There are no easy answers.  Austin is not Phoenix or Seattle, with predictable rainfall and temperature patterns.  2011 was El Paso precipitation with a Minneapolis winter blast.   2006 was  New Orleans rainfall and a Miami January.  We can’t grow desert plants because it gets too cold, and we can’t grow sub-tropical plants because we experience long-term droughts.  We are the bastard child of normal climate patterns.  ”What’s a poor Fort Worth (or Austin) boy to do”?

For Dead Lawns in Full Sun

Chances are that the dead grass that used to live in full sun conditions was St. Augustine.  I like St. Augustine, it’s a super drought tolerant groundcover over rich, well-drained soils, in the shade.  Otherwise, its a brass handrail on the Austin Titanic.  If you must have a lawn in full sun conditions, then you must flex your compromise muscles.   The below options will only work in low-traffic sites, and if you’re willing to bend the idiotic notions of pristine suburban lawns and forgot all about St. Augustine.

Full Sun Lawn – Option 1 – Native Grasses by Seed

We have successfully established lawns using a mix of native grasses  (Buffalo, Blue Grama, Curly Mesquite) started from seed, which is now available as a standard mix called Thunder Turf from Native American Seed in Junction.  These folks are, to me, the best native seed supplier in the state.  But, there are two huge hurdles that you’d have to overcome to make this work:

1.  Water.  Seeds need a constant soil moisture to germinate, which means daily watering for at least two weeks in the form of rain or your sprinkler system or garden hose.  If you plant in spring, it will take the entire summer under ideal conditions to get the grass to establish.  After two weeks of daily (or even twice a day) watering, you can start to back off, but still, you will have to water at least once a week during the entire summer.  If you let young grass seedlings dry out once, it’s all over and you have to reseed again, and these seeds aren’t very cheap.

2.  Weeds.  Even though the Thunder Turf mix can eventually be the turf grass option that requires the least maintenance, it takes years for it to become that way.  Once established, it requires very little water, no fertilizer, and very little mowing to stay happy.  But before then, and during the first three months especially, you will have to spend an insane amount of time weeding all of the opportunistic jerks that love the freshly prepared soil and constant water that you are giving the native grass seeds.  Weekly weeding all summer will be absolutely mandatory.  The amount of effort required will depend on how weed-infested your current lawn is now and what the soil is like, but a reasonable expectation is at least 1-2 hours per week through the summer, then gradually tapering off.

Cost to do it right ranges from $1.25/2.50 per square foot, depending on current level of weed infestation and how committed you are to chemical avoidance.

Full Sun Lawn – Option 2 – ‘Density’ Buffalo Grass from Sod

We have also successfully used a variety of Buffalo Grass known as ‘Density’, grown at a farm in Poteet south of San Antonio.  It will cost something in the ballpark of $2.25 per square foot to install it properly.  Density still requires regular water to get it established, but will have fewer weed problems than starting from seed.

But it will still require weeding to make sure Bermuda or other noxious weeds don’t take over, and uncommon attention to make it perform the way you want.

Full Sun – Option 3 – Trees or Beds or Vegetables

It’s possible that your lawn just needs a little protection from afternoon sun to survive the summer without supplemental water.  There are plenty of non-irrigated St. Augustine lawns in Austin that did fine last summer with the help of some shade trees.  So plant some trees!

Or, maybe you don’t have kids that like to run around barefoot, or maybe you live close enough to a park where they can run wild and free on the public dime.  Maybe a lawn is just a silly notion that you forgot to let go of when you moved out of your parents’ house.  There are options.

Convert that dead lawn into a heat and drought loving native bed, filled with a diverse set of plants that might not look pretty when the going gets tough, but at least they’ll survive and recover when the rains come back.  When they’re happy, they’ll even feed the birds and butterflies and bees.  Just be sure you plan for those New Orleans/Miami years; the low-maintenance xeriscape in dry years is a very, very bad maintenance hangover in wet years.

If you’re gonna use the water in a landscape, then make those drops count.  Convert your dead lawn into a mini-farm and grow veggies instead.  At least you’ll have something to show (and eat) for those water bills.

Of course, trees and new beds and veggies will need a different kind of lovin’ than traditional turf grass, so like the other Full Sun Options, they are not Get Out of Jail Free cards.  You will either need to put on your experimental hat or hire a pro to help overcome the learning curve to make these options work.

