Turn your lawn into a flawn!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good good morning everybody. Welcome back. I'm Ron Wilson and
you are in the garden here on news radio six
' ten WTVN talking yardning. And yes, Helene has really
helped out bringing some badly needed moisture to the state
of Ohio. A lot of those dormant lawns look at
all around from the south to the north, maybe starting

(00:21):
to green up a little bit. And this, you know,
this is going to be the time of the year
to this week and next week to make a decision
as far as what kind of lawn care you might
want to do in case you want to do any overseating, seating,
things like that. But before you make that final decision,
have you ever considered considered having a flawn? Flawn? A flawn?

(00:42):
Are you familiar with what a flawn is? Well, if not,
our flawn expert is with us this morning. He is
Anthony Nead. The website is flowering lawn dot com. Good morning, sir, Hey,
good morning Ron, Thanks for having me back. Hey, my pleasure.
Good having you on again talking about these flowering lawns.
So so folks, I understand first of all, what is

(01:03):
a what is a flawn?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, simply put a flawn or a flowering lawn is
taking your existing grass lawn and incorporating low growing flovers
like legumes and wild flowers to that. And the reason
we do that is to reduce your your maintenance, your
input needs, reduce your watering needs, no more fertilizers, no
more hazardous chemicals. And then it's also safer people and

(01:29):
pets in the environment, and really beneficial for our pollinators
which are in decline.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
So and again, folks want to learn more about this
at flowering lawn dot com. So you know, if I'm
thinking about doing this and I'm saying, well, you know
that's that might not be a bad idea. It cuts
out on my I'm assuming on mowing as well, and
we can address that too, but on the fertilizing and all.
And it does help the environment, It helps the butterflies
and the pollinators and all. Well, the community go for

(01:57):
that as well. Have you seen restrictions that we're not
allowed to do something like this, Well, it's.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's not a meadow, it's not a prairie. We're not
talking like coming up to like even knee high or
anything like that. This is still your lawn, only better.
And yeah, you do still mow it as little as
two times a year, once in spring, it once in tall,
but really you're reducing your mowing by about seventy five percent,
so you're bumping that more up to its highest level

(02:23):
and really only going when you need to and letting.
Letting the plants kind of dictate that for you. So
I personally, I have my bee lawn mixture, which has
the Dutch white clover, the self heel and the creeping
time in amongst my grass, and I only mow that
when the flowers are starting to look a little brown,
when they're when they're done blooming, then I'll cut them off.

(02:44):
But when it's beautiful, when it's in boom, I let
that be. It's it's enjoyable for me, My neighbors like
to like it walking by seeing it. And then it's
also you know, providing those that beneficial nectar for the pollinators.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Got it. So if someone's listen to our show right now,
and let's say they've got a turf type tall fescu
lawn and they say, you know, okay, I can I
like the idea maybe of this having some clover in there.
I've heard about the micro clover, mixing it in with
the turf type tall fescues. If they do that, basically
they can have that benefits of the micro clover. But

(03:20):
that's something really doesn't flower too much, right, and you
don't really notice it all that much, right, Yeah, I
mean it.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Would live amongst the tall fesc and it's about a
quarter of the size of Dutch light clover, so it's
smaller than your pinky fingernail. And it is really a
dwarf variety, so it's it's down in, you know, like
the canopy of the grass, so driving by, you're not
going to notice it. And yeah, it's providing all the
nutrients that the grass needs, so you don't need to

(03:49):
add all those extra fertilizers or use any kind of
chemical pesticide.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
And you you know, you had It's just something to
when we had talked earlier, you had mentioned something to
me which I thought was a great idea. If somebody's
not you know, maybe you want to keep the front
yard looking like everybody else's as far as you know,
pretty much just a straight turf type tall or a
turf a lawn. But you could do this micro clover
in the front yard, then you could actually take the

(04:14):
more of the flowering lawn and put that in the backyard.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah. Absolutely, And what it looks like is really going
to depend on how often and at what height you
mow it. So even if you did go with like
our micro b lawn, which has the micro clover, which
stays real small on its own, but then it also
has two other flowers, the creeping time and the felt heel.
But if you mow those, I mean they've been trained

(04:39):
over thousands of years of getting munch done and trampled
on by deer and bison and elk, so they now
get cut off by her lawnmowers, right, I mean get
those animals in our urban environments. But basically the lawnmower
will keep those flowers small and they learned not to bloom.
You might have cut a dandelion off in spring, right, Well,

(05:00):
the next one doesn't grow, you know, a foot tall,
It's going to grow two or three inches tall, so
it doesn't get a head cut off again. So these
flowers kind of have that same sort of growth habit.
They will learn to grow and bloom at the height
that you're that you mow. So if you want to
mow weekly or every two weeks in the front yard
and only mo once a month or only a few
times a year in the backyard. Yeah, you're going to

