Beneficial insects kill the damage-causing pests in your garden and provide pollinating power for more flowers and higher yields.  Here’s how to attract them.

Beneficial insects are invaluable in the home garden.  They kill the bad bugs by eating them or parasitizing them, and increase flower production and crop yields by providing the valuable service of pollination.  Luckily, attracting beneficial insects is easy.  Provide a habitat they’ll like, avoid using chemical pesticides and attract and keep them around with all-natural, easy-to-use products.

Good Bugs Abound

Take a close look in your garden, and you may find that you already have a few species of beneficial insects calling your garden home.  These may include lady beetles, green lacewings, hover flies, parasitic wasps and predatory mites.  The predators, such as lady beetles, lacewing larvae and mites, prey on aphids, caterpillars, mealybugs, leafhoppers, whiteflies and insect eggs.  The parasites, such as wasps, defend your garden against tomato hornworm, cabbageworm and tent caterpillars by laying their eggs on or into them.

Providing a proper habitat for beneficial insects is the first step in attracting and retaining them.  Many predators and parasites feed on pollen and nectar, so growing a variety of flowers that bloom at different times will help sustain them throughout the season.  Try planting cosmos, buckwheat, hairy vetch, calendula, marigolds and dill, which are known to attract beneficial insects.

Beneficial insects also need a source of water and protection from heat, rain and predators.  Watering your garden with overhead sprinklers will create puddles and wet leaves for them to drink from.  Growing leafy plants offers protection from the sun, pounding rain and birds and predatory insects.

Avoiding chemical pesticides is also key to providing a healthy habitat for beneficials.  The same chemicals that kill the damage-causing insects in your garden will also kill the good guys, so you’ll want to steer clear of them.

What’s on the Menu?

The menu for beneficial insects changes constantly as the pest population in your garden dwindles and grows again.  To attract and keep beneficial insects in your garden, we recommend these all-natural, easy-to-use products.

When beneficial insects are done feasting on the pests in your garden, they’re likely to leave in search of a new source of food, allowing the pest population to return.  Use Benefeed from Gardens Alive!® to keep beneficial insects in your garden beds so they continue to feed on pests as they hatch, keeping pest numbers from spiraling out of control.

Benefeed is a powder concentrate that provides a complete nutritional diet for beneficial insects when their normal food source has dwindled.  Simply mix Benefeed with water and spray it in your garden beds to encourage beneficial insects to stay.  It’s especially helpful if you plan on releasing beneficial insects in your garden, such as Garden’s Alive!’s Sta-Home™ Lady Beetles—spray Benefeed before releasing them.

Attract pollinating honey and wild bees to your garden beds and fruit trees with Bee-Feed, exclusively available from Gardens Alive!®.  It attracts and keeps bees in your garden areas by providing the essential food elements for bees: lactose, fats, protein and sucrose.  Bee-Feed has been shown to increase bee population in the treated area by 50 to 100 percent.  Mix Bee-Feed with water and spray gardens and fruit trees to start attracting bees within 4 to 6 hours from the time of application.

Benallure™ attracts beneficial insects to lawns and gardens with a special controlled-release lure.  Hang one in every 30 feet of garden space or landscaped area.  For large trees, place one lure per tree; for drawf or smaller trees, hang Benallure in every other tree.

BEE-Allure™ attracts honeybees to your vegetable garden and fruit trees with a pad enclosed in a controlled-release dispenser.  Hang one lure per fruit tree or for each 200 square feet of garden space at bloom time to attract honeybees for two weeks in any kind of weather.

For more information on Benefeed, Sta-Home Lady Beetles, Bee-Feed, Benallure and BEE-Allure, visit http://www.gardensalive.com/GoodBugs or contact us at publicity@gardensalive.com.

