High nitrogen fertilizer will help lawns weather cold air

     By Bob Morris
     View columnist
      The following are typical questions our Master Gardeners answer daily at the Nevada Cooperative Extension. If you have gardening questions, call the Master Gardeners' hot line at 257-5555 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. There is also a gardening Web site at http://www.intermind. net/mgarden/.
     
      This is the time of year to put on that last fertilizer application on fescue lawns to keep it green through the winter. If temperatures remain higher than normal this winter, your lawn will stay green.
      If air temperatures dip below 20 degrees at night, lawns not fertilized will turn off color or brown, depending on the temperature.
      The only way to keep them green if this happens is to have them well fertilized going into December and January. Choose a high nitrogen fertilizer with half the nitrogen as slow release. Apply it at label rates and reduce the waterings according to the temperatures. You should be watering no more than three times a week now.
      Some of you may be able to go longer between waterings. Shrubs and trees should need weekly waterings or less often. These should be deep waterings when done.
      Fall weeds such as the mustards are now up and showing themselves. They will overwinter and persist until late spring. These are winter annuals. Places where they do best is in areas of the lawn where it is shady and the lawn is sparse.
      Increase the light in these areas by thinning out tree limbs causing shade and thicken the lawn next spring by seeding or sodding. Or leave the shade and replace the lawn in these areas with shade tolerant groundcovers.
      Question: I have worms coming up all over the lawn. I don't mind worms but there are just too many and it looks messy. Can they be controlled?
      Answer: I wish you would reconsider trying to control them and be a bit more accepting of the messiness they are creating. Worms that come to the surface of a lawn is a good and healthy sign.
      They indicate that there is activity going on that is working to your lawn's benefit. As one of our Master Gardeners told me, you're getting a free lawn aeration.
      That's a key in trying to solve your lawn's problem. If the worms are tunneling holes to the surface of your lawn, then help them. Purchase a hand aerator at any of the nursery or garden centers and aerate the lawn in the areas where the earthworms are a problem. What you don't want to do is try and kill them or reduce their numbers.
      Watering also plays a role. Worms need air to breathe. Soil is made of spaces or voids that can hold either air or water. Whenever air spaces are continually filled with water, more room for air is needed.
      Worms tunnel to the surface to create more spaces for air. Try and adjust your lawn watering so that the lawn dries between irrigations. This is a perfect time of year to really cut back on irrigations. The plants and your wallet will benefit.
      Q: Crickets are a problem for us now that the weather has turned cold. They are coming into our home and garage. Is there anything we can use to keep them out?
      A: The traditional way was to spray the entire foundation of the home with a pesticide. The pesticide was sprayed in a band wide enough so that pests had to cross this band to enter into the home. When they did cross this band, they would then come in contact with a deadly poison. That poison would kill them rather quickly.
      If the label rate was followed correctly, the amount of poison was spread out over the area so that only small insects like crickets, ants, roaches, spiders and the like are killed. The amount of poison was calibrated so that it was high enough to kill insects but not small animals, pets or people. However, anything that did cross this path came in contact with this poison. Bare feet and pads on the bottom of paws are areas of the body that can take up pesticides rapidly.
      The adage, the dose makes the poison is appropriate here. In many cases, the amount that a pet or human takes in is usually not enough to make them outwardly sick. Flu symptoms are nearly identical to a mild, pesticide poisoning. By the way, the testing done with pesticides for toxicity is for acute toxicity or short-term effects of the poison.
      There is very little testing done for long term or chronic effects. This means we have almost no idea what happens with repeated contact over long periods of time.
      Our office has done some testing with Neem oil, a natural product from trees in India, that shows some promise. There are some indications that peppermint oil can act as a repellent. We can provide some alternative products to traditional pesticides if you would like to participate in a testing program.
      Otherwise you would use the traditional products such as diazinon, dursban, synthetic pyrethroids and other products labeled for home pest control.
      Q: I am changing out my hot water heater and I don't want to waste the water in the tank. Can I use this water to water my plants or is this water not good to use. I do have a water softener as well.
      A: I would not use it. Many people have chosen to have all of the water in the home softened to reduce lime deposits after washing. If you have a water softener, it is not safe to use any water connected to the softener for watering plants.
      The problem with the traditional salts used for softening water is the sodium content. Sodium is very destructive to soils used for growing plants. Repeated use of this type of water will destroy a soil's structure and workability.
      Sodium is also a very toxic mineral to most plants. With continued watering from softened water, most plants will be damaged.
      Be careful with hose bibs that come from inside the house. These may not be safe places for you to use for irrigating plants. Don't use these hose bibs for a garden hose or drip irrigation connection for vegetables or fruit. It would be best to have a hose bib connection coming directly from the pressurized side of your irrigation system and use this for watering.
      Q: I want to start some of my transplants from seed for vegetables and flowers. Do I need a greenhouse to do this or can I do this at home?
      A: You don't need a greenhouse to start some transplants at home. There a couple of ways to do this. And these are fun to do. You can experiment, grow whatever you want and don't have to rely on whatever the nursery decides to sell.
      The old-fashioned way is to build warm frames or cold frames which are simplified greenhouses on a very small scale. USDA Cooperative Extension used to have plans available to build these out of some wood and window panes. The difference between a cold frame and hot frame is that the hot frame had a heat source, other than the sun, to keep the plants warm.
      Heat sources for hot frames could be rotting manures or electric heat cables depending on how fancy you wanted it to be. Cold frames just relied on the warmth from the sun. In the old gardening days there were three reasons for having a cold frame. One was to start plants early in the spring for transplanting into the garden. A second was to receive transplants from hotbeds and "harden" them off before planting them totally outside.
      "Hardening" off plants just simply means getting them accustomed to cold weather so they aren't shocked as much after transplanting. The third reason is for protecting young plants, started in the fall, from killing temperatures during the winter.
     
     Bob Morris is a horticulture specialist with Nevada Cooperative Extension.