It sure seems like we have had a long winter, dont you think? I am thankful for the sunshine and the warming days! Except now is when my phone rings off the hook with lawn questions and especially about crabgrass. Let me save you a phone call and tell you all you ever wanted to know about crabgrass in one short article. Do call me if you have questions but, here is good information to get you started.

Buying crabgrass preventers is a little like buying laundry products. It used to be simple, soap, softener, and bleach. Now, there are so many combinations its mind boggling. Bleach that is color safethat makes me go - huh?

Crabgrass is a summer annual grass that germinates in the spring and dies with the frost in the fall. Hot, dry environments, like Kansas summers, encourage crabgrass because cool-season lawns are struggling at that time. Crabgrass will often take over if the lawn is not well taken care of. A healthy lawn is always the best weed preventer.

There are two chemical methods to control crabgrass: preemergence (before it appears or slightly after), and post-emergence (after it appears).

Preemergence products dont actually keep the seed from germinating, instead just after germination the new plant absorbs the chemical from the soil and dies. With few exceptions, most crabgrass preventers will have no effect on existing crabgrass plants. Crabgrass germinates when the soil reaches 55 degrees or warmer for 3-5 days at the inch level. This happens typically around May 1 so April 15 is a good date to shoot for if a spring application of product is made. Note: not all spring weather cooperates with gardeners. A good indicator for timing product application is to watch the Eastern Red Bud trees; when they begin to reach full bloom its time to apply crabgrass preventer.

Dimension and Barricade are the only two products that will give season-long control of crabgrass from a single application. In fact, they can be applied much earlier than April 15. Dimension can be applied as early as March 1 and Barricade can be applied in the fall. Both will retain their effectiveness. Because of the way these products work (killing seed as it germinates) new grass seed can not be planted during the same season.

If you need to plant grass seed in the spring (fall is the better time) here are a couple options:

Tupersan can be applied while seeding. It will allow the grass seed to germinate while preventing crabgrass and various other weeds. The draw back is that it must be reapplied in 8 weeks and is not overly effective as a weed preventer.

I prefer allowing grass seed to germinate and two weeks after it emerges from the soil applying Dimension. Dimension is one of the rule breakers because it can kill crabgrass at germination and in its very young stage (2-3 leaves). Dimension is also the best choice when treating a lawn that was planted last fall. It is kind to young tall fescue, perennial ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass seedlings.

Note: Products that contain Dimension and Barricade may use the common name rather than the trade name. The common chemical name for Dimension is dithiopyr. A product with this in it is Turf & Ornamental Weed & Grass Stopper by Hi-Yield. The common chemical name for Barricade is prodiamine. This is found more often in a weed and feed product like Fertilomes All Seasons Lawn Food + Crabgrass Preventer. (It is best for your lawns health to apply preventers in April and fertilizers in May so using Barricade in the fall is a good idea.)

Continue reading here:
At Home Living: Holding back the crabgrass invasion

OBITUARY: Frank Clement Crofts, 1925-2014

FRANK Crofts was a distinguished agricultural scientist and inspiring university teacher whose career achieved huge savings in fuel and water for Australian croppers.

His achievements on the NSW North Coast, the North West and on the Central Tablelands represented breakthroughs for farm soil fertility and crop and pasture productivity.

Born on February 27, 1925, the son of farming parents Arthur and Lila Crofts, he grew up in Blayney, attending the local primary school, then Kinross Wolaroi School in Orange, before serving in Townsville and New Guinea with the Royal Australian Air Force from 1942 as a radar operator.

As a returned serviceman he received a Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scholarship to attend the University of Sydney in 1947, where he met Lucinda Wyndham, a demonstrator in agricultural botany and genetics.

After graduating with a bachelor of science in agriculture with first class honours, he and Lucinda married in 1952.

Between 1951 and 1954 he worked on pasture decline on the Far North Coast as a Department of Agriculture research agronomist on secondment to the University of Sydney, becoming keenly interested in conservation and no-tillage agriculture - at least 20 years ahead of his time.

Together with pasture agronomist Ernest Breakwell and Harold Jenkins, Frank Crofts was largely responsible for developing the practice of sowing legumes into uncultivated pastures to lift grazing productivity - a practice now known as sod-seeding.

This led to the university's patent of a sod-seeder designed with a unique chisel seeding boot, built under licence by Grasslands and widely used as a basis for conservation farming.

Grasslands sold about 500 units in the first production year, 1954.

