How To Lay Sod

I’m not the biggest fan of lawn yards. But in New York City, we are lucky if we get a 5’x5’ piece of dirt outside.  In this case, I think it’s fine to want some grass for your kids, your pup, or even you to play in. Growing grass from seed can be a pain and take forever, with not great results. Why do that when someone else can grow it for you and you just roll it out? Brilliant.

How to lay sod:

First you want to clear your area. If there is patchy grass or other weeds where the sod is going, you need to remove all of it so the soil is bare.

Turf likes well-aerated soil. If the ground is very compacted, use a tiller to loosen the ground.

Add finished compost and soil amendments and till into soil.

You need to level the area where the sod will be placed. If it will be near a sidewalk or paved surface, you want the soil to be a couple inches below this surface.

Now you can unroll your sod in rows, making sure to line up the edges.  Pull it flat making sure there are no raised points. Do not step on your sod as you are laying it.

Make sure the edges of the pieces are snug against each other but not overlapping. You can use a knife to cut the pieces to size.

Once everything is laid, water, water, water!

The new grass needs a lot of water to settle in and take root. Make sure to keep it well watered every day for a week or so. After that you can cut back to every other day for a few weeks. 

During the first couple weeks, while it is settling, you don’t want to step on it.

Buying sod instead of seeds is, of course, more expensive but you are buying convenience. You are paying someone else to spend over a year to grow it and then you go from bare dirt to a lush carpet of grass in a few hours.

Sod is great because it can be laid at almost any time of year. It is best to lay it in the spring or fall when you won't have to water it as much. You can do it in summer but it will take a lot more watering and be a bit more fickle. 

Here is a tiny front yard we installed in Park Slope. They had a toddler and wanted just a little place for him to be able to play. 

You can see the lines from the edges of each roll. These lines go away within a week or two as it settles in. 

Before and After: Park Slope Backyard

This Park Slope backyard received the full Staghorn NYC upgrade. 

It went from a very unwelcoming, barren, concrete slab to a warm, lush, comfortable yard. 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

First things first, that concrete was really bringing the place down. We added some bright wood pavers to the yard which instantly changed the feel. Once drab and cold looking, the backyard now felt warm and welcoming. The contrast of the existing fence color and the new pavers really complimented each other. 

For planting, we used the existing border garden and added planters along the opposite wall of the yard. We chose part to full shade tolerant perennials, grasses and shrubs to fill this shady backyard. 

The ferns are loving it!

Foxglove still in bloom!

Top 5 Fall Blooms- That Aren't Mums

We all know fall is here because everywhere we go they are selling mums. Mums are the true sign of the season, no? Well, we feel that mayyyybbeee mums are a bit over done. They are also annuals, which means after they sit on your stoop for a couple months you throw them away (or compost them. Please, compost them!). And then you buy them again next year and you throw them away and so on and so no.

We would like to help you break this cycle. Here are our top 5 fall blooming perennials:

Goldenrod

Solidago rugosa

Solidago is a great fall perennial because it has that warm fall color. This one is a true fall bloomer. It starts in blooming in September and stays yellow into October.

Stonecrop

Sedum "Autumn Joy"

So many perennial look pretty tired by this time of year. We just stopped in at client’s garden this week to find this perennial perky and in full bloom.

Amsonia Blue Star

Amsonia hubrichtii

Amsonia is a great multi-season perennial. In the spring, it gets little blue star flowers. During the summer, its leaves, which are narrow and needle shaped, go all the way up the stem and the plant looks great as is. But! In the fall is when Amsonia really shines. By late September, the foliage starts turning golden yellow to orange. It pops in any garden.

Russian Sage

Perovskia atriplicifolia

A little contrast to the warm autumn colors, Russian sage provides nice airy blue flowers atop silvery foliage. It’s super tough and smells great too!

Sneezeweed

Helenium autumnale

Sneezeweed is a cute daisy-like flower with a fuzzy looking center. This one blooms from late summer into October (sometimes until first frost).

A Visit to Brooklyn Botanical Gardens- Autumn is Coming!

We've all felt the shift. It's coming! Autumn. 

It dropped down to 60 degrees Sunday night! 

Ehhh-  I wasn't ready for that. I've been a bit anxious about the shift. To me it just means soon winter will be here and I am very far from ready for that. 

