By Bill Sheffler ~ April 29, 2005

Happy New Gardening Year!

(This is a special gardening tip that we recently delivered to our customers. We thought all of you that are signed up for the Gardening Tips would like it as well.)

Today we applied a spring blend of nutrients that included high calcium lime, gypsum, alfalfa, feather meal, ammonia sulfate, molasses and yeast.

Gypsum will neutralize salt in the soil as well as supply calcium for strong cell walls. Gypsum will dissolve with rain, where high calcium lime is digested or weathered in order to become available. Good microbes in the soil need a high calcium environment. Calcium also encourages the clay to open up. Gypsum is also very valuable as it unlocks nutrients from the soil. Our soils are very rich but sometimes it's tough to get the soil to release the minerals. Organic fertilizers also help to release nutrients from the soil as they stimulate and feed the good microbes and earthworms.

Remember, plants don't have a stomach so the digestion has to happen in the soil. Creating a friendly environment and feeding the microbes are very important parts of good nutrient management and helps control problem diseases which are anaerobic. Difficult weather can overpower the good microbes, so our goal is to get as many ducks in our row as possible so that when difficult weather comes our soils will recover quicker than the chemical lawns.

Alfalfa and yeast are terrific stimulants for the microbes, and feather meal and molasses feed them. Feather meal is also high in nitrogen which helps the grass stay green.

According to Larry Acker, my weather guy, the current weather pattern of partly sunny, partly cloudy and above normal rainfall will last through the end of May, and around mid June will change to hotter than normal and drier than normal, which will continue through September. Sounds like a challenging summer, so we will be coaching you on watering, mowing and other ways to help the lawns, trees and gardens to get through temperatures that are consistently in the upper 80's and low 90's, with half our normal rainfall.

We should be mowing high this time of year, and for the rest of the year. Longer grass makes longer roots which can find more food and water, and also choke out more weeds. The top setting on the home lawn mowers is three and one half inches. The person mowing at two and one half inches will have twice the weeds, and need twice the water -- and those lawns burn up first in the summer!

The last mowing of the year can be real short, which will prevent snow mold in the winter. The last mowing is definitely after Halloween -- preferably close to Thanksgiving.

Happy Gardening!

Bill