If the lawn outside your window is giving you the blues, join the club, says Consumer Reports.

After a brutal winter walloped much of the country, the magazine's Facebook and Twitter feeds have been buzzing with lawn care woes from exasperated homeowners (#moles and #barespots, anyone?).

Fortunately, many of the most common problems have fairly straightforward fixes. Consumer Reports offers the following solutions to common problems:

Solution: Look for lawn alternatives

Even so-called shade-tolerant varieties of turfgrass won't do well in dark corners of the yard. And pruning trees too aggressively to create sunlight can end up harming the tree. You're better off cutting your losses and replacing the sun-starved patch of grass with a shade-tolerant ground cover, such as bishop's hat or sweet woodruff.

Or you might convert that part of the lawn with gravel or a perennial bed.

Solution: A multipronged defense

You're smart to tackle this pesky weed. Besides being an eyesore, crabgrass typically dies off at the first frost, promoting soil erosion.

Applying corn gluten meal, a natural alternative to chemical herbicide, in early spring can help contain the problem. Follow with a spring fertilizer.

As the mowing season begins, don't cut the grass too short, since this can open the door again for crabgrass. Set the deck on your mower or tractor to around 3 1/2 inches.

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Consumer Reports: Your best lawn ever

Nampa, Idaho (PRWEB) May 28, 2014

Barrier Lawn & Pest, Inc. believes their simple customer service, which they call the Barrier Promise has helped them gain a good reputation both online and offline in the pest control industry in the Boise area. The proof can be found by reading BBB reviews, Google reviews and Demandforce customer reviews. They receive excellent customer service reviews, which can be read on their site.

Barrier Lawn & Pest, Inc. is a family owned lawn care and pest control company. They have been operating in Boise, Idaho since 2006. Their headquarters are located in Nampa, Idaho. They are capable of serving most of Southwest Idaho including Garden City, Boise, Eagle, Emmett, Kuna, Meridian, Middleton, Nampa, Caldwell and Star.

Each day, Barrier Lawn & Pest, Inc. strives to meet the needs of the customer. They believe in doing simple and basic things, such as answering the telephone, because that is really what pays off. This company is committed to their customers 100%. They believe in providing top of the line treatment and service. They aim to be the type of company everyone wants to do business with. They believe in delivering results and treating people with the respect they need and deserve.

They promise to return every message, answer every call that comes in during business hours, call to schedule every service, and they are always on time. When treating homes and offices, the solutions they use for ant control and spider control are safe for the family and pets.

The company is licensed and insured, and believe in doing things safely by the book. Back in 2011, the Idaho Department of Agriculture performed a site inspection of their location. They passed this inspection with flying colors.

About Barrier Lawn & Pest, Inc.

Barrier Lawn & Pest, Inc. is a family owned lawn and pest control business. They first started back in 2006 and are continuing to grow. They believe in treating their customers with the respect and dignity they deserve.

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Barrier Lawn & Pest, Inc. Announces Their Barrier Promise

A presentation made to Park Ridge Park District officials suggests eliminating pesticides and using natural lawn care treatment on the new Youth Campus property.

Go Green Park Ridge delivered the presentation during the park boards Thursday, May 15 meeting.

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Originally posted here:
Pass Up Park Pesticides?

Before leaving for Indianapolis to visit her husband, who was in the hospital being treated for multiple myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer, Bonnie Atkinson (not her real name), a resident of the Painted Hills subdivision outside Martinsville, stood outside her house chatting with a neighbor. Suddenly a professional lawn care service truck appeared, and the driver sprayed herbicides on several lawns in the neighborhood, as had happened before. Although it's difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether her husband's cancer and the many other cases of cancer in Atkinson's neighborhood are linked to her neighbors' habit of treating their lawns with herbicides, she knew for sure that herbicides used on lawns are deadly to more than weeds, the target organisms, as Rachel Carson pointed out in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Atkinson also knew that because of pesticide drift, herbicides move to areas other than were they're sprayed.

About 90 million pounds of herbicides are applied to U.S. lawns every year, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of the 17 most frequently used herbicides, three are known carcinogens, three are possible carcinogens, and one is a probable carcinogen, according to Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit working to end dependence of toxic pesticides. Various herbicides are linked with cancers, endocrine disruption, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, kidney/liver damage, birth defects and sensitization/irritation.

