Solar Mowing Spreads Its Wings

catplant4As we begin our 15th year, Solar Mowing is metamorphosing. You might say we’re spreading our wings. We’ve joined forces with a start-up company that has our same environmentally conscious values, but they also have a big mission:  To make American yards carbon negative (and planet positive)!

We’ve always known Solar Mowing could grow. We have an extensive waiting list and have rarely advertised. But how to grow and meet the needs of all actual and potential customers has been a struggle. Enter Sust, another Maryland company, who likes what we do and wants to build on it.

Besides a new name, we’ll have new trucks, a new website, and a new phone number. And look for some changes in how we do things, such as offering landscape service packages, providing levelized (consistent) monthly billing, and integrating new technology. By streamlining our processes, we can spend more time doing what’s important getting our hands dirty as we help turn your yard into a climate asset.

butplant1We promise to continue serving you with care and dedication – always making the needs of our earth and our customers a priority. We wouldn’t be able to make this leap without you, and are so grateful for the opportunity to have served you and your lawns for the last 14 years.

It’s been a great run! But it’s time for an upgrade. Solar Mowing can do more of what’s needed by joining Sust than we could do on our own. So, this isn’t good-bye, this is Hello Butterfly!

Goodies for the Garden

We mow, trim, and clear debris from hardscapes — all with emission-free equipment. We also offer, to our mowing customers, many non-mowing services, including spring & fall cleanups, weeding, mulching, pruning, reseeding, and laying sod.

This year, we’re adding to our lineup two garden goodies: gates and raised beds.

Gate600

Gates can include butterfly and/or flower cutouts, like my own gate, shown here.

Both will be made from western red cedar, a rot-resistant wood, harvested from private tree farms as well as sustainably managed timberlands. The gates and boxes themselves will be locally made by Solar Mowing’s own co-manager, Randall Hitchins.

Gates can be single or double and can include butterfly and/or flower cutouts.

A raised bed in a sunny spot is a perfect place to raise flowers, vegetable, and/or herbs.

A raised bed in a sunny spot is a perfect place to grow flowers, vegetables, and/or herbs.

Raised beds are good for your back as they lift your plants about a foot off the ground. We’ll fill the beds with humus rich soil and line them with a weed barrier that will protect your plants from groundhogs and other critters that live down under.

If interested in either garden goodie, send us an email or give a call (301-787-5018).

So many lawns, so few emission-free mowing companies

mowing10thAnniv1We’re beginning to wrap up our tenth year, and I must say, I truly did not believe that it would last this long.

When I started Solar Mowing in 2009, I figured that bigger companies would soon invest in battery-powered equipment and renewable energy. I figured customers would demand it. I figured I’d get mowed over in five years, tops.

Wow, was I wrong. Nearly all mowing and landscape companies in the DC metro area and elsewhere still use dirty and deafening equipment.

Thanks to our customers (several of whom have been with me for the entire 10 years!), we’re proud of what we’ve prevented:  50 tons of CO2 from going airborne.*

If everyone in the U.S. mowed their grass with renewables, our country’s CO2 output would diminish by 5%. And hey, 5% is 5%. It’d actually be amazing!!

If you think, what’s the use, everyone on Earth is polluting, what possible difference will I make by flying less, putting solar panels on my roof, or using emission-free mowing equipment? As Americans, we are already way ahead on the polluting scale. On average, today and every day, we burn twice as much fossil fuel as the typical person in Europe or in Japan.

That’s embarrassing. And immoral.

I hope that big landscape companies invest in renewable energy and battery-powered equipment. Customers should demand it. But until those companies clean up their act — and perhaps even after — we’ll be here doing our part. We hope you will, too.


*
The average homeowner burns five gallons of gasoline each year to mow and trim the lawn. And each burned gallon emits 19.6 pounds of CO2. Over ten years, our customers have NOT burned 5,100 gallons of gas and NOT emitted 99,960 pounds, or 49.98 tons, of CO2. 