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Frank Crofts: a pioneer in his field

Call 281-431-7441 for the best Zoysia sod available in the Houston area. Zoysia is a slow growing, dense turf grass that looks great and tolerates more shade than Raleigh St. Augustine and any Bermuda grasses. Many of our clients who move to the Houston area from the North like Zoysia grass because its lush, fine bladed appearance reminds them of Kentucky Bluegrass and fescue.

If you choose Palisades Zoysia for your home lawn project, youll have the best looking lawn in your neighborhood. Its more expensive than our other turf grass sod varieties, but your new sod will enhance the value of your home for many years to come!

Palisades Zoysia Japonica turf grass is a vegetatively produced, medium broad textured, high density turf that is specifically suitable for home lawns, golf fairways and roughs, sports fields, industrial parks and highway medians.

Palisades Zoysia Grass is a medium to coarse textured turf noted for its shade tolerance and low water use requirements. It will tolerate mowing as close as one half inch with good weed competitions and ideally as high as two to two and a half inches for home lawns. Its tolerance for close mowing makes Palisades Zoysia Grass Sod a great choice for use on golf course fairways, especially where water availability is of concern.

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Press Release BATON ROUGE, La. -- The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF) is now accepting applications for the 2015 Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP), Commissioner Mike Strain, D.V.M., announced today.

Applications must be received no later than close of business (4:30 p.m.) May 11, 2015.

The LDAF will administer the grant program funded through the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA-AMS). Although, the USDA has not officially released SCBGP funding amounts, the LDAF anticipates about $300,000 will be available to fund Louisiana projects.

The grants designated for the state are to be used for projects that solely enhance the competitiveness of Louisiana specialty crops like fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture, Christmas trees, turf grass/sod, nursery and greenhouse crops.

Some groups eligible for the grants include non-profit organizations and corporations, commodity associations, state and local government entities, colleges and universities. Applicants must reside in or their business or educational affiliation must be in Louisiana. One requirement of applicants is that each applicant must obtain a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number and include that number on their application.

Grant funds will not be awarded for projects that directly benefit a particular commercial product or provide a profit to a single organization, institution or individual. Projects should focus on issues to help improve specialty crop industries as a whole such as: distribution, production, research, market development, food safety, promotion and education.

LDAF will accept grant applications with a yearly budget value of up to $100,000. Grants can be awarded for projects lasting up to two years and 11 months. Once the deadline has passed, all applications submitted to the LDAF will be carefully evaluated to determine if the projects are qualified based on the criteria listed in the guidelines.

All submitted project applications deemed qualified will be reviewed and scored by a panel consisting of industry stakeholders, and the panel will make funding recommendations to LDAF. All LDAF approved projects will be incorporated into one state grant request, which will be submitted to the USDA.

LDAF has prepared a Request for Applications (RFA) document detailing application instructions, scoring criteria, federal forms, project format examples and other helpful information from the USDA. The document may be found at http://www.LDAF.la.gov. Click on the 2015 Specialty Crop alert.

A complete list of eligible specialty crops may be found at http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/scbgpdefinitions.

Excerpt from:
Specialty Crop Block Grant Program Accepting Applications

07:01 20 March 2015

by James Scott

Solar Eclipse. Credit: Letchworth and District Astronomical Society.

Archant

An astronomy group is pulling out all the stops for members of the public to wonder at a solar eclipse which is taking place this morning.

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A partial eclipse which happens when the moon passes between the Sun and Earth and partially blocks the former, casting a shadow over the latter is due between 8.25am and 10.40am.

The Letchworth and District Astronomical Society will have four gazebos set up in Leys Avenue housing a screen with a live feed from NASA showing the eclipse and display boards with information.

Outside there will be eight telescopes with solar filters so that people can look directly into the sun safely, as well as 100 pairs of safety goggles.

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Letchworth astronomy group pulling out all the stops for solar eclipse

Gospel Mission outreach worker JoAnne McKenzie with one of her peeps. The mission's outreach program has lost its funding, meaning chronically homeless who don't use the shelter will not be getting visits and help from the mission unless more funding is found.

image credit: Kevin Parnell

Every morning at 6:30, the men and women who have taken up shelter overnight at the Gospel Mission begin another day of survival. Most of them will be back for coffee, lunch and dinner at the mission and will find themselves back in a bed overnight.

But for some homeless, the Gospel Mission isn't part of their lives. Enter outreach worker JoAnne McKenzie, who also begins her day at 6:30 and heads out to work with chronically homeless people, those that are not using the shelter and opt to stay in parks, church parking lots or gazebos.

"A lot of them don't want to come inside, whether it's addiction or other issues so we go outside with them and we work alongside them on their turf," she said. "The first thing is building trust."