(05:21):
have more of that flowering oasis in the backyard, and
you're gonna still have some flowers in the front, but
they're just not going to be as noticeable.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Have you have you had folks that will do like this,
just do this in part of their yard and not
do the entire yard.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Oh absolutely. I mean when we have like a you know,
a house on a lot, we have a couple of trees,
maybe bullivard trees. We might have some sloped areas, so
we have these microclimates, right, and there might be too
much shade in between two two story houses for example,
or you know a low lying area that you know
you might be attractively like creeping Charlie, and you just
can't get the grass to survive there. These are little

(05:58):
pockets that are great to try out. See how you
like it. You're going to be more resilient and easier
to grow than grasses and these types of environments. And
once you kind of get a feel for it, then
you can decide if you want to do the rest
of your yards.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, I mean I look at that and say, you know,
I can even see you doing sweep. So that if
you had a you know, like a perennial bed and
you had all the you know, your butterfly garden or whatever,
and then you could do a sweep of that, you know,
ten feet are still around that bed with the flowering
lawn and then just phase right into your regular lawn.
That could be fairly attractive.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Actually, yeah, doing things like buffers, stripping or hack. I mean,
we have different varieties in all different colors, so you
can even make a pattern if you wanted to, and
go go crazy if you wanted to, and send me
a picture, I'd love to see it. That we have
you know, everything from mixed English states which will be
coming up real early in late March April, and then

(06:51):
we have flowers like the creeping time and the Dutch
ry clover that bloom all the way into October November.
So we want to have different, you know, sources available
for pollinators that are here and there all throughout the year.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Talking with Anthony Need, the company is It's flawn Seed
and their website is flowering lawn dot com flowering lawn
dot com. Now Here in Ohio a lot. Of course,
we've been faced with the draft, one of the worst
ones we've ever had since I think nineteen eighty eight
or whatever. So a lot of dormant lawns right now
got some rainfall coming through thanks to Helene, and lawns

(07:22):
starting to green back up again. A lot of folks
are going to be looking right now to get the
lawn perk back up again and possibly doing some overseaing.
Is now a good time to consider making our lawns
a flawn Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Absolutely, now was the best time to get going in
the right direction. Think about next summer if we get
an even worse drought, or even a normal drought. I mean,
it's cyclical, so we want to have something there that's
more resilient. And think about grasses. They have these narrow
blades that just go straight to the sky, and the
sun can just beat right down through them and hit
the ground and dry it out a lot quicker than

(07:59):
if we have our broad leaves like our clovers. They're
creating a little canopy. It's like a mini rainforest effect
really going on, and it holds in the moisture and
prevents the sun from drying out the ground as quickly,
so they really are more drought tolerant, and they support
the grass in that effect too, where they're taking an
atmospheric nitrogen and fixing it into the soil, so it

(08:20):
replaces your need for any fertilizer. So your grass, if
it does get into a drought condition with the clover,
it's gonna be greener longer, and if it does go
into dormancy, it's gonna come out of dormancy a lot
quicker than just the grass only lawn.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Now will the clover or any of the other flowers
that we're planting in with our lawns if the lawn
does go dorma we go through another drought like this
again with the heat and all, well, those will go
dormant as well at some point, I would imagine then
they come back. I mean they pretty good as far
as staying alive until we get moisture back in the
ground again to green back up.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean a lot of these are natives
and they're you know, been here for millennia without any
help from humans, so they are resilient and they can
tolerate different types of soils as well. So if it's sand, silk, clay,
or loam if it's a high or low pH These
are not as picky as grass is when it comes
to growing conditions, okay, and they may kind of disappear

(09:19):
a little bit here and there depending on the weather conditions,
but when the conditions improved, they'll come right back on
their own.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
And we're talking sun or shade with these right either
either one.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Absolutely, we don't like to, you know, just have a
monoculture like grass alone. You know, you're going to be
able to see all those different microclimates throughout your property
because you've got different growing conditions, different amount of light
and moisture. But if you plant a mix like our
bee lawn mix has three different varieties in there, it
kind of spans the damage of all the different types
of growing conditions you might run into. So if you

(09:51):
see this all the way around your house and you
have those different climates, well, in one area, it might
just be a little bit more of this color. You know,
it might be a little light purple, it might be
a little more pink. You're a little more white here
and there, depending on what time of year it is.
And so that's just that they will adapt to the conditions.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
That you plant them in we're talking flawns that would
be a flowering lawn. Go to their websites flowering lawn
dot com. Anthony Need is with us this morning. We're
gonna take a quick break. We come back. We've got
more questions for Anthony about establishing a flawn, and now
it would be a good time if you're interested in
doing it. Check out their website is flowering lawn dot com.
Here on news radio six to ten WTVN. Have you