# # #

Gardens Alive! Press Contact:

Dane Coleman, 937-667-2491 Ext. 3509, Dcoleman@GardensAlive.com

Gardens Alive, Inc., 5100 Schenley Place, Lawrenceburg, Indiana 47025

In the beginning of my green industry career a wise man told me that “Landscape Maintenance is all about minutes”. I had a hard time fully understanding what that meant as I was young and still green (sorry for the pun) in the industry and life. He went on to explain that every minute matters in this business… if you don’t jump on opportunities, somebody else will… if you don’t track your time, you will be lost… if you cannot be efficient, you’ll never survive. As he explained I started to understand but it would take me years and the startup of my own company to fully get the picture.

Opportunity knocks more than once… But only a few times.

Take the opportunities that come your way. Quote everything (within your scope) that passes over your desk. Follow all leads and return all calls quickly. There is something to say about that old adage “The early bird gets the worm”. Generally speaking, if you are the first contractor to provide a call back and quote, your chances of getting that job increase dramatically. And if you start turning down quotes, you may not get another chance.

Potential clients don’t like shopping around for shotty expertise so make sure to give them what they want from the start.

Do your timesheets!

Make sure to do a timesheet everyday to track your work. This is a very big part of tracking your business. Here are a couple of good examples of timesheets you can use.

Blank Timesheet (MS Excel file)

Blank Timesheet – Snow Removal (MS Excel File)

Remember to keep them simple yet detailed… Simply Detailed if you will (I believe we have an oxymoron in our midst). As you can see in the example sheet the columns you need are;

- Client/Property
- Description of Work Done
- Time IN / Time OUT
- Staff and Times
- Total times

***TIP:  To make entries quicker you can abbreviate, such as ‘Cut, Trim and Blow’ to CTB.

By doing daily timesheets it helps you with;

- Invoicing
- Tracking employee hours
- Apply hours to job costing

By knowing these numbers you can really see where your business is losing and gaining.

Know your route.

Use your timesheets and a detailed map to tighten up your route. Minutes are lost during drive time and is one of the biggest profit losses in the business.  You would be surprised on how much time is lost while your butt is in the seat.  Take this into consideration:

Service 30 Clients each day with 5 minutes of drive time between each one = 2.33hrs of driving per day or just under 12 hours per week.  That’s a whole days work for one person lost in the truck.  This equation doesn’t even include time it takes to get to your first client or the drive back to the shop… what about paid breaks?  You could be creeping up to 18 hours lost by the end of the week.  Now lets say that your hourly rate is $45.00 per hour, at the end of the mowing season (which is 26 weeks here in Ontario Canada) you could be sitting on a $21,060.000 loss of revenue.  How does your butt feel now?

Now there will always be drive time, but what can you do to tighten it up and lower your loss?  Here are some examples that I have found worked for me.

Bridge the gaps.

Knowing your point A to point B try to get clients in between by marketing.  This will cut down on drive time between each client and increase ‘Productivity’ narrowing the gap of the dreaded ‘Loss’.

Stay in one place.

Find communities where you can drive to and stay awhile.  Condos, gated communities large commercial properties are all great examples of zero drive time.  By doing this your productivity will go thru the roof.  I have one such gated community where I have 14 properties.  We park and are there for 3.25hrs or 6.5 man hrs.  Without the drive time we can Mow Trim and Blow 14 properties in just over 3hrs… solid productivity.

Reverse your route.

This may sound like a odd thing to do.  However try reversing your route and see how the times differ.  You may be surprised on what you find.  By reversing your route you may find a lot of different outcomes, such as;

-  You are at properties at different times of day.  This allows you to make yourself visible to potential clients that have never saw you before.

-  Avoiding traffic when the volume may be higher. There is nothing worse than sitting in traffic as break-lights turn into dwindling profits.

-  Finding shortcuts to tighten you route. Going the opposite way leads to new discoveries.

Paper Bag it and Pack your lunch

This one may sound a bit grade school, but not only does it save you time it also saves you money from your wallet.

I use to be a huge Convenience Store junkie. But by buying my lunches and water when we do our weekly groceries saved me about $75.00 per week and a lot of unnecessary stops for snacks, food and drinks.

