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With March just around the corner I thought I’d share some tips about prepping your UC Verde lawn for a season of loveliness!

  •  In early spring, mow your buffalograss to a height of 1 inch. This will remove the old grass debris and allow the sun to warm the soil faster so your buffalograss will green up earlier.
  • Apply a pre-emergent or a fertilizer with crabgrass and/or annual grassy weed control at this time. Any product available at your garden center should be okay to use. Read and follow the label.
  • Repeat this application at a ½ rate in 6-8 weeks for season long control.

And if you’re looking to install UC Verde for the first time this spring I can’t stress enough to you how important it is to properly prep your space before you plant!

  • It is extremely important to treat your space prior to installation to make sure that an exisiting weeds, plants or lawns have been killed off so that they do not overtake your young plugs when they are establishing. Take extra time and extra care to make sure you’ve killed off everything before you install your plugs and save yourself some major stress!
  • Often, this is a 3-4 week process. After killing off your existing lawn or weeds with a product such as Round-Up, you will want to wait several days and then begin to regularly water your space to encourage existing weeds and grass to come up.
  • Apply another application of Round-Up to anything that pops up.
  • Repeat this process until everything is eradicated.

Taking the time to do this before installation will save you from the headache of having isolate the weeds or old grass from the establishing UC Verde plugs. Here is a list of helpful advice from the Lazy Gardens blog on what to do before your installation!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hello love bugs! It’s Valentine’s Day and what Valentine’s Day would be complete without heart shaped pizza for lunch!…sorry I forgot to take a pic of it before we devoured it!

Prime UC Verde time is just around the corner in spring and with that being said, I thought I’d do one last status update on our painted test patch out front. What do you think? The colorant has slightly faded, but not bad after full winter exposure for 3 months (left with colorant applied late November, right left in natural dormant state)!

And now that UC Verde is coming out of hibernation you’ll be hearing from me more often! Talk to you soon!

 

Still Looking Good!

Well, it has been about two and half weeks since I applied the turf colorant to our dormant UC Verde Buffalograss lawn and it’s still looking good! As our grass continues to lose its color as the winter weather takes over, the colored portion is looking better and better ;)

I’ll keep taking snapshots of it throughout the winter so you can see how well the colorant holds up until spring when UC Verde comes out of dormancy!

Have a great weekend everyone! Get your Christmas shopping done! :)

How was your weekend? It’s getting hectic with Christmas coming up quick – lots to do!

Welllll, since only a couple of you entered into the dormant kit giveaway – you both sort of win! haha :)

@rctfan2 who posted on your Youtube channel wins the big prize – the dormant kit! Wooohoo!

and Amy Hayes you win your very own bottle of Green Lawnger! Wooohoo also!

I’ll try to contact you guys today or feel free to contact me to send me your mailing address ltakao@takaonursery.com

Thanks to everyone for checking out our very first demonstration video! :)

The folks over at UC Davis documented their whole UC Verde experience from brand spanking new plugs to how to deal with winter dormancy. Check it out!

UC Verde plots, October 2010 (after the 1st weeding)
No water stress 8/16/11

Rye grass versus a turf colorant to keep UC Verde looking green through the winter:

Section of plot sprayed with turf colorant, Nov. 30, 2011.  Annual ryegrass is adjacent to (above/left) sprayed section.

 

Drum roll please…We have officially reached triple digit Facebook fan status! Woohoo! With 101 fans on our Facebook page we’re feeling so loved…ahhhhhh hugs, hugs, hugs all around!

And to share the love we want to give something back to you!…Since we also just kicked off our very first demonstration video to help you color your dormant grass – we’ll be giving one lucky winner their very own dormancy kit, compliments of Takao Nursery!

It has everything you need to color your dormant UC Verde Buffalograss lawn this winter:

  • 2 gallon hand-held sprayer
  • bottle of Green Lawnger
  • spray bottle
  • disposable gloves

…all you need to add is water :)

Entering into the giveaway is super easy! Just go over and check out our new demo video and tell us what you think! Did you love it?! Did you feel like anything was missing? Are there any other topics you’d like to see covered??? Leave your comment on our new Youtube channel or on our Facebook page!

The contest will end on Friday, December 9th and I’ll announce the winner the following day! So, what are you waiting for? – Go and give us your two cents now! :)

As promised our very first how-to video is here for you all to see!!! In it, I’ll show you how to apply a turf colorant to your dormant UC Verde Buffalograss lawn!