The 4-Step Solar Mowing Special

Crocuses are disappearing, forsythia is in full sunny bloom, and grasses are waking up. We’re preparing for the 2015 growing season by cleaning our equipment, sharpening/replacing mower blades, and by rejuvenating customers’ lawns with the Solar Mowing Special, a four-step process. Here’s how it works:

By thinning the dead material lying on top of the soil, we improve the success of new grass seeds and open up the soil enhance nutrient penetration into the soil.

By removing dead material lying on top of the soil, we improve the success of new grass seeds and enhance the soil’s ability to take in water, air, and nutrients.

  1. “Comb” the lawn with special rakes (both bamboo and metal) to thin out the thatch, or layer of dead plant material, which builds up over time and prevents water, air, and nutrients from permeating the soil.
  2. Apply grass seed mixed with an organic fertilizer. Our fertilizer contains nitrogen, potassium, and all other essential elements; more than 70 trace elements, including manganese and zinc; and beneficial microbes (critical for soil health).
  3. Topdress with a thin (eighth-inch) layer of compost.
  4. Water well; this activates the microbes and helps work the nutrients into the soil.

Afterward, it’s critical that the soil stays moist. This usually means twice daily light waterings. After the grass seeds germinate, watering can be done once daily; less often if it rains, of course.

Reseeding this time of year can reduce the spread of weeds by filling in those bare and thin spots where weeds find refuge.

Let us know if you’d like the four-step SolMow Special this spring — or in the fall.

And if you’re waiting to hear the roar and see the smoke of our engines as we begin mowing, fuggedaboutit. Our mowers purr and emit nothing. smilingsunSMALL

The Wind Down

Grass does most of its growing during the mild, wet days of spring. Then, if you’re a blade of grass, you tend to go into a summer slump in late July and August when temps rise and little rain falls. This summer, however, our lawns entered no such slump. Lower temps and moderate rainfall throughout most of late summer kept grass growing like spring.

Finally now in mid-October, grass is starting to slow down. Though not until average daily temps sink to 50 degrees or below will growth stop. And roots will continue to grow and take up nutrients until the ground freezes. (We mowed our last lawn in 2013 on November 5.)

This is the best time of year to reseed bare spots in your lawn, overseed thin patches, and apply fertilizer. An organic fertilizer applied now will feed grass roots unlike in the spring when fertilizer tends to increase topgrowth and the number of required mows.

Judy'sLeavesSolar Mowing provides these services as well as fall leaf cleanup.

Our mulching mowers will turn some of your leaves into food for your grass and soil. We use rakes and emission-free blowers to pile the rest along curbs for pickup and/or to put in your compost area. Contact us for price info and to get on the schedule.

Emission-free mowing remains our bread and butter, but largely guided by our customers, we continue to expand into other safe and effective lawn and garden care services.

Cluck. Cluck. Who’s there?

You want to be a good land steward, so you’ve planted natives that attract pollinators. You’re growing veggies and herbs, organically. You’ve hired Solar Mowing, an emission-free mowing company, to care for your grass. What’s next?

RentACoop owners Diana Samata and Tyler Phillips started renting their coops in 2012.

How about fresh eggs from your own backyard chickens?

Local company RentACoop makes that next step pretty darn easy to take. Owners Tyler Phillips and Diana Samata build and rent chicken coops complete with hens, organic feed, and bedding (pine shavings). Fully vented, easy to clean, and predator proof, the coops fit in the back of most minivans, but the company also delivers.

fjiewahfhew;hf

“One of the sweetest and most docile breeds out there,” says Tyler Phillips of his Golden Comet hens.

And yes, keeping hens (but not roosters) is legal in both Montgomery County, MD, and D.C. Restrictions on where you can place a coop get tossed aside when the chickens are considered pets, and the hybrid Golden Comet used by RentACoop are super family-friendly. And hardy. Golden Comets continue to lay eggs during the freezing temps of winter.

If you decide after four weeks (the average rental time) that you want to buy the coop, hens, etc., part of your rental fee goes toward the purchase price.

