Typical homes and gardens

There really is no “typical” home or garden. Homes and properties come in all shapes and sizes, and one size does not fit all. Neither does one style of home and garden management meat all needs. Suburban dwellers have one set of needs, while the rural lifestyle may demand a different set of skills. To be sure, there are many things in common. Basic structure maintenance is about the same for both, basic lawn and landscape maintenance principles are about the same, but the size of the lawn, and the contents of the landscape can vary greatly!

Home and garden varieties

In some parts of the country, there is a trend toward larger suburban properties in what were once rural areas, and these new settings produce new challenges, and new opportunities. Many former urban and suburban  families are finding themselves with acreage beyond the norms of their former situations, with property features which stretch the boundaries of normal suburban maintenance practices. Managing such properties require a different set of skills, and a more varied physical and mental tool set. It may also require the use of alternative methods of land management to avoid over taxing the physical and economic resources available.

Home and garden websites

Most Home and Garden sites offer a lot of home improvement information, mostly of the home decorating type. A few venture into light gardening and landscaping to make everything look nice around your home. Some even offer a little advice on minor repairs for the homeowner, but very few dive into the deeper waters of serious issues in and around the home and the extended property. That is why we offer this site.

This home and garden website

X Ring Home And Garden covers more than just the standard property maintenance issues. It offers alternatives to the traditional forms of land and property management to meet the growing and changing demands of our day, and takes a look into the future, where less water use, less pesticide use, and better biodiversity practices will become the standard.

We offer serious information and advice for those who are serious about managing their property, with such categories as Land management, Lake management, Structure management, Lawn management, Landscape management, and Pest management and control.

Many people who move from urban areas into semi suburban, or semi rural areas, buy properties which include elements with which they are unfamiliar. The cost for lake management can be a little surprising, but the cost of not managing a lake can be much higher!

Large pasture like lands which once served as grazing areas for cattle, have now become back yards. Stock tanks, or ponds once used for watering cattle and other livestock have now become recreational fishing lakes or ponds. In many cases, the new owners realize that they do not posses the information, or the equipment needed to maintain such amenities.

Mowing large areas repeatedly can become very expensive very quickly, but there are mowing alternatives which can help.

Lake management cost considerations

Ponds and lakes can present a somewhat different set of problems. Lake maintenance, like pasture maintenance can get a little expensive. Potential property owners should take this into consideration before buying. In most cases, maintaining an acre of water, will cost as much to maintain as an acre of  lawn, and such costs should be considered in the overall package.

What are these issues?

It would be a mistake to think that a lake or pond will take care of itself. It is a living organism teaming with living things, which will tend to get out of balance from time to time. Some things will grow there which might be alright if it were a body of water setting in the middle of nowhere, but not in your back yard. Getting, and then maintaining balance is your goal.

Aquatic weed control and lake management

Aquatic weed control will be the primary concern. Without it, the lake will become overgrown with vegetation, and all sorts of undesirable wildlife, including insects and rodents. Controlling aquatic weeds with herbicides, mechanical controls, or biological controls can be difficult and costly. Preventing their return through controlling water quality and water depth is the best alternative.

Water quality

One of the most important elements related to aquatic weed control, and lake management in general, is water quality. This both effects, and is effected by lake weeds. Maintaining proper pH and proper fertility helps to bring the cycle into balance. This involves testing the water, in most cases, correcting the pH will include the use of lime, fertilizing the pond or lake, or, if excess fertility is the problem, creating a vegetative buffer, or barrier to run off containing high levels of nutrients. The cost for this can be substantial.

Water depth

Water depth is another consideration related directly to controlling aquatic weeds. Weeds tend to occur in shallow water, and raising the water level, or dredging can be expensive.

Aquatic recreation

If the pond or lake is to be used for fishing, the cost for preparation and stocking should be taken into account. The same is true with other recreational activities, docks, boat houses, and other additions may be needed.

Lake maintenance costs

At this time, and in this location, the cost of caring for an acre of lawn per year is estimated by various state agencies as about $2,600.00 per year on average. Our experience has been that this is similar to the cost of maintaining an acre of water, although there are occasional spikes in activity which will raise the cost a bit. This should help those who might be in the process of considering a property with a lake or pond, or those already in possession of such properties to count the cost of lake maintenance in the overall property maintenance cost.

Caddo Lake

Aquatic weeds can be a huge problem for the property owner. If you use your lake primarily for recreational activities, lake weeds can put an end to your fishing, and other water sports in a matter of weeks if the wrong conditions exist. A lake weed invasion can also cause other problems, like pests in general, and mosquitoes in particular.

What is the best way to handle lake weed problems?

That depends on the nature of the problem. If the problem is an overly fertile body of water, you will need to lower the fertility.