While four case workers meet and work with homeless inside the Gospel Mission, trying to get their lives back on track and move them towards treatment, affordable housing and back towards mainstream society, the two outreach workers attempt to get the chronically homeless to use the shelter. Most don't have identification which means they can't get on social assistance and many times it takes as much as a year or more to get consent to work with them.

But come the end of March, the Gospel Mission will lose its federal funding for the outreach program. McKenzie will move back inside to work as a case worker while the chronically homeless will not be receiving regular visits from either of the mission's outreach workers, who often travelled with other health care providers.

"It's one of the things about being not-for-profit and raising the funds," said executive director Randy Benson. "It's tough out there. We're still working on a few options because we obviously believe in the program. We know that segment of the homeless population is going to be left without support."

While the homeless situation may seem hopeless to some, there are also many successes the Gospel Mission has had, moving people off the streets and into treatment.

McKenzie tells the story of a woman from Vancouver's downtown East Side who came to Kelowna and lived on the streets for 18 months before she agreed to get help. She entered detox, treatment and then into independent housing. Another woman was found by outreach workers addicted to heroin and pregnant, living in a tent. Over the course of a year-and-a-half, the woman was able to get into a shelter, get off heroin, have her baby and now has full custody of the child.

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Gospel Mission outreach program loses federal funding

CHARDS market traders have welcomed a U-turn over a potential relocation of the towns street market.

Members of Chard Town Council met traders last week and were handed a petition against the suggested move.

A Saturday Market Working Group was set up to look at ways to improve the market and take it forward and the council agreed to approve the groups recommendation to relocate the market, as well as proposals to canvas opinion and apply for a grant from South Somerset District Councils Area West committee at a meeting of the full council earlier this year.

Many traders threatened to pull out of the market if a proposed move to the Lace Mill car park in Holyrood Street was to go ahead. But traders are now looking forward to working with the next elected town council on ways to improve the historic feature.

Jim Morrison, of Jims Pet Food, told The News: The meeting was very amicable and Cllr Jenny Kenton explained in more detail the thoughts that the committee had and the traders were able to put their views across.

Some of the ideas were covers or gazebos of the same colour to be provided, the launch of a Facebook page, and looking for new traders to fill the side of the Guildhall and to go over to the other side of Fore Street.

There was an idea to go into Holyrood Street but this is not possible as the emergency services would not have access.

The move to the Lace Mill is now not going to happen but hopefully some of the ideas from the traders will be taken on by the committee and the council.

The traders have asked for more promotion, more communication between themselves and the council and we are looking forward to working with the council to improve the market.

We would like to thank the public and shopkeepers for their support and the petition with 260 names was handed to the Mayor during the meeting.

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Chard traders welcome u-turn on market move plan

Conyers City Councilman John Fountain

CONYERS In an effort to compromise and accommodate the needs of a good member of the community, the Conyers City Council Wednesday revisited the question of how heavy equipment can be displayed outside business buildings in the Gateway Village zoning district.

Councilman John Fountain made a motion to approve an ordinance that would amend the city code to allow outdoor display of utility trailers, which is the primary merchandise for Rockland Cargo Equipment in Gateway Village.

The ordinance would substitute for one that the council voted down in its Feb. 21 meeting. That ordinance, requested by Ronald Ayers, owner of Rockland Cargo, sought to allow the business to display an array of heavy equipment on its lot such as utility trailers, cargo trailers, tow dollies, playground equipment, storage sheds, gazebos, garages and carports.

The city code section that currently regulates Gateway Village district does not allow outdoor display of those items, and in 2004 the city ruled Rockland to be a legal nonconforming business, but has allowed the business to continue displaying its entire range of heavy equipment.

The council, Mayor Randall Mills, City Manager Tony Lucas, Planning and Zoning director Marvin Flanigan and others discussed Ayers Jan. 21 request at length, including addressing it on three different days at the councils annual retreat.

The councils dilemma was summarized by Fountain at the Jan. 21 meeting when he said, On the one hand, youve got this business thats been a good member of the community On the other hand, we have all the challenges that Ayers request would present as a precedent.

No satisfactory resolution could be found and in its Feb. 4 meeting, the council unanimously rejected the Jan. 21 ordinance request.

This ordinance is very different from that one, Fountain said after Wednesdays meeting, because it allows only utility trailers and not all those other items to be displayed outdoors. Were seeking to accommodate their main line of business, utility trailers.

Fountain told the Citizen he came up with the compromise in an a-ha moment.

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Conyers City Council takes another look at outdoor utility trailer displays

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