Children are especially sensitive to pesticide exposure because they absorb more pesticides relative to their body weight than adults and have developing organ systems that are more vulnerable and less able to detoxify toxic chemicals than adults' systems.

Lawn chemicals harm pets, too: according to Environmental Research, using a pesticide to achieve a lush lawn is likely to cause malignant lymphoma in dogs.

Take the herbicide 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid), for example. It is the only one of the top 13 herbicides listed by Beyond Pesticides that causes all the ill effects herbicides are known to cause (http://www.beyondpesticides.org/lawn/factsheets/30health.pdf). It's one of the top 13 most heavily used herbicides in the home and garden, according to Beyond Pesticides. Lawn care companies apply it in the late spring and early summer for http://psep.cce.cornell.edu/issues/lawnissues.aspx">broad leaf weed control and in the fall for weed treatment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that 2,4-D, which is applied outdoors but is commonly tracked into houses on shoes or pet paws, can remain in carpets for as long as a year. 2,4-D has been widely detected in drinking water.

2,4-D was a chief ingredient in the defoliant Agent Orange, which the U.S. used to destroy ecosystems in North Vietnam during the Vietnam war. It left a legacy of cancer and birth defects among the Vietnamese exposed to it, and it left a similar legacy in exposed American troops and their offspring.

2,4-D is contaminated with a class of synthetic chemicals called dioxins, the most potent chemical carcinogens known. Dioxins cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive effects, liver damage and a skin disease called chloracne. Dioxins are neurotoxins and endocrine (hormone) disruptors and are on the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list of the worst hormone disruptors.

2,4-D is especially associated with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, cancer of the lymph system, according to Beyond Pesticides, an organization that advocates abandoning the use of pesticides. 2,4-D is absorbed through the skin. Anyone who applies the herbicide or is in contact with lawns or surface water where 2,4-D was applied is at risk of exposure to it.

Just how many Indiana homeowners employ lawn care services to spray herbicides on their property is impossible to know. The Hoosier Environmental Council has no information on the subject. According to the Office of the Indiana State Chemist, no agency has information on how many Indiana households use lawn care services because homeowners aren't required to report the use of a professional lawn care operator. However, the office reported that Indiana has 1,242 licensed turf-management businesses.

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Chemical commerce fuels cancer cluster worry

Orlando Lawn Treatment Services | 407-447-7378
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Orlando Lawn Treatment Services | 407-447-7378 - Video

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Rene Bourque's hat trick capped a wild Montreal win last night, and hats rained down on the Bell Centre ice. Around the same time, in Bourque's hometown of Lac La Biche, Alberta, some far-flung Habs fans gave Bourque's parents' lawn the same treatment.

The photo, by Christine Owchar, was shared on Twitter last night by @opinionated_mom (she tweeted it to the Canadiens and to the Prime Minister, which is adorable). Bourque is big news in Lac La Biche, where residents gather at the local ice rink for playoff viewing parties.

Bourque's father, Gary, was an Oilers fan before his son made the NHL. Now it's all Canadiens.

"It's always nice to see them win," Gary Bourque said. "But if he's part of the goal production or the assist, it's a bonus for him and I'm sure it's a bonus for me, eh?"

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Canadiens Fans Throw Hats Onto Rene Bourque's Parents' Lawn

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) May 26, 2014

Grass have brown patches that never turn green? Lawn suffering from irregularly shaped dead patches? These horrifying results could be due to ravenous grubs looking for a full meal in that beautiful, lush green lawn, as well as the hungry moles and other mammals who eat them. The only suggested all encompassing sure fix is with severe pest and mole control from Gopher Patrol. According to Tech Supervisor Brandon Rodriguez, Our company uses all inclusive treatment programs to promote full and healthy lawns.

The most common ones seen are white and creamy colored. They are a beetle larvae that has a C for cookie shape. Here are just a few helpful hints in trying to keep an eye on those pests:

If there are dead patches...They may be due to grubs feeding that occurred the previous fall. To check, lift a piece of your turf. If grubs are the culprit, the dead patch will roll up like a carpet, or youll be able to pull up the grass and see that it has no roots.

If there are irregularly shaped dead patchesThey will appear in your well-irrigated lawn in late summer or early fall. Check the turf using the technique just mentioned.