Too much fertilizer

Excess fertility can be caused by nutrient runoff ending up in your lake. These nutrients can come from agricultural sites like adjacent farms and ranches existing upstream from your lake, or from over fertilized lawns in your area, which could even be your own.

Low fertility.

Low fertility means that the pond or lake is not getting the nutrients it needs to produce plankton. If plankton is not produced in sufficient quantity to tint the water enough to keep light from penetrating to the bottom, light will reach the bottom, and plants will grow up from it. This includes the filamentous algae that is often seen floating on a lakes surface.

Shallow lakes

Is your pond or lake so shallow that lake bottom gets light, weeds will grow. The best way to solve this problem is by either raising the water level if possible, or dredging.

Weed types

You should also know which category your lake weeds fall into. Are they submersed, emergent,  floating, or algae. There is a difference when it comes to treating them. There is a great tool from Texas A & M to help in the identification process. It is called Aquaplant. Aquaplant is also an excellent example of what a website should be!

Methods of aquatic plant control

Prevention:

This is the very best method for controlling any situation. If you can prevent it, you won’t have to control it or manage it in other ways. It just makes sense.

Biological control:

Most environmentally aware individuals prefer biological controls to chemical controls. There are some problems with that idea. Biological controls can be unpredictable, and run the risk of getting out of control if conditions should change. After all, you are adding another invasive predator into the mix!

Mechanical control:

Mechanical controls are great for some aquatic weed work, but not for all. Many aquatic weeds can reproduce from fragments at rates higher than fifty percent!

Unless you are resigned to mowing your lake as you do your lawn, it is a bad idea to fragment the living plants. If they can be cut smoothly, without much fragmentation causing vibration, and completely collected , that is great, but the problem will return from the roots.

Chemical Controls:

Sometimes, in fact, most of the time, the best weed management method, the most eco friendly method after prevention, is chemical lake weed control. It can, and should be, selective.

Aquatic weed control chemical types

Chemicals for controlling and managing aquatic weeds, fall into two categories:
Contact, and Systemic.

Contact Herbicides

Contact herbicides, work quickly, and kill all the vegetation they touch.

Systemic Herbicides

Systemic herbicides, work more slowly, but travel to the root of the plant to kill all parts of the plant.
Which one should you use? That depends a lot on the conditions, and the plant you are trying to get rid of. For more information on lake weed control types see:

Lake Weed Prevention

Biological Lake Weed Control

Mechanical Lake Weed Control

Chemical Lake Weed Controls

Home pest control by attrition

Most people approach pest control as though at some point, if we kill enough of them, they will eventually go back where they came from.

There are a few problems with this theory:

• Bugs and weeds do not think, they only react, and their reaction will always be the same as long as nothing changes in their environment.
• The bugs and weeds are already where they came from. When we build a home, we are the interlopers in their territory, and we have displaced them. They will always try to get it back.

Pest control by attrition is a life long commitment to the war against “bugdom”. It is a series of battles that will go on forever, unless something is done to modify the environment. We are occupying territory that they once dominated, and they are always trying to reclaim it!

Home pest control by prevention

In order to make any progress in keeping our property free from these pest insurgents, we have to make our property less inviting, and less accessible to pests. In other words, we must modify our environment to favor us and not the pests. We must make it difficult for pests to gain entrance, and difficult for them to survive. We must create an environment that:

• Denies them what they need to survive.
• Exposes them to natural predation.
• Seals them out.

That is pest prevention in a nutshell.

The practice of home pest prevention

There is a logical sequence that should be followed for controlling home pests by preventing them. The practice involves removing the things that insects and rodents need to survive from the outskirts of your homes environment.

1. Start by clearing away any brush, weeds, rubbish, or rubble from your property. That is what insects use for cover, and for food. If you remove the cover, they will fall back to the next available cover, which will probably be your neighbors yard, so, you might want to share this with your neighbors. Now move toward your home. Remove the things that provide cover throughout your lawn, and mow your lawn more often. I know it is a pain, but it really helps. If the grass is high, insects and rodents use it to provide cover for getting closer to your home.
2. As you move closer to your home, look at your trees. If they are hanging over your roof, or touching your roof, they are providing a way for pests to get to the top of your house, so, trim them back. Don’t just cut the ends off, but trim them back to a lateral branch. If you do this improperly, you could cause an increase in pests, and disease in your trees. Keep your own safety in mind, use ladders cautiously, and pay special attention to power lines.
3. Your landscape beds next to your home are an important area for your pest control efforts. The typical landscape bed is a hotbed for pest activity. Keep vines away from the walls, they provide a road for insects. The same is true for the shrubs in the bed, they should be cut back a foot or more from the wall. Landscape mulch should be kept at least a foot from the homes exterior. This is not standard landscape practice, but it needs to be done.
4. Regulate your irrigation carefully. Too much water invites all sorts of critters into your place. Too little can weaken the lawn, and invite weeds to live in the place of the lawn grasses and landscape plants.
5. Now, to the exterior of your home. Seal everything! cracks, openings around doors and windows, replace worn weatherstripping, caulk around frames, caulk around all pipes, wires, cables, inlets, and anywhere else a bug might get through. Make sure all eve and soffit vents are screened. The same goes for your dryer vent.
6. Do the same inside, with all the corresponding areas. Almost every hole in the outside will have a corresponding hole in an inside wall, and they should all be sealed.