Dappled Shade or Full Shade

Some lawns have managed to stay on the fringes of survival in this drought.  Super weedy, thin and crappy looking, but with the benefit of shade.  In some cases, its best to just work with what you have, instead of tearing it all out and starting from scratch.   Applying 1/4″ of compost over the entire lawn can significantly increase the organic content of soils, as well as improving nutrient levels and soil drainage.  A monthly feeding with liquid seaweed, compost tea, fish emulsion, and liquid molasses can help wake up the soil and stimulate root growth.  Proper mowing and occasional but deep watering can do wonders too.  Sometimes, you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.

Too shady for St. Augustine?  Then do what nature does under a thick canopy of Ashe Juniper, and mulch it deep.  If you must have some green in your duff, try out some native Sedges.  Or maybe some Horseherb mixed with Twist Leaf Yucca, or Tropical Sage for color.  And that’s just for those who can’t deal with the simplicity of plain natural mulch.

Rain Water

Until recently, the main purpose for engineers was to make sure 14″ of rain over a 24-hour period exited the property as calmly and quietly as possible.  That’s changing in Austin as we re-think the value of rain water, and now most commercial developments in Austin implement ways to capture that water, and keep it on site as long as possible for the benefit of plants and water resource conservation.

Rain gardens, rains water collection systems, and other creative paradigm shifts in precipitation strategies are all the rage in Austin for good reason.  And they don’t have to be complicated or expensive.  We can help design and build 2,500-gallon rainwater systems for about $2,500.   That’s enough capacity to keep a typical garden irrigated for at least 6 months without turning on a tap.

No Easy Answers

Ugh, and this is just the simplified version.  Every landscape is different, every users perspective is different, every year sees a different weather pattern.  What works on Holly Street might not necessarily work in Hudson Bend, so it takes a customized plan and a flexible approach.  We don’t have all the answers, but at least we’re thinking about them.

Desert Grasses as Alternative to Traditional Turf Grass

Full Sun Site Prepped and Ready for Thunder Turf Seed Mix

Irrigated Veggie Boxes in a Drought Affected Landscape

Even though we consider ourselves as low-impact landscapers, it’s a struggle for me to be excited about landscaping in this horrific drought.  I might as well be bulldozing garbage into the Guadalupe River.

We use alternative fuels in our equipment, but propane and waste veggie oil and biodiesel in combustion engines are still air-choking pollutants.  What if we figured out ways to avoid using those engines altogether?

Avoiding chemicals doesn’t make us greener, it just makes us work harder and with less efficiency.  What if we could change clients’ perspectives, and show them the value of plants that most people consider to be weeds?

Replacing lawns with native beds doesn’t necessarily reduce water use, it just makes us look like we’re trying.   What if sometimes, the best way to conserve resources is by working with what we have, and by waiting for better conditions before attempting improvements?

Sometimes, doing nothing in the landscape is the best solution.

In severe drought, all newly installed plants need regular water.  We actually killed Agaves and Texas Sotols when we planted them in May and failed to add a drop of water this summer.   The weeds that were replaced by these now dead plants would have done better.  The reality is that those weeds were probably the most sustainable option at the time.

If we actually had a little rain this summer, it’s a different story.  A little supplemental water to get properly selected drought-tolerant plants established during normal planting seasons is not a big stress on regional water resources.  Once these plants have a solid root system, they can survive future summers of two-thousand e-hell-ven without any help, AND can improve a site by providing more cover and food for wildlife, shading soil microbes and your house, preventing soil erosion, and maybe even providing a bloom or two for the ladies.

Sometimes, using resources in the short-term actually saves resources in the long-term.   Now is a really bad time to use those resources.

We really shouldn’t be planting anything in landscapes this fall, even if the weather does cool a little.  I’m just too chickenshit to stand by that, so we’re planting anyway, because anything can be justified.  But if I had a spine, I suppose I would try this out:

Un-irrigated Landscapes – Keep them un-irrigated.  To save soil resources, only focus on areas that are now bare soil thanks to drought.  Delineate these areas into natural shapes, leaving the majority of any vegetation that is still alive untouched.   Add an inch or two of compost, cover with four inches of mulch, hand-water it long and deep one time.