If the turf has become spongySometimes sponginess can be detected before extensive brown patches appear. With well-watered lawns, sponginess may be the first clue that grubs are present.

Birds, skunks, armadillos, raccoons or moles will destroy lawns they eat grubs and are trying to uncover them.

Grubs CAN and WILL take over and destroy a lawn in one summer. In its first instar, or earliest stages of larvae development, the Scarab Beetle grub feeds on the turf roots just below the soil surface. This damage generally occurs in Spring, however, the actual damage does not become apparent until the hot dry days of Summer set in. With an extended period of hot dry weather the top layer of soil dries out completely! The grass roots being sheared off just below the soil are unable to absorb any water or moisture from the soil and consequently the lawn dies in the patches where the grubs have been active. If left untreated, the population will grow and there will be more problems with other outdoor pests such as gophers coming to visit and helping to destroy the lawn.

Read more from the original source:
Jiggly, Wiggly, Worms To Swarm Lawns Grub Summer Treatments Now Offered as Infantry in Fighting Pest and Mole Control ...

The Anderson County Extension has been bombared with questions about the American Burnweed. American Burnweed, better known as Fireweed, is a particularly obnoxious weed in the early spring. It usually appears in April, seemingly out of the blue, and can look like its literally taking over your yard. It has big fat leaves that really stick out like a sore thumb in your in-the-process-of-greening-up lawn.

Fireweed comes from seeds blowing around in the spring storms. Fireweed produces small white or greenish flowers that go to seed like dandelion puffs, and then they go everywhere. The seeds float down and root in the thatch layer of your lawn. (This is little pieces of dead grass, leaves, and other lawn detritus thats on the dirt at the base of your grass.)

Since its not rooted into the soil, it pulls up very easily, and when the weather heats up, and you start mowing regularly, it will dry up and die. Until then, we can treat it with a good post-emergent broadleaf herbicide in April and May.

Post Emergence Control:

A three-way herbicide may be used on Bermuda grass, Zoysia grass, Centipede grass, St. Augustine grass and tall fescue. The active ingredients of a three-way herbicide often include the following broadleaf weed killers: 2,4-D, Dicamba, and Mecoprop (MCPP). Examples of a three-way herbicide are Ferti-lome Weed-Out Lawn Weed Killer with Trimec, Bayer Advanced Southern Weed Killer for Lawns, Spectracide Weed Stop Weed Killer for Lawns, Southern Ag Lawn Weed Killer with Trimec, and Lilly Miller Lawn Weed Killer Concentrate.

Note: Herbicides containing 2,4-D should be applied at a reduced rate on St. Augustine grass and centipede grass to prevent damage to these lawns. If a second application is needed, apply the herbicide in spot treatments. Repeated applications of a three-way herbicide should be spaced according to label directions.

In addition to three-way herbicides, Metsulfuron (such as in Manor and Blade) can be used for Fireweed control in Bermuda grass, Centipede grass, St. Augustine grass, and Zoysia grass. Metsulfuron is packaged for landscape professionals.

Due to the cost and application rate of this selective herbicide, it may be more practical to hire a landscape professional to apply the treatment. A non-ionic surfactant (such as Southern Ag Surfactant for Herbicides) is required at 2 teaspoons per gallon of spray mix for best control. Do not apply Metsulfuron to lawn if over-seeded with annual ryegrass or over-seed for 8 weeks after application. Do not plant woody ornamentals in treated areas for one year after application of Metsulfuron.

Do not apply Metsulfuron herbicides within two times the width of the drip line of desirable hardwood trees. Do not apply Metsulfuron to Fescue Lawns.

There is no pre-emergent for Fireweed, because it doesnt root in the soil in the first place.