It’s a tad cheesy, but what can you do? – it’s hard to give a demonstration and not sound a bit cheesy! :)

So watch our little clip here or go over to our brand spanking new Youtube channel and check it out (and you can even subscribe if you want, wink wink)!

Road Trip!

A bit of non-grass info for y’all! Here’s a little peek into the other side of being a part of the nursery…

I’m back from my road trip to speak about marketing at the San Diego Flower & Plant Association’s Annual Growers Meeting. It was a great trip that ended up being a bit longer than I had planned on…

The meeting itself was great – buffet, drinks, raffle prizes, a brief tour of Thompson Rose where the meeting was being held - met new people, got to see some familiar faces…

The following day we were lucky enough to be given the grand tour of Olive Hill Greenhouses! Denise, her husband Will and the main man Tony, gave Darren and I a thorough walk through of their facilities – it was really interesting to see! Growing indoor plants was quite different from what we do as perennial propagators and even from what Darren’s family does as a grower. The 2.5 hour tour was the perfect way to top off our work trip! And all the beautiful plants we got to take with us (as many as the Mini could fit) didn’t hurt either!

 

Lots and lots of colorful bromeliads (amongst many other types of beauties)! Aren’t you so jealous!?

Their awesome living wall in their office. I think I want one too now!

One last stop before the trek back to Fresno…a quick pop-in at McCall’s Meat and Fish in Los Feliz to visit Darren’s brother at his meat shop to take a little something back home for dinner. With spicy lamb sausages and their house burger blend in our ice chest, we were finally off! – be sure to check it out if you’re the foodie sort!

…then halfway through the grapevine, my tire began to shred…

Long story short…we had to stay the night in Gorman, because it was too late to get anything done. All of the local shops were not set up to change tires on a Mini and also did not carry any tires that would have fit anyways (Mini’s don’t come with a spare – they ride on run-flats, but run-flats only work if your tire isn’t on the verge of disintegrating).

We hauled all our stuff into our hotel room, plants included, and had pizza delivered to the room – which I found through the clever advertising they placed next to the tv channels sign (menu on back with Holiday Inn Express discount too, clever indeed!)

Unloading our goodies…I think our hotel room was the nicest one that night!

 

We woke up bright and early to be towed to the nearest BMW dealership in Bakersfield so that they could change out the tire – then walked to a chorizo breakfast - then 4 hours later we were finally on our way back home.

It was a great trip – minus the tire scare/hassle - but it’s good to be home and in a car that’s driveable :)

Whooohooo everybody! Guess what?! Thanks to Perla Hernandez, we’re darn near 100 Facebook fans now!!!

That may be small beans to some of you out there, but we’ll take it! We’re busting into the triple digits any day now baby! And to celebrate our almost-at-triple-digits feat, we’re going to do another giveaway, because free is always fun, right!

Since UC Verde Buffalograss is bound to go dormant soon, we won’t be handing any of that out…so I’ll have to get a little creative…hmm, hm, hmmmmm…

Well, what would be more exciting for you - plant goodies or other kinds of non-greenery goodies???

{image via}

Corey’s soooo great about keeping us updated on the UC Verde Buffalograss he won in our contest last spring! (And if you entered, but weren’t as lucky, don’t worry! I’ll be throwing another contest next spring!) Here’s his latest update:

…20 weeks in.  Only third mow of the season!  Been super busy so I have done absolutely nothing since my last mow at the 12 week update.  8 weeks between mowing!  That would have been impossible with my old dwarf fescue lawn which needed mowing every 2-3 weeks, minimum.  Have been watering every 4 days for 10 minutes except skipped a couple cycles during the early Oct rains.  The lawn has been just fine.  A little taller/lusher on one side of the lawn than the other now.  Probably as the sun has been getting lower in the sky that side has been getting a little bit more shade distributed throughout the day than the other so moisture evaporating unevenly.

Maybe I’ll give it a couple more 4-day cycle waterings to let it recover from the mowing, then back off on watering further to just once a week.  Maybe can even turn off the sprinklers depending on the weather.  We shall see.

Have had no time to try any weed treatments whatsoever either.  The spurge weed continues to comingle with the UC Verde, but it is definitely not taking over.  You mention in a post that now is the time to try some harsher broadleaf weed treatments so I will have to see if I can find some time to do that.

Other than that, I guess time to see what it is like as it heads towards its first domancy period.

Cheers,

–Corey

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