Crabgrass spraying

Today, I went with Guillerme and Rich to spray the crabgrass at Olin College. Crabgrass loves to grow in warm sunny areas and there are plenty of those areas at the college. Along roadways, parking areas and along all of the sidewalks.

We concentrate on the "hot spots" and do a visual check of the interior areas and spot spray any crabgrass we see. I will be using the Permagreen power spreader and the guys will be using backpack tank sprayers.

This year, with all of the cool weather we are having has, reduced the amount of crabgrass and the size of the crabgrass. Usually at this time of year it is quite large, approximately 7-8 inches in diameter and requires multiple spraying to eradicate it. This year we are seeing the crabgrass to be only about 3 inches in diameter max., which is good thing, because it will require only 2 applications to kill it off.

It takes us the full day to cover the entire campus, and we will be back in a few weeks anyways with the next fertilizer application.

More Rain, this is getting depressing.....

Well it is raining again today, so I went in to the shop first thing this morning to do some maintenance on the PERMAGREEN spreader, it was in desperate need of it, because of it being used for more than 40 hours and it was all done in moist conditions and of course Guillerme, flipped it over twice. No one was at the shop except Rob, and he made the decision that there would be no work for the day. So, it was back to my place to work on my home business. I had some CRAVE energy drink, so I would have plenty of energy. When I got home, I worked for about 8 hours straight, which is a good thing, I needed to get caught up on some Computer work.

So for my pictures for today, I am leaving you with some White Astillbe, Pink Mountain Laurel and a beautiful red/pink/yellow flower.

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.

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.