The rest is here:
Anderson County Extension answers lawn questions about American Burnweed

Despite five-and-a-half million newborn and stillborn baby deaths each year, investment in newborn health remains very low. Thats one of the findings in a series of papers published in the medical journal The Lancet. The research also shows the vast majority of those deaths could be prevented. Listen to De Capua report on preventing newborn deaths Lead researcher Joy Lawn said the research is the most accurate estimate yet on the number of deaths of newborns and stillbirths. Every year there are two-point-nine-million babies who die in the first month of life -- and most shockingly a million who die on their birthday, the first day. And there are two-point-six-million stillbirths -- most shockingly, one-point-two-million who die while the woman is in labor. So together this is five-and-a-half-million babies, she said. Most of the deaths are in low and middle income countries. But rich nations, she said, are not immune. There are about 500,000 pre-term births in the United States every year. The three leading causes around the world are pre-term births, birth complications -- so where women dont get the right care during labor. And babies that are full-term can have damage and even die because of lack of care during labor and then, thirdly, infections, she said. Lawn is a professor and Director of the March Center at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an advisor to Save the Children UK. She said many babies and their mothers could be saved for just a few dollars worth of medical care. In this series we show very clearly that 71-percent of newborn deaths can be prevented with solutions that we have already. And that together, three-million women, babies counting newborns and stillbirths could be saved every year with investments at the time of birth. So thats a triple return on investment with care at the time of birth, she said. That care includes simple things like keeping the baby warm; helping it learn to breastfeed and making sure it has skin to skin contact with its mother. Also, Lawn said there are injections that can greatly improve the odds of a babys survival. One injection prevents tetanus infections, a nearly always fatal condition for babies. Another contains corticosteroids and is given to women in pre-term labor. Corticosteroids affect stress and immune response and inflammation. They help premature babies improve their breathing. This is standard treatment in rich nations, but not in developing countries. It costs less than one dollar. Lawn said that its been known for many years that a large number of newborns die. Yet, funding to prevent the problem remains low. Of the billions of dollars that are given for child survival, only four-percent of that donor funding even mentions the word newborn. And yet 44-percent of under-five deaths are among newborns. So theres a major mismatch in what the funding is going to compared to where the deaths are now, she said. Much of the funding goes towards preventing deaths of mothers and children up to age five. In recent years, its become more common in the U.S. to issue birth certificates for stillborn babies. Lawn said it means a lot to parents to know that their child has been recognized. However, what the papers in The Lancet also show is that in many developing countries no record is kept. Lawn said, A women who loses a newborn death or a stillbirth in many of the places Ive worked in Africa there will be no piece of paper. The baby may not be named. Its very unlikely there will be any funeral or public recognition. And those things arent just sad for the woman, but they hide the whole problem. The fact that in this day and age you can have five-and-a-half million babies entering and leaving the planet without official record but also mostly without funerals or recognition actually stops us [from] acting. More than 50 experts from 28 institutions in 17 countries took part in The Lancet series. In June, a new international initiative is set to be launched called Every Newborn Action Plan. Its described as an evidence-based roadmap toward care for every women and a healthy start for every newborn baby.

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Millions of Newborn Deaths Reported

MIAMI Carlos Ruiz de Quevedo worked nearly two years to design and build a "green" home in a gentrifying section of the Little Gables, a labor of love for the architect and Realtor, with energy-saving features like energy-efficient impact windows, a solar-ready electrical system, and highly insulated walls and roof.

The two-story house has environmentally friendly details like cisterns that collect rainwater and air-conditioner runoff for watering the lawn, and it's wired for an electric car charger.

So when Ruiz de Quevedo listed the three-bedroom, three-bath house at $625,000, aiming to tap into the peak spring/summer house-hunting season, he hired a home staging company to furnish the place.

"They even put in a make-believe family to live in the place," said Ruiz, who bought the property in June 2012 with a run-down coral rock cottage that was beyond saving.

"There is a lot of competition, so you want your house to stand out," said Marisa Salas, who owns the South Florida franchise of Showhomes. "We stage all the rooms so people can envision how spaces are meant to be utilized."

In the current strong housing market, Salas said, her company is seeing growing demand for staging services. She furnishes the homes, places art on the walls and adds homey touches.

When Salas started out in the business during the downturn, "there were a lot of vacant properties," which made home-management services particularly appealing to owners. Besides staying on top of maintenance, the property manager helps ensure that squatters don't move in.

Staged homes fetch 5 percent to 15 percent more than those left vacant, according to Salas. The staged homes also sell faster than those that aren't, she added.

"We create the emotional aspect of a house. When people walk into a vacant house, they don't really appreciate anything," she said.

Home sellers tap "stagers" primarily for higher-end homes, in "the $1 million to $3 million range," Salas said. Fees typically run $3,000 to $10,000, depending on the home.

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'Green' spec home in Florida gets staging treatment