If and only if it ever rains again, and if an only if it happens to be during a cool season, plant however many 10-gallon trees will fit into the mulched space, matching plant material with soil type found on the site and that will survive prolonged drought once they’re established.  Good luck figuring out exactly which trees those are, and be prepared to show your neighbor a finger when he asks why you are planting giant weeds.  Wait a year or two, then repeat with shrubs and perennials only if needed to keep up with Jones’.

Irrigated Landscapes – Shut off your irrigation system, sell your house as quickly as possible while everything is still sort of alive, and move to Oregon.

Water Restrictions

Austin is officially in Stage 2 watering restrictions.  So we can only use sprinklers once a week.  Let me know if you need help resetting your timers.

Vegetables

I’m a lost soul on the topic of veggie gardens.  The edibility of certain plants can justify their needy existence, but even in droughts like this?  Our garden at the house is dormant, save for a single basil plant that came out of nowhere.  This year’s excuse was lack of rain.  So I’m copying a yard sign I saw in San Antonio that insecurely excused the state of a parched landscape by claiming that the owner is “Sharing Our Water with Local Farmers.”  Ya, let them use our water to grow our veggies, hell, I’ll take food over a shower any day.

But I did learn something this summer, and it gave me hope that a symbiosis can exist between veggies and responsible water use in tough times like these.  Sun Gold tomatoes love drought.  We planted 40 of these plants at Fonda in April, turned off the water in July, and as of today, they’re all still loaded with sweet, juicy, beautiful cherry tomatoes.  Not a drop of water in 6+ weeks of the hottest part of the hottest summer on record, and we’ve got golden balls of manna stacked seven feet high.  Throw in some edible weeds that don’t care what the weather is doing, and we’ve got an indestructible and bountiful garden.

Sometimes, You Gotta Get Up to Get Down

Or vicey versey.  We have been turning down new clients all summer, and will continue this trend through the fall for two reasons.  1) The guys have been working overtime all summer to keep up with obligations to exiting clients and those obligations are increasing as we approach the alleged planting season;  and 2) my failure to deal psychologically with this drought have kept my ambitions at a healthy zero.

Droughts are part of a natural cycle of life in this part of the country.  95 had never felt so good as it did last week, I’m guessing the first thunderstorm will be 100 times better than that.  The drought brought tragedy to thousands of families around us, but as thousands more rush to help their neighbors, it has also strengthened communities and created new ones that will stand together during the next tragedy.  That’s pretty inspiring.  It’s the lows of life cycles that makes the highs so magical.

Anyway, we’re still here living and learning, thanks for being part of that process.  Let it rain.

jeremy

We all want our jobs to have meaning, but brother, that sure is a hard figure to measure.  Matthew Crawford wrote an essay for the New York Times about the contradictory value we put on people who live by their wits, backs, and hands for a living.  I, like several of my friends from our small town high school, was programmed to go to college so that I can get a good job.  You know, an office job.  Because mowing grass for a living leads to a dead end.   Crawford writes: 

 “High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become ‘knowledge workers’.  The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy.  This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding.  More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it?”

Right.  The work of lineman can be personally fulfilling.  Then consider those dissenters of the office cube world; it’s not uncommon for someone from my generation to quit the office job and go to work on an organic farm.  Many people who work for the Information Man blatantly and openly voice their jealousy of people who sweat for a living. 

So summarizing this argument, we can say that salty workers are generally happier than their cube worker peers, because: 1) they don’t have to deal with the absurdities of the office environment; 2) their work is easily defined, and; 3)  there is usually a tangible result of the day’s labors, which brings fulfillment.

Now we enter the mind of a salty worker, for example, a landscaper.  He’s standing in the front yard of a house that backs to Barton Creek, the vein that carries the sparkle and shine of Austin to its crown jewel, Barton Springs.  The owner of this front yard has consulted with this landscaper, to find a way to reduce his $800+ monthly water bill and the 100,000 gallons of water he uses to keep his 1.5 acres of St. Augustine green and soft.  The owner’s idea is to drill a well, and use that water for irrigation, thus saving environmental resources by greatly reducing his use of City-treated water.  Then, get a list of organic products from the landscaper, and use them to replace the bottles of lawn chemicals in the tool shed.  Take out the recycling bin on Thursdays, buy a Prius, and boom, save the world.

The path of least resistance here, for the landscaper, is to agree.  For the landscaper who is a landscaper because he has “no other option”, this very path is the only path that exists in the universe.   The actions required of this solution fall right in line with the three arguments for why the salty worker jobs are superior to cube worker jobs.  Encourage the man to drill a well, apply an organic fertilizer on a regular basis, and keep that shit mowed.   Check’s in the mail.

