Ramsey County

April 26, 2007

Howdy!!!! 

What weather we are having!!!!  I am surprised however by the amount of frost we have so close to the soil surface.  I was going to start on my fish pond this past weekend and found only 2-3 inches of soil that I could remove easily.  I get a chuckle out of people when the weather warms up and everyone gets into that spring fever mode.  We all get busy and work on our spring cleaning including our lawns.  I get many phone calls this time of year asking questions from dead grass areas to how come my grass is pulling up to when I get done our lawn is so rough to should I aerate my lawn.  Well the answer to most questions is we are a little early yet.  In some cases our lawns are drying out underneath but I am willing to bet, especially with the frost still in the ground, the ground is to wet to be playing around in the grass.  If you ever want to do an experiment, you don’t need too as I usually do it for you to talk about it, water an area in the spring time of year and look how much easier your grass pulls out compared to an area that has not been wet down.  Keep in mind I am talking about now not a week or two from now and the ground has dried.  The grass is still dormant and even though some grass looks it is greening up it really kept its green color from last fall.  Yes, the grass will be greening up as we have temperatures this week in the 50’s and yes this will bring grass out of dormancy but when we talk about just a couple of days many changes can take place.  When we work on our yard to early, unless it is fairly dry, we can do many different damaging acts to our grass.  Heavy raking or a harrowing type operation can actually pull the grass out of the ground, using a lawn mower can leave imprints in the soil like us walking on newly wet soil and leaving an imprint thus leaving a very rough yard and like wise if we aerate our yard to early can also have the same effects as mentioned above.  I would suggest if you have not done anything yet wait until this weekend unless it rains but by waiting the grass will have a chance to reset roots for the upcoming summer season.

Dead Needles on our Spruce trees

Do you have dead needles appearing on your spruce trees this spring?  Well if you do there could be a couple different things happening to your trees.  The first problem that generally happens after a mild winter with snow on the ground is call SUN SCALD.  This is created by the sun reflecting off of the snow onto the tree and putting a higher amount of energy into the needle killing it.  This usually occurs on the south west side of the tree.  The other occurrence that is happening is called root damage.  Now I know all of you are wondering what I mean by that and here is the answer.  Root damage can be caused from many different scenarios but root damage in this case is likely caused by either standing water or a high water table.  Water root damage can happen in any part of the tree and can be in small amounts or even larger areas.  In either case the branches can be trimmed but wait until the new growth of the tree has emerged to make sure that particular branch has been killed.  Once needles fall off of a spruce tree they will not be replaced only any new growth that might come that growing season.

If you have any questions on any of this or would like me to come out and visit your place for any other questions please don’t hesitate to give me a call at 701-662-7030.

 Happy gardening!!!

524 4th Ave NE #5, 2nd Floor Ramsey County Courthouse
Devils Lake  ND  58301
701-662-7027
email - ramsey@ndsuext.nodak.edu

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