"Fluff Up", the Property of the President of Olin College

We were off to "Fluff up" the property owned by Olin college and used by the President and his family. They were not home when we arrived around 7:30 AM. This property has to always look it's best because of the people visiting the property to see the President and his wife. His Wife is really into gardening and always has plants or bushes she wants planted.

Rich, Guillerme and I started right in, on the weeding, which at this time of year can get out of control. As the guy's did the weeding around the flowers and bushes by hand, I would trim back any long "flyer's" that had grown on the bushes. We hand weed around, the flowers and bushes and when we get to the larger mulched area's, we use the weed whacker. After it is raked up we spray "Round Up" in the large area's, but nothing is sprayed any where close to the flowers or bushes. We have a special attachment we use on the backpack sprayers that is shaped like a funnel to prevent the "Round Up" from drifting over onto bushes or flowers.

We were just about finished around 4PM when the President and his wife arrived home from a weekend vacation. They were happy to see us and really liked what we had done to the property. And that is all that counts as far as I am concerned. We finished up the weeding and then sprayed the lawn for broad leaf weeds with "Speed Zone", which we have found to be very effective on clover and most broad leaf weeds in the lawn.

Fungicide and Holly Tone...

These pictures are of the various colors of the Rhododendron's that are all around the property.
I really like these bushes and the are a very popular here in New England.

Today, I went with Rich to the home used by the President of Babson College. We had to weed all of the beds, as this home, has to always look "Presidential", for all of it's visitors.

Nick, the guy in charge of the grounds for the campus had, called Rob, and wanted us to put down a fungicide, on the lawn because it had "red thread". This usually goes away by itself if you lighten up on the water you are applying to the lawn. Red Thread, is caused by a lack of Nitrogen and because it has more moisture than it needs. We have been in a rainy stretch here and that is more than likely what caused it. We will be doing our second application of fertilizer next week.

Rich and I spent the morning weeding and in the afternoon, Rich put down 20 pounds of Holly Tone on a bed that has pachysandra, that had a hard time recovering from this past winter. The Holly Tone will bring it back to life and will get it to fill out the bed.

After, that I put down the fungicide and sprayed the weeds in the lawn with SPEED ZONE. As I was doing this, Rich was going around with a bag of grass seed and throwing some down in any weak parts of the lawn. When we had everything packed up and we were not going to be on the lawn any more I went around to the walks and patio and sprayed Round up on the weeds in the cracks.

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.