This business idea was not a big stretch for Tyler, a native of Potomac, MD. He grew up working on his parents’ traveling petting zoo, so it was only natural. Just like your yard.

 

 

 

If a Milkweed is a Bully, is it still Beneficial?

At first, I thought morning glory (Ipomoea L.) was twisting over and through the swamp rose (Rosa palustris), a Maryland native growing in my rain garden. It had those unmistakable (or in this case, mistakable) heart-shaped leaves, and morning glory has been creeping everywhere since I planted three seeds 18 years ago. In these parts, the annual morning glory is a definite perennial.

Creeping noiselessly over, under, and through a swamp rose is the poorly behaved honey vine and its dangling milky pod.

Creeping over and through a swamp rose is the beneficial bully honeyvine.

But then, I spotted milky pods — and the garden plot thickened. :)

Turns out my swamp rose is in the grip of honeyvine (Cynanchum leave), a member of the milkweed family, that not only attracts bees, birds, and butterflies, including monarchs for which it serves as host to its young, it’s drought-tolerant and deer-resistant. Oh, and people hate it.

Because it’s a bully. I’m convinced that plants are every bit as complicated as people.

An 11"-by-11" painting made with pigments from  Rosa multiflora, Mahonia bealei, Lonicera maackii and weed soot on paper from Morus alba. Acer platanus

An 11″-by-11″ painting made, in part, with multiflora rosa (Rosa multiflora), bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii), and white mulberry (Morus alba).

And while we’re on the subject of invasives … we are, aren’t we? … Washington Post illustrator and volunteer land steward, Patterson Clark pulls invasives in mass quantities from public and private lands in Washington, DC. Then he does something remarkable: He processes all that noxious plant material into pigment and paper and makes art.

You can see Clark’s weed work at the Atrium Gallery in McLean, VA, from September 11-October 25.

And so I have to ask: Mr. Clark, do you walk by honeyvine or turn it into art?

Divine Energy at Shoshoni

I spent two days last week at Shoshoni, a yoga/meditation retreat in Colorado, where life goes on at its simple best — contemplation, exercise, nourishing food — and where solar energy plays a starring role. (Pun intended :))

Much of the organic food served at Shoshoni is grown on site in hoop houses.

Much of the organic food served at Shoshoni is grown on site in hoop houses.

With 300+ days of sunshine a year in the eastern Rockies, there’s plenty of solar power to put to work. Solar panels atop cabins and the main lodge heat water for bathing; south-facing windows on many buildings allow for passive solar heating, which can be blocked on hot days by pulling down thermal shades.

Solar and geothermal energies allow year-round gardening even when winter temperatures dive below zero for weeks at a time. Outside air moves through underground pipes (where temps stay in the mid-5os) and is warmed in winter and cooled in summer before being vented inside one hoop-style greenhouse.

Shakti has helped manage the gardens and grounds at Shoshoni for 3.5 years. Behind her is a hoop house and a shed for chickens.

Shakti has helped manage the gardens and grounds at Shoshoni for more than three years.

“A second hoop house will be outfitted this winter with solar panels that will heat water, which will run through underground pipes that will, in turn, radiate heat up through the soil,” said Shakti, who has worked on the gardens and grounds at Shoshoni for more than three years.

While the beets, carrots, peppers, kale, collards, and other food crops need solar-generated heat in the winter to survive, the chickens do not. “I chose heritage breeds,” said Shakti, “that are fit for Rocky Mountain winters.”

Heritage-breed chickens live perfectly well throughout Rocky Mountain winters.

Heritage-breed chickens, acquired only for their eggs at this vegetarian retreat, thrive even in Rocky Mountain winters.

Shakti’s name means divine energy, which if you ask me, is another way of saying solar power.

NOTE: Check out the outstanding recipes in Shoshoni’s cookbook.