But what about this new breed of landscaper, the one scarred and mangled from his educational background and former career path as a cube worker, which he eventually rejected so he can purse a career that allows him to be physically spent at the end of each day?  That juicy plum from the Tree of Knowledge taught him a few things after all, like the basic principles of hydrology and geology.  A simple connection is made, and suddenly, the absurdity of drilling a well feels a lot like those loony tasks required of him in the cube of his former life.  Now, his role in the situation becomes more complicated as he scrambles to be a diplomat between a fragile environmental resource and his paycheck.  The outcome will not be tangible, and will require bending a mind before action can be taken.  The Fruit is now poison, infecting the three arguments for the salty worker until they rot in a sad little puddle.   

So: 1) he sweats for a living, which when you get past the glorification of the romance of such work, take its toll on the body if he’s not careful, and can turn that end-of-the-day fulfillment of his youth into pain-with-every-movement horror of his adulthood; and,

2)  he’s still dealing with absurdities he thought he was escaping by leaving the office job, which makes;

3) his role a depressing shade of grey, rather than simple black and pure white.  

The three arguments for the superiority of salty work over office work are obliterated.

On top of that, as a small business owner, this landscaper is juggling, somehow both sullenly and in desperate panic, obligations and responsibilities he didn’t sign up for:  trucks that get stolen; employees who don’t show up for work; employees who get arrested; employees who completely disappear for weeks at a time; equipment that fails in masses, at all the same time, when he needs them the most; clients who want to squeeze as much service for as little money as possible; clients who value the truly local small business, but only when they’re the lowest bidder; clients who ignore the 99 awesome things he did and blow up at the single mis-communication in a single email; clients who want service, dedication, and quality, but don’t want to pay for it; self-centered business partners who always take and never give; trying to do the right thing and still stay competitive; trying to provide a beneficial community service and still stay profitable; trying to give clients what they want, when they want it, for a fair price, and still maintain a healthy relationship with his wife and son; trying to develop and demonstrate a more environmentally and financially sustainable business model for those who will come after him; and on and on and on. 

Turns out the grass isn’t greener after all.  There are cubers that stand on the edge, and leap with all their strength, realizing with horror as gravity delivers them to the salty world that, at a closer resolution, it isn’t covered in soft, lush, green grass after all.   It’s actually a thin film of flesh-eating algae, deceptively masking a deep dark pit full of alligators, piranhas, sharks, and very sick people.   The arguments for salty work disintegrate in the poisonous fog, and the promising dreams of independence and self-reliance are uncovered to reveal smothering monsters of unbearable weight and despair.  It isn’t long before these poor souls take the walk of shame back to the other side, with a resigned relief to be back in the cube.

But, and here finally is my point, this is not the fate of everyone who is fooled by the three arguments, or the superficial lure of owning a business.  Some of us, when discovering the truth of the deceptively green grass, still hang on.  In this cold dark world, we find kindred spirits.  We find clients who appreciate what we do, respect our efforts, and who look past our faults to see our strengths.  We find employees who become friends, backed by a mutual respect and dependence on each other.  We find a mechanic who smooths out the jagged wrinkles of uncertainty, vendors who evolve into mentors and role models, and competitors who become unofficial partners for a common cause.  We find a rhythm in the volatility of business ownership, learn how to take advantage of our freedom instead of allowing it to crush us, and harness the potentially dangerous power of independence and use it for good.   

And gradually, in our daily actions to support each other and keep bread on our tables, we twine invisible threads.  We become a collective force, strong enough to resist the flesh-eating algae, alligators, piranhas, sharks, and very sick people, powerful enough to prevent anyone from crossing back over to the safe side.  We overcome all the challenges that our ignorance kept us from anticipating and despite the mountains of circumstances that threaten to drag us down, we thrive and succeed.

We become a community.

It’s that one thing, community, that outweighs the disappointment of the three false arguments and negates the disparity of being a small business owner.  It’s community that provides the inspiration, validation, and encouragement to counter the negative forces that threaten to drag me down and break me.  Community, created by accident, born in response to all the bad things that are bound to happen, is the secret to happiness in my work. 

