

The fertilizer I am using is from LESCO and it is a Pre-Emergent herbicide, called Dimension. It contains 19% Nitrogen, 0 % Potash and 6% Sulphur along with 0.10% DIMENSION.

We use this to control new weeds from germinating, like, Dandelions, crabgrass and broad leaf weeds. This fertilizer forms a protective layer over the ground, to prevent germination, of the undesired weeds. After this application we have to wait about 10 weeks before we reseed those areas.

This will take Rich and I all day to finish. We will be fertilizing approximately 640,000 sg feet of turf. I will be using a "power spreader"made by PERMAGREEN and Rich will be doing the smaller area's with a walk behind spreader, made by LESCO.