But! This week has been beautiful. So, I have come to terms with accepting Autumn's arrival. After all, it is the most beautiful(maybe tied with Spring, in my opinion) and definitely the best smelling season. This week really was like someone hit a switch and boom the season changed. Last week was a crazy, muggy, heat wave. Monday brought cool nights, fresh drier air, clear skies and that smell! You can smell the leaves! I could be making that up but I feel like it's the leaves I'm smelling. 

I want to get the most of this season change so I decided to visit the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for a stroll through their Native Flora Garden. I am ashamed to say that this was my first visit (and I live very close by)! But I wanted to get in there and check everything out now so I can see how everything changes in the next few weeks. 

On Sunday, I went and took a guided walk with Uli Lorimer, the curator of the new section of the Native Flora Garden. It was a great informative intro to the garden. Here is some of what I saw:

Jewelweed

 Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis, also goes by the name 'touch-me-not' because of it's awesome seedpods that when touched uncoil like a spring and shoot out their seeds. Very cool. 

End of season blooms in the understory of the old section of the Native Flora Garden. The bees are busy gathering as much as they can before the cold comes. 

Entering the meadow

The meadow is the newer expanded section of the Native Flora Garden. On the walk, I learned that most of the plants in this new area were started from seeds collected in the wild from the surrounding NY- NJ area.

The grasses! Autumn is the time for ornamental grasses to shine. They are dramatic wispy rays of sunshine. The meadow has so many different species such as Little Bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparium, which turns reddish and then bronze later in the fall. 

I spent twenty minutes chasing around some monarch butterflies trying to get a photo but this is as close as one would let me. It's there! That small sliver in the upper middle of the photo on the white flowers. 

I did find a monarch chrysalis though on some Tall Boneset, Eupatorium altissimum. It was near the swamp milkweed, which is the monarch caterpillar's food source. 

Some Milkweed bugs going to town on the milkweed.

The Eupatorium plants smelled sooo good that ALL the insects had to visit. I took a video to show how active it was but I'm not sure it'll work here. 

Let's see:

Here are a few other random facts I learned on my walk:

• Spicebush is the sole larval host of the spicebush swallowtail. That means no spicebush, no swallowtail.
• Native Americans used the resin of the Sweetgum tree medicinally.
• May Apples, which are dormant now but bloom in the spring, have little low hanging fruits that box turtles eat and then spread the seed.
• Cherry birch is actually what they used to make root beer from, not sassafrass like I always thought,
• The pond in the Native Flora Garden is no longer covered in algae but now is covered with the smallest flowering plant on Earth, Wolffia.

5 Funny Common Names and Their Origins

Many plants have various common names. They usually vary from place to place. These names can be pretty silly, for example there are Dragon's Blood Trees, Hens and Chicks, and Mother-In-Law’s-Cushion.  A lot of plants get their common names from the way they look. Bleeding heart, for example, looks like a heart with a drop below it. But some plants get their names from what they are traditionally used for. Here are five of those plants with silly names that do what they are named to do. 

Sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale 

Sneezeweed got it's name from the Native Americans and early settlers who used it as snuff. They crushed the flowers and inhaled them to induce sneezing which was thought to rid the body of evil spirits. It was also used medicinally to treat fevers and head colds.

Horny Goat Weed, Epimedium 

Can you guess what Horny Goat Weed is used for? Bow-chicka-wow-wow.. yes. It's used as an herbal supplement for sexual performance problems including erectile dysfunction and to arouse sexual desire. But, according to WebMD, it's also used for "weak back and knees, joint pain, osteoarthritis, mental and physical fatigue, memory loss, high blood pressure, heart disease, bronchitis, liver disease, HIV/AIDS, polio, a blood disorder called chronic leucopenia, viral infections of the heart, bone loss after menopause, weak bones (osteoporosis), and as a tonic". That's quite the plant. 

Soapwort, Saponaria officinalis

Soapwort contains saponins which when boiled in water lather up just like our modern soap which uses phosphates to do that job. It can also be used as a shampoo. Check out this link for liquid soap and shampoo recipes with soapwort. (The -wort part of the name comes from an ancient English term meaning plant.)

Chokecherry, Prunus Virginiana

Many Native American tribes used this plant as a food and medicine. European settlers learned from the natives about the health properties of the plant and began using it to treat coughs and colds. But it had many other medicinal uses as well, such as helping inflammation of the bowel, diarrhea, stomach cramps, cholera, digestive problems, gangrenous wounds, sores, pains, severe burns and wounds.

Spleenwort or Miltwaste, Asplenium ceterach

Spleenwort, also called Miltwaste, got it's name because it was thought to cure disorders of the milt or spleen. The genus, Asplenium, is derived from the Greek word for spleen. This is an old belief based on the doctrine of signatures, that the fern was useful for ailments of the spleen, due to the spleen-shaped sori on the backs of the fronds. 