Now of course there are many other ways to save minutes like ‘How to mow efficiently’ but I’ll be doing an article on that soon.  The point of this article was to get across the understanding that ‘Time’ really does equal ‘Profit’ in this industry.  So how are you tracking it?  What are you doing to become more efficient?  I would love to hear your tips and tricks.  Please comment below and if you like this article use the tweet button at the top and spread the word.

Cheers,

Richard Murphy
The Lawn Blog

How to grow hedge roses for form and function.  Tip: Start with the
right rose.

Hedge roses are grown for their beauty and function.  Planted closely
together and pruned to maintain a tight habit, hedge roses provide
visual or physical barriers and help organize your garden spaces.  They
can be used to hide a fence, screen unsightly views like utilities or a
compost pile, provide privacy and control foot traffic.

Hedge roses also provide an attractive, colorful backdrop for other
plants and can create a focal point around a patio, fountain or other
garden feature.  When selecting and planting your hedge roses, consider
a disease-free and low maintenance variety and how and where you’ll
plant them.

Careful Choices and Pairings

It doesn’t take much imagination to buy 50 hedge-type plants and plant
them in a straight line along your property line.  Landscaping with
roses takes a little more thought because you’re dealing with vibrant,
long-lasting color.  When choosing your hedge roses, consider their
colors carefully and how they will work with the other plants in your
garden.

Plant hedge roses behind a perennial border or in front of a taller
evergreen hedge to create a truly remarkable focal point.  You may also
consider pairing ornamental grasses or other highly textural plants with
your rose hedge to provide a nice contrast in textures and add interest
to the base of the hedge.

The rose hedge variety you choose should be disease-resistant and
low-maintenance.  For the most maintenance-free, trouble-free roses ever
developed, we recommend Freedom(tm) Hedge Roses
<http://www.springhillnursery.com/FreedomHedge>  from Spring Hill(r)
Nurseries.  They have been specifically hybridized to resist diseases
and insects and produce a profusion of exquisite flowers.  Paired with
lush green foliage, its brilliant 3 1/2-inch double blooms are long
lasting and incredibly fragrant.  Blooms appear by the hundreds all
summer long and keep coming even in fall.  Freedom Hedge Roses are
available in pink and red.

Each Freedom Hedge Rose <http://www.springhillnursery.com/FreedomHedge>
grows 4 to 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide.  Plant them 3 feet apart for the
greatest hedge density.

Hedge Rose Planting and Care

Like all roses, hedge roses need full sun (at least 6 hours of direct
sunlight) and well-drained soil.  Space Freedom Hedge Roses
<http://www.springhillnursery.com/FreedomHedge>  3 feet apart for
maximum density, or slightly further apart for a softer texture and
feel.  Water deeply and consider installing drip irrigation along the
length of your hedge for easy future watering.

With a pair of long-bladed hedge shears, lightly shear the roses to
remove spent flowers and maintain the hedge’s shape.  In winter, you can
shear your hedge back by as much as half (or less if you want to keep
the hedge tall).  Every thee or four years, it’s easy to clean up your
hedges by removing old, woody, less-vigorous canes and any dead wood.

For more on Red Freedom Hedge Roses or Pink Freedom Hedge Roses, visit
www.SpringHillNursery.com/FreedomHedge
<http://www.springhillnursery.com/FreedomHedge>  or contact us at
publicity@gardensalive.com.

Spring Hill Nurseries History

Founded in 1849, Spring Hill Nurseries is one of the oldest and largest
gardening companies in the United States. Spring Hill distributes
catalogs nationwide and maintains a substantial presence online.

________________________________________________________________________
_____

Spring Hill Nurseries Press Contact:

Dane Coleman, 937-667-2491 ext. 3094, publicity@gardensalive.com

Spring Hill Nurseries, 110 West Elm St., Tipp City, OH 45371-1699

Dane Coleman

Gardening Publicist

publicity@gardensalive.com

Outdoor Power Equipment Institute Seeks Correction and Public Disclosure of
Significant Computation Error in AGU and UC-Irvine’s Recently Released Urban
Turf Report; Correction Shows Turfgrass is a Positive Sequester of Carbon

Alexandria, VA – February 15, 2010 – The  <http://www.opei.org> Outdoor
Power Equipment Institute (OPEI) today announced that Dr. Amy Townsend-Small
of University of California – Irvine (UC – Irvine) acknowledged a
computation error of carbon used to maintain turf in the recently released
UC-Irvine study published January 19, 2010, titled “Carbon Sequestration and
Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Urban Turf.”  With the error corrected,
ornamental grass is in fact shown to be a net sequester of carbon even when
inputs are accounted for in grass maintenance.  The correction has been
submitted to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) who published the paper.