Consider a lawn and landscape makeover

While going through this process, you should also consider major modification to your entire lawn and landscape. Don’t let the word major bother you, this is one area where a little change can be done over a long period of time, and have a major impact, without huge expense. In fact, this could save you money in the long run.

Encouraging natural predation can help lower insect populations. This can be done by adding native trees and shrubs, where lawn once existed, and replacing non natives with native plants in the existing landscape. The native plants will be less susceptible to pests, and the native birds will have more of a reason to hang around and eat the remaining bugs. See: Lawn And Garden: Less Lawn More Garden for more information.

In the course of my regular work in land management and property maintenance, I am sometimes called on to solve problems with large acreage. One of the most common occurs when someone new to land management buys a large parcel of land without the awareness of the maintenance costs.

The cost of mowing

When there are several acres to be mowed, it can tax resources. Doing the job yourself can be a time consuming project. The cost can also be pretty high, requiring a tractor and shredder. The cost of paying someone to do the job for you can prove to be prohibitive. The price in my area runs between $25.00 and $50.00 per acre. For 20 acres of land, the median cost of hiring someone to mow three times a year, would be about $2,400.00!

Alternatives to mowing

There are a few alternatives that are less expensive, and a couple of them might even earn some extra money. Please note that this is for areas that are “pasture like”, that is, that they are reasonably level and free of debris. If your land is covered in trees, that is probably the way it should stay, but I will address this in another article.

Some of these suggestions should be fairly obvious. If you have a lot of acreage, and it costs money to maintain it, it would be wise to put the land to work for you.

Row crops

The land could be used to produce a crop. If you have the time and experience necessary, a row crop might work for you, but they can be pretty labor intensive.

Grain crops

Wheat, oats, and other grain crops could be a less labor intensive method, but it still involves some work.

Timber production

Planting trees for timber production is less labor intensive, since they do not have to be replanted and harvested each year, but the return on this relatively small investment takes several years. Still, it beats having to mow, or pay someone else to do so.

Animal husbandry

Cattle production is another possibility. It requires some expertise, and some work, but it can be done, with varying levels of profitability.

All of the things listed thus far involve a significant investment of time and money, but they can also be accomplished with the aid of others. You could allow someone to rent the property for these purposes, or allow them to produce the crop on your property for a cut of the profit. This system works very well with my next suggestion.

Make hay

This method will allow you to produce a crop on your land, with little to no labor and expense on your part, and leave you with a profit!

Find someone who bails hay for a living, and ask if they would be willing to bail your pasture land “on the halves”. That simply means, that if they bail it, you get half the hay, and they get half. If they want to fertilize the meadow, you can either split the cost with them, or see if they want to just take extra bails above your cut.

This is a really good solution because it allows you to avoid the expense of mowing, produce a crop that will be used for animal feed, and possibly make a few bucks in the process.

What to do with the hay

What do you do with all that hay? Well, you can use it, or you can sell it. There is a pretty good chance that the guy who bails it will either want it for himself, and be willing to pay you, or he probably knows someone who does. Don’t have any way to transport it? That’s ok too. most people who buy hay have the equipment to do the job. Even if you sell your half of the hay at lower than market price, you will still make some money, and you will have saved the cost of having to have your pasture mowed, and together, that equals a pretty good profit!

Hay production example

If your 20 acre pasture made 4 rolls per acre per season, that would be 80 rolls, your part would be 40 rolls multiplied by the price for bail, which we will figure at $30.00, would be $1,200.00. $1,200.00 profit, plus $2,400.00 savings on mowing costs, leaves you $3,600.00 better off each year. And that is nothing to sneeze at!

Chemical mowing

There are chemical treatments that will leave your pasture land with growing grass, without the need to mow more than once a year, and still leave the wildlife living in it, in place. These methods involve very small amounts of herbicide which stunt the growth of the plants for a few months. Oddly, if you are concerned with wildlife, the chemical option is probably the best. Mowing takes out al lot of small animals. The cost of such a program is usually about the same as one mowing.