It’s my community: my clients; my employees; my wife; my family; some of my fellow landscapers; the local vendors we rely on to keep our equipment and trucks running; fellow small-business owners who keep our website up to date and deliver bulk materials for us; vendors that provide us quality soil, mulch, plant, stone, gravel, and building materials to make us look good; local service providers that make it easy to dispose of our waste, recycle our brush, provide us with alternative fuels, and keep us efficient; local restaurants and food manufacturers that provide us with waste oil to fuel our trucks; and local farmers, editors, writers, poets, biologists, non-profits, long-time friends, musicians, and mamas who inspire us and back us up when we’re low.

God help me if I ever lose them, my posse, my people.  It’s my community that, no matter what, keeps the grass browner on the other side. 

So after 3 weeks, when I had given up on recovering the veggie truck, I get a call.  “Mr. Walther, this is Detective Price with the Austin Police Department, just calling to let you know we’ve recovered your truck.  It’s at an auto body shop east of San Marcos, sounds to be in pretty good shape.  It was towing a stolen trailer and stolen bobcat, abandoned near a road and stashed under some brush.” 

What?!  I figured it was in 5,000 pieces by now, or in Mexico smuggling guns or drugs or people.  I didn’t expect it to be 30 miles away, still in one piece, and almost driveable.  What happened?

The short answer is that the waste veggie oil system saved the truck.  From what we can tell, the thieves accidentally flipped the switch next to the steering wheel that night, drawing waste veggie oil from the auxiliary fuel tank in the bed of the truck, instead of diesel from the main fuel tank.   As far as they knew, the fuel gauge on the dash was the gauge for the tank they were using. 

So when the truck started sputtering outside of San Marcos and the dash fuel gauge still read “full”, they had no idea what was going on.  The truck eventually dies from lack of fuel,  and they crank and crank and crank on the ignition in vain to get it restarted, draining the batteries, and eventually, realize they’re stuck.  All they had to do was flip a switch, and they could have made it 200 miles into Mexico before needing to stop to refuel.

Instead, they ditch the truck,  trailer, and Austin Habitat For Humanity’s stolen bobcat, and a sheriff’s deputy eventually comes along and runs the plates to realize that something’s not right.  A couple of tow truck trips, two new windows, 37 phone calls, two new steering wheel locks, one recharge on the batteries, two new gate padlocks, one new security light, and one new steering column later, we have the truck back, good as new!

Most of it is wrapped in reusable jute tarps, or bundled as bulk limbs, or stuffed in plastic leaf bags or reusable plastic pots, and hauled to our lot in East Austin.  Every week or two, we load a truck and trailer with the accumulated treasure, and haul it to a brush recycling facility about 5 miles from the lot.  The frequency of these trips is an excellent measuring stick for how busy we are; and brother, there ain’t no stick big enough right now.  We’ve make weekly trips this spring, with the big trailer and truck stuffed with about 20 cubic yards of brush each time.  Last year, we collected about 675 cubic yards, enough to fill a large house with no walls from floor to ceiling, packed tight.

The brush recyclers use huge cranes with grapple attachments to drop the brush into massive industrial tub grinders, which spit out the shredded brush into massive 30-foot mountains. The mountains are watered, and allowed to age for up to one year.  At that stage, we buy it back from the recyclers; only this time, we call it “mulch.”

This closed-loop process is so common, that most of the bagged mulches available at places like your local Home Depot are actually sourced from Austin brush recycling facilities.  Buying directly from the source, in bulk, helps make the loop even smaller.

Funky Weather Patterns - Two years of record heat and drought.  Then an unusually hard winter, including a super hard freeze.  Then 6 months of steady, deep, unusually frequent rains. 

Non-native Turf- unlike a diverse prairie, a mono-culture stand of St. Augustine is hit especially hard during extreme weather and actually dies off in patches.  Two hard summers, followed by a hard winter, have weakened most lawns so severely that large parts totally died.

Surface Disturbance – The ancient prairies had wildfire and buffalo herds.  We had Funky Weather Pattern and Non-native Turf.  Our scenario is actually really similar to the old days, which encouraged natural succession in plant communities; true circle of life stuff. 

Wildfire/Funky Weather Patters severely knock back the surface vegetation.  The early succession weed seeds underground respond by unleashing their energy to grow fast and furiously on top of the bare soil, because there is no competition.  But they don’t spend much energy on roots, and die back when summer hits, adding nutrients and bug food as they decompose, paving the way for the next succession of plants. 