It's Only Natural: Common Late Summer Issues

Many things can happen in the garden that may make you panic and think all is lost. For this, we are starting a new blog series “It’s Only Natural”. We will address some things that may come up, what they mean and some ways to help. For this edition, we will focus on common late summer issues.

Late in the summer the garden almost always looks somewhat sad. The days have been long and hot and there has been little rain. The plants are stressed. Many have gone dormant during the hot weather as a method of survival. This means little new growth is occurring.

Watering is the most important thing in the late summer. It is good to give your plants deep water. This helps develop a strong root system. Shallow watering often doesn’t reach where it needs to and dries up quickly on the surface due to the extreme sun in late summer.

Common issues

Things are looking distressed. Plants have some yellow leaves.

This is mostly happening because of lack of water and the heat. The plants are shedding excess leaves to conserve what water they have for the rest.

Tip: Remove dead or yellow leaves from plants. Not only does removing the dead parts allow for airflow, it also allows the plant to conserve it’s energy for growth.

Powdery mildew on perennials

Mid to late summer disease starts becoming visible on plants. Powdery mildew is chalky white fungal disease that coats leaf surfaces. This won’t kill the plant but it will weaken it overtime. Annuals are very susceptible to it but it is also common with some perennials such as verbena, monarda, and tall garden phlox.

Tip: Use Safer and Bonide brand products to combat this. These are safe organic options.

Blooms are spent

Some perennials have finished flowering by late summer. Now is a good time to notice empty spots in the garden. Your early bloomers have finished flowering and now you can notice a few areas where you may like to add in some late blooming plants.

Tip: You can deadhead all those spent flowers (or if you’d like to save the seeds leave them on until dried out). Deadheading is a good way to tidy up the garden and also encourages new growth. Some spent blooms look nice to leave into fall and winter, and some may be left to attract birds- it depends what you’d like for your garden.

Late season weeds may have taken hold of your garden

In August, it seems like we all were gone on vacation. Gardens don’t take vacations though and while you were away, the weeds took over.

Tip: Some effort is needed to solve this issue but once you get rid of those guys then your garden will look a lot neater and it gives your perennials more room for growth.

Edibles

Things are huge and out of control and are probably a bit heat stressed as well. Like with the rest of your garden, it’s a good idea to go through and clean out any yellowing or dead parts. This will help prevent mildew and disease spread.

APHIDS!

Aphids may have taken over some plants by now. If you planted nasturtiums in your edible garden at the beginning of the season, this was a great idea! Nasturtiums attract aphids away from your other edibles.

Tip: They may be super infested by now and you might just want to remove them. Sunflowers are also good to plant near edibles, as they will also attract aphids away from your other plants.

Cracking tomatoes

Some of your tomatoes may have split. This is caused by extreme temperatures and periods of dry weather, followed by heavy rain.

Tip: Grow resistant varieties. When cracks do appear, harvest the tomato immediately and it can be eaten with no problem. Try to keep the soil uniformly moist.

You may think your edible garden is done for the season but you can actually start some cool weather crops now. Spinach, lettuces and radishes are good to start now. Check out this site to see what you can plant.

Before and After: Bed-Stuy Backyard

I might have to say this was the most labor intense and awesome backyard we have done so far. This one is an extreme before and after! We have done some hardscaping before but this was our first huge hardscaping project and I'd say it turned out beautifully. The clients wanted their downstairs neighbor to have their own backyard space so the yard was sectioned to give each their own space. They are all very excited about their new backyard garden.

BEFORE:

DURING:

The new fence! The front part is what separates the downstairs tenants space.

The bluestone delivery! Holy cow.

Oi. That's a lot of huge heavy rock. No problem. We got this.

Bringing in and fitting together the puzzle of stone

Permeable aggregate for optimal rainwater absorption added between the irregular bluestone

Stone in front laid

We had to level and clear the back. Colin and Vladimir find a huge boulder! 

Stone in the back laid! The far back square is aggregate that will be covered with artificial turf lawn which remains green all year - zero maintenance, and a permeable surface for rainwater absorption

Planting! We chose a mostly native plant palette with evergreen shrubs around the existing mature Magnolia soulangeana.

Laying the artificial turf. Colin is fabulous. 

AFTER:

TA- DA! 

Dana posing after our hard work!

Kat admiring and Colin relaxing.