See also: Mowing Options Chemical Mowing

More natural, and native style gardens may offer answers to some of the difficulties  facing the homeowner. Traditional lawns require a lot of resources like extra water, fertilizer and pesticides to keep them looking the way we have grown accustomed to seeing them.

Good landscape planning using native trees, shrubs and ground covers may produce more efficient results. Perhaps even backyard wildlife habitats will become the gardens of the future as we head toward predicted times of more water use restrictions for lawns. The cost associated with traditional lawn irrigation can be expensive as well. Having a huge lawn and not having the water available to irrigate it could become a big brown ugly fact of life in many states.

If lawn care costs are getting you down, you might consider this idea from the “green” community: To be more green, have less green! By less green, we mean less turf covered area. Turf grasses are pretty efficient at cycling water and nutrients if they are fed and watered properly, and they do a good job of providing clean oxygen, but most of them are not native to our area, no, not even Bermuda grass, and they require more nutrients, and more water than other types of plants in order to maintain that lush green color we all love! They also require an inordinate amount of pesticides compared to trees, shrubs, and ground covers.

This extra cost and attention results from the need to modify the environment to allow a non native species to thrive in it. Sometimes the modifications can be relatively small, but in many cases they become nearly all consuming.

Planting native trees and shrubs can be a nice alternative, and offer a little relief for your pocketbook in these tough times. There are even some pest control benefits if you plant the right combination. If birds are attracted to your yard, they will handle a lot of your pest control for you!

You don’t even have to suffer the ravages of massive lawn and landscape renovation projects to accomplish this. Renovation can occur over a long period of time, gradually allowing and encouraging a more native habitat to take over the non native habitat. The results can be amazing.

Native habitat advantages

Natural, garden like habitats are:

• Less thirsty for water beyond what the weather in an are naturaly provides.
• Less hungry for extra nutrients.
• Less likely to suffer from weather conditions in your area.
• Less likely to be destroyed by pests.
• Less likely to attract pests.
• Less likely to attract non native predators.
• Less likely to cause biodiversity problems.
• More likely to thrive.
• More likely to attract native species which eat pests.
• They will not escape into the wild and displace other natives.

Just because it is cold, and there are no lake and pond weed problems visible, does not meant that the lake and pond weed problems you had last year have disappeared.  They are busy under the surface, soaking up nutrients, gaining energy in each node, preparing for that first warming, chlorophyll forming sunlight to get through when spring is sprung. The sunlight is the problem. Not that it is bad, but if it can reach the lake bottom, weeds will grow. Even pond scum starts at the bottom.

The weeds are preparing, but what are you doing to prepare for your battle with them?

To give yourself an advantage in the weed wars, there are a few things you can do during this season, at least if you are living in the warmer regions of the country.

Pond and lake pH

Check your lake or pond’s pH. If the pH is lower than 6.8,  it is too low to support the plankton algae bloom that prevents sunlight from reaching the bottom of the lake during the warm season. Even if you don’t have lake weed problems, low pH should be resolved. The single cell algae that colors your water green also provides food for the micro invertebrates that feed the bugs and the fish that eat them. This plankton is the beginning of the visible life cycle in your pond or lake.

Lime

You can solve your low pH problems with agricultural lime. If the lime is spread evenly over the bottom of the reservoir, it will provide a barrier to the acidic elements rising from the bottom. This can be done from a tractor and fertilizer spreader set to a headland setting if the body of water is small enough for the spreader to reach halfway.

If you are industrious and want to drain your lake or pond, you can apply the lime directly to the bottom. Draining the water is not necessary though, since the lime will eventually drift through the water to the bottom, and settle there.

Lime can also be spread with shovels from a plywood sheet on the top of your favorite boat. This can be a lot of work. A pump and hose can be used to wash the lime from the plywood if you want to make the job physically less taxing.

One of the nicest innovations of our time is liquid lime which can now be purchased at many agriculture supply stores. You simply purchase the required amount for your acreage, and apply it from your watercraft. It can be poured slowly into the prop wash, or you can poke several holes in the bottom of the container, loosen the lid, and pull it behind the boat until the container is empty. If you use this method, you will need to criss cross the lake several times to assure even coverage. The water will turn a milky white so it is easy to see where you have been.

Treating now with lime will aid any lake fertilization program you use during the warm season.

Dredging

If the reason you have lake weeds is that your reservoir is shallow, that is, under 2 feet deep in places, this is a good time of year to dredge to increase the depth. Water depth is a key factor in lake weed control. Once again, sunlight is the key. The deeper the water, the less the penetration, and the fewer the weeds.

Lake structure repairs

This can also be a good time of the year to repair docks, boat houses, boats, and any other equipment you use in or on the water. So, replace those weak boards and rails, repair the lift, and repair that boat or motor now while you have the time, and in the spring, all you will have to do is enjoy the fishing!