So weeds are nature’s way of paving the way for longer term plants, like grasses.  It’s natural, and it’s happening in lawns all over Austin. 

What to do About it- Well, that depends.  If you’re old school, you can go through the entire cycle again, kill the weeds, amend the soil, and replant St. Augustine.   Or if you’re super old school, or super new school, you can do what the prairies did, and continue to evolve.

If the dead patch is in the sun, heed the call of the Wildflower Center and Native American Seed and plant a “pocket prairie.”  You can try a mix of native short-grasses, like buffalo grass, blue grama, curly mesquite, and Texas grama.  Throw in some taller grasses, like lovegrass or bluestem.  Maybe a few wildflower seeds for seasonal fun. 

If the dead path is in the shade, take the advice of folks smarter than me, and try a mix of native and/or adapted sedges.  Lawn sedge, woodland sedge, blue sedge, meadow sedge, or Cherokee sedge.  Maybe mix in some color with tropical sage or Turk’s cap. 

Either way, nothing is maintenance free, especially in the beginning.  But there are lots of great folks out there to help you with that part too!

Who cares, you ask?  I’d like to think that most of you pay me to be the best sponge I can be, so that I can use the best information from the best resources to make educated suggestions on the best way to sustainably manage your landscapes.  If you’re gonna pay someone to mow your lawn, you might as well make sure the mowing crew is doing the best they can to protect the ecological integrity of your soils.  You don’t want to pay someone to mindlessly pollute your community’s natural resources.  You want to pay a thoughtful sea creature, who respects the surrounding environment. 

It’s spring time.  Time to consider the structure, nutrients, and biology of the soils that support your plants and lawn.  As I learn more about the intricacies of soils, (see the latest issue of Edible Austin, page 50) I’m slowly changing our approach to fertilizing, focusing more on building soils and less on regular fertilizer applications.  Most new clients now receive a proposed maintenance schedule that includes compost topdressing, organic fertilizing, and compost tea at regular intervals throughout the year.  But most of you long-time BioGardener loyalists have not been exposed to those proposed schedules, which are shaped from the detritus of many conversations and readings of people who know alot about soil in Central Texas.  So here’s the gist:

Compost Topdressing – March/April and again in September/October  - Compost is the backbone of an organic program.  It addresses all the important components of healthy soils: structure (by breaking up clays and adding the proper kinds of nutrients); organic content (adding humus, which feeds microbes and plants); and good bugs (compost has lots of beneficial microbes, which drive the natural process and balances of healthy soils). 

Compost Tea – Monthly, March through November – A super concentrated dose of microbes and humus. 

Liquid Fertilizer – Monthly, March through November- A dose of fish emulsion, seaweed, and humic acid, which provide micro-nutrients and macro-nutrients for healthy soils and plants.

Granular Fertilizer – April- For those who just have to have something that resembles traditional fertilizer, we use an organic, slow-release product formulated for Austin soils to add macro- and micro-nutrients. 

Triple Shot – Monthly, March through November – Because they are applied using the same technique, we can combine Liquid Fertilizer and Compost Tea in a single application.  Throw in molasses as a quick sugar source for microbes, and call it Triple Shot.  It saves money.

Even more concisely, a handy graphic that sums up an organic feeding and soil building program for a typical Austin lawn.  Pricing makes some big assumptions, and varies from landscape to landscape.

This represents a comprehensive soil-building strategy for a typical Austin lawn, and assumes normal conditions.  Soil tests can provide specific information needed to customize a soil building and soil feeding plan for your landscape, which I highly recommend.  Tests are $15-35, or we can do it for you and help interpret results for about $65.

For those DIY-ers all of these materials are readily available, and application is a snap.  Please let me know if you need help finding the best quality composts, compost teas, and fertilizers, or need any tips on how to apply them.

First, build organic matter in soil.   Most folks agree that soils need to have at least 3% organic content to sustain a balanced microbial population, but no higher than 10-15%.  Most disturbed soils in Austin have about 1% organic content.  We rely on soil tests to determine actual organic content for a specific landscape, and slowly apply compost (by topdressing) to get above 3%.  Not all composts are created equal, and different products present trade-offs among price, safety, microbial diversity and viability, and amount of humus, which is the end product of a completely finished product.  Everyone has their own opinion on the best compost, so I try to lay out the options, pros, and cons, and let the end user decide which is best for them.