We Like Green (Air Quality Code) Days

Everyday about 3:30 p.m., I get an email with the air quality code for the day and the air quality forecast for the next two days. These free daily air alerts come from Clean Air Partners, and you can sign up here to receive them, too.

I track air quality for obvious personal reasons and also for business purposes. If the air for the next day falls in the unhealthy (orange) range or worse, then we’ll limit our mowing to early hours of the day and/or mow only within a very limited driving range. Or, not mow at all.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) shown here is familiar to all of us by now. What you may not know is that it’s based on five major air pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act: ground-level ozone, particle pollution (also known as particulate matter), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. It is the first two of these — ground-level ozone and particle pollution — that pose the greatest threat to human health, and monitors throughout our region measure these. (For a map showing monitor locations in our area, click here.)

You can help clear the air in multiple ways: Replace your charcoal grill with a propane gas grill, use water-based instead of oil-based paint, drive less, and of course, if you haven’t already, sign up with Solar Mowing. Free estimates for emission-free mowing, trimming, and blowing!

AQIchart

Compost Tea … If it’s Good Enough for Harvard

Dylan Reilly works for Solar Mowing. He’s applied to the Landscape Architecture Graduate Program at the University of Maryland for the fall. 

The idea to make compost tea has been on a back burner, so to speak, since I read about Harvard University’s transition to organic care of the Harvard Yard. This time-honored landscape includes brick pathways, stately old trees, and a good deal of grass.

It began in 2008 when Harvard compared two plots of lawn: one treated organically and the other treated conventionally as a control. Both plots were tested for percolation, pH, and other metrics to assure a fair comparison. The conventional control plot received synthetic nitrogen/phosphorus liquid fertilizers, some pesticides, and annual aeration/reseeding. The organic plot received aeration, reseeding, topdressing of compost, pelletized organic fertilizer, and a special amendment called compost tea.

Compost tea is a mix of organic nutrients (nitrogen, potassium), actively aerated water (by oxygen pump), and compost (such as chicken manure, grass clippings, decomposing leaves) that steep together in a fine mesh bag that allow microbes, but not soil, to pass through. Harvard’s recipe mixed seven pounds of compost, eight ounces of molasses, eight ounces of liquid kelp, eight ounces of fish hydrolysate, and a half cup of vegetable oil into a 30-gallon container of water that was then steeped for 24 hours.

The heart of compost tea is not the nutrients from the various ingredients, but rather the biology that is harbored by the steeping process. This is where the aeration comes in. To create beneficial microbes for a healthy lawn you need food to help beneficial bacteria from the compost grow and air to help them breath and that is exactly what brewing/steeping compost tea does. Once brewed, it should be applied as quickly as possible to take advantage of that biology.

Dylan sets the compost tea bag in place and fires up the hydroponic oxygen pump. He'll apply about three gallons of compost tea to his lawn.

Dylan sets the compost tea bag in place and fires up the oxygen pump. He’ll apply about three gallons of compost tea to his lawn.

In my experiment, I applied about three gallons of compost tea to our one-eighth-acre of grass, which is actually more than recommended. About a month later, I have not noticed any particular uptick or decline in our lawn’s growth or health, which is not surprising for one application. But the brewing was definitely an education. I used a 30-gallon trash bin to brew my tea, along with a store-bought 400-micron teabag, oxygen pump, and homemade aeration grate for the bottom of the bin. I dispensed the tea with a one-gallon hand sprayer.

In February 2009, Harvard put out a report on the project, detailing successes from the organic lawn care system, such as increased root depth and less required watering. A few months later, 25 acres of Harvard’s campus was converted to organic practices. With a 45K investment in composting facilities, compost tea brewers, and associated equipment the cost of the new maintenance plan is about the same as their conventional system.

The take-away for folks with lawns is this: It has never been a better time to start an organic lawn care regimen. Compost tea has become a bit of a waving flag in the past few years, but it really appears to be the synergy of compost topdressing, aeration, reseeding, organic pelletized fertilizer, compost tea, and careful management that allowed Harvard Yard to go green.