Upon review of the report, various flaws were discovered, including one
significant math error that was made in computing the carbon consumed during
mowing.  The carbon from fuel consumption was multiplied by 12, one too many
times, to convert from monthly to annual data.  The error was not caught
during the peer review process prior to publication of the paper by the AGU.
When the computation is corrected, turfgrass actually is a net sequesterer
of carbon dioxide, reversing the conclusions of the original report that was
widely reported in the media.

“Blaming grass for contributing to global warming is a non-starter when you
look at the facts.  The grass in your backyard is working hard to keep us
cool, soak up carbon, capture particulates, produce oxygen, capture rain
water and reduce run-off.  We need to focus on the right plant in the right
place and on management practices that maximize the environmental benefits
potential of turfgrass,” said Kris Kiser, Executive Vice President of OPEI.

Kiser added that, “While the UC-Irvine study, rightly so, highlights that
mismanagement of turfgrass can occur via excessive fertilization and
irrigation, and inefficient maintenance practices, the focus should be on
proper management techniques.”  OPEI stressed that proper management
techniques can minimize carbon emissions and maximize the benefits of carbon
sequestration in turfgrass; for example, proper selection of turf based on
climatic region (drought resistant species) and leaving grass clippings on
the grass to serve as a natural nitrogen fertilizer.

OPEI also noted that the UC-Irvine study did not acknowledge the dramatic
reductions of emissions and fuel use profile for today’s gasoline and diesel
equipment, nor did the study disclose what model equipment and corresponding
fuel use numbers were used.

Mowers and outdoor power equipment today are the cleanest in history and
fully regulated by the U.S. EPA and California’s Air Resources Board since
1997.   EPA Phase 3 and CA Tier 3 compliant product are 90 percent cleaner
than pre 1997 models. Coupled with improvements in emissions, there have
been substantial improvements in mower fuel efficiency.  Additionally,
outdoor power equipment manufacturers have introduced a number of electric,
battery, biodiesel, gasoline-electric and diesel-electric hybrids, propane,
CNG, solar and other alternative fueled products with corresponding
reductions  in carbon output.

Other issues found with the UC-Irvine urban turf study:

.         The paper uses a technique (passive flux chambers) that is often
inaccurate in measuring surface flux because it is not clear that what is
being measured is at equilibrium.

.         The UC-Irvine study focused on one urban center in Southern
California.  Management techniques across the country are variable and
therefore, can’t be applied broadly. Future studies should look at sites in
other parts of the country.

.         The UC-Irvine study did not measure actual inputs of water and
nutrition but made estimates based upon standards or agriculture averages.
Future studies should measure actual inputs or use the best available
technology to estimate inputs of water and fertilization.

To learn more about the carbon sequestration benefits of turfgrass, see the
paper, Technical Assessment
<http://www.opei.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/1438>  of the Carbon
Sequestration Potential of Managed Turfgrass in the United States by Dr. Ron
Sahu.

About the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute

OPEI is an international trade association representing the $15 billion
landscape, forestry, utility and lawn and garden equipment manufacturing
industry. OPEI is a recognized Standards Development Organization for the
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and active internationally
through the International Standards Organization (ISO) in the development of
safety standards. Founded in 1952, OPEI represents and promotes the outdoor
power equipment industry before federal, state and international legislative
and regulatory bodies. For more information on OPEI, visit
<http://www.OPEI.org> www.OPEI.org.

##

Kris Kiser

Executive Vice President

Outdoor Power Equipment Institute

(703) 549-7600

KKiser@OPEI.org