Second, we consider the soil structure.  Ideal soil is porous, has a nice balance of drainage and water-holding capacity, and has a balanced set of nutrients in a form that makes it easy for plants to absorb them.  Most disturbed soils in Austin are compacted, have higher than ideal clay or rock content, and have nutrient imbalances.  Adding finished compost to soils introduces humus, which binds to clay particles to create crumbles and helps release nutrients that were otherwise tied up in the sticky clays.  In some cases, aeration combined with a compost application is a good first step in improving soil structure.  Proper mowing, irrigation, organic fertilizer application, and thoughtful use of the landscape all help avoid compaction and other soil structure issues.  A soil test can help create a customized soil amendment program, though topdressing with compost 1-2 times per year is usually not a bad general approach.

Then, once organic material is built up to at least 3%, and soil structure and nutrient balances are addressed, we can start building microbes.  The best way to do this is through compost teas.  Compost teas have exceptionally high concentrations of microbes, are relatively inexpensive, and easy to apply.  Most of our tea is purchased by an Austin-based company called Microbial Earth, though Natural Gardener and GeoGrowers also provide teas.

Because compost teas are basically little critter soups, timing is critical.  Although it doesn’t hurt to apply teas in winter and summer, the microbes will be mostly dormant during Austin weather extremes, so spring and fall are ideal application times.  Now is an ideal time to kick off a new season of compost tea applications.

Retail price for a gallon of tea is about $5-8, which can be applied using a simple 1- or 2-gallon pump sprayer.  1 gallon of tea covers about 5,000 square feet, slightly larger than the typical Austin yard.  You might consider a “drench” in early spring and again in late fall, which calls for 3-5 gallons of tea at a time, then follow up with a regular 1-gallon application every month through fall.  Our rates to apply the tea for you is about $35-40, in addition to the cost of the tea.

The noble BioGardener crew recently visited a house on McCullough, owned by a family who mostly maintains the landscape themselves but who enjoys some seasonal help from their favorite landscaping company.  Ollie must have dropped his collar on McCullough during a walk, shortly before our visit.  Most likely, it was accidentally picked up by the BioGardener crew in a rake-full of leaves twigs and weeds, stuffed in a bag, and loaded into the truck.

The bag, with the collar in it, was dropped off at our storage lot in East Austin, where it waited a few days to be hauled to a local brush recycling facility.  Normally, the collar (inside the bag) would have been reloaded into a truck with 100 or so other bags, driven the short trip to the brush recycling facility, been dumped out (completely unnoticed) with the leaves and other organic material it was catching a ride with, and then would have been ground and shredded, piled, watered, and left to rot for 12 months, ground and shredded again, then finally bagged and sold as mulch.  A nice, dust-to-dust sort of life for a collar to live, but not very fun or interesting, and most certainly not the appropriate or deserved destiny for a collar like Ollie’s.

Every once in a while, I’ll randomly select the softest, most uniform bag of leaves and weeds from the heaping piles at our lot, and take it just down the street to my home. The contents of the selected bag are spared the fate of its fellow common brethren, and treated to a second life as scratch for a small flock of bored chickens that live in a humble coop between our house and the neighbor’s fence. Every once in a rarer while, the lottery bag travels all the way to a small cabin in the woods outside of Fredericksburg, where a small flock of country chickens gets to taste the sweet weeds and feel the crunchy leaves of the big city, which represents the only glimpse of urbanity that these chickens will ever experience.

What makes this relevant to Ollie, is that the bag his collar landed in just so happened to be one of the softest and most uniform bags of leaves and weeds that we collected from our landscapes last week. Even more remarkably, the collar landed in a bag that just so happened to be heading to the flock of country chickens that live in the woods just outside of Fredericksburg. So when I ripped open the bag this weekend and watched the eager country chickens gather as I dumped out its innards, I paid a little extra attention to ensure no trash or other potentially toxic objects were included. Country chickens don’t know how to properly deal with city trash, and could choke on it. Then I heard the tingle of a bell. And saw a flash of metallic blue and bright orange. And there, among the city weeds and leaves, was Ollie’s collar.

I hope the collar finds Ollie well and raises his standing among his family and his peers; a lost neck piece destined for complete disfigurement and destruction that is saved, then hauled 82 miles, then faced with an even more gruesome death by pecking, saved yet again, and finally returned to its rightful spot around Ollie’s neck should allow the little dog at least some entitlement. Please give him a treat for me.