(10:29):
ever considered having a flowering lawn. It's called a flawn.
If you have or have not and want to learn
more about it, go to the websites flowering lawn dot com.
With us this morning is Anthony Need and he is
telling us all about how you would establish that flawn.
So I think I want to back up a second.
I think you did mention this. You know, there's such

(10:49):
an importance now of planting native plants in our landscapes
and all the varieties of flowers that we would be
planning in the lawn. These are all natives, right, all
of them are.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Native, and it's okay about it. We're planting these in
a grass lawn environment. So again, we're not planting these
in like a meadow or a wild native prairie. Right, well,
what is your what is your grass? Lawn? Comprised of
European grasses, so, and it's a monoculture. So we're improving
it by adding beneficial plants. Many of ours are native

(11:21):
and you can check our website for more information in
the Latin names to check for your area. But we
want to have that benefit and mainly for us to
reduce our maintenance, for our kids to be safe, for
our pets to be safe, and then for our collinators
as well.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
So you know, like I said, we we've all put
off doing any lawn improvement right now because of the
heat and the drought. Now we've got moisture back in
the ground, we're probably going to be looking at doing
more of this over the next ten days to two weeks.
If we're interested in doing this and incorporating this into
our lawns yet this fall, I mean, what would be
the procedure? I mean, you know, most of the time

(11:59):
we'd be thinking of core and slice seating, and you know,
the fertilizer and all that. What would be the process
if we said, okay, let's go ahead and listen. Corporate
and turn our lawn into a flawn well.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
You don't need to go out and rent any heavy
equipment or hire a professional. We've made our flawn seed
kits as easy as possible for the home consumer to
do this. And you have a lawn more you have
a leaf rake or a metal rake and a sprinkler,
then you're you're good to go. And we have real
easy videos on our website and on our YouTube channel
that you can just simply mow the lawn as short

(12:34):
as possible, and if you have a lot of flippings,
just rake those off to the side or bag them.
If you have a lot of weeds that you don't
want to be there going forward, make sure you do
bag your clippings and don't return them, or you know,
rake up as much of that vegetation as possible. Anytime
you're seating, it's really important to get the speed to
soil contact, so we need to make sure if you

(12:56):
have like a bache layer, that you do a little
bit more aggressive breaking just so that you're exposing the soil,
loosening it up. If you have a really compact or
hard soil crust on the layer there to just make
sure that the soil is visible after email it real
short it should be, and then you're just shaking to spread.
Our seed kits, and any of our seed kits include

(13:17):
composts and soil builders for you with all the seeds
already mixed in so you're really just walking and shaking,
and simple videos to check out on our website. If
you have any questions to fit, the little chat button
in the bottom right corner sends me a direct message
I'll get.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Right back to you, which you do, and you're very
good at getting right back to folks and answering questions,
and so I do this next week. Let's say, how
long will it take before I start to see some
results starting to come in?

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, I mean it depends on what one you're seeding overs,
especially you know, the micro clover, dutch By clover, both germinate,
and as little as three to five days, granted, you're
going to have to be getting down on your knees
and pulling the grass apart to see those little tiny
seeds leans down there. And just the word of warning,
they do not look like clover for the first few weeks.

(14:06):
They won't look like clover until you know, two or
three weeks in so don't think that, you know, we
sold you a bunch of weeds or anything right off
the bat. But we have a lot of instructional videos
that will show you what it looks like after one week,
what it looks like after two weeks, how to care
for it going forward and creeping time. Is one of
the slower ones that is a native wild flower to

(14:26):
North America, and that kind of follows that old, you
know adage of it's going to sleep in year one,
it's going to creep in year two, and leap in
year three. So that can take a couple of years,
and a lot of people, I know, if we're impatient,
we want to see that result right away, but just
just be a little patient with it. Let it go
through its winter at it'll come right back in the

(14:49):
in the spring and summer, and you'll start seeing some growth,
and then you'll see some blooms probably by the end
of the next year.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Talking with Anthony Need again. Their website is Flowering Lawn
dot com. Be sure and check that out. I think
it's very interesting and I think again, I think folks
could easily you could experiment with this if you're not
sure it's something you totally want to do, like he
was saying, just experiment, do a part of the backyard,
do a path, you know, a wave in front of

(15:14):
a planting bed or whatever it may be, see what
you think, and then take it from there and you
might wind up doing your entire yard. I know a
lot of folks have really gotten involved now with the
micro clovers. Just doing those and of course adding with
the rest of the flowering plants I think would be
absolutely wonderful, especially if you've got gardens in the backyard
or whatever. Great way to bring more pollinators into your yard.

(15:37):
Got a quick question before we go here, how the
heck did you get involved with doing this?

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah? Absolutely, And you know I used to work for
a conventional lawn care company at a garden center, and
I would come home just coat it and pesticide from
head to toe and not be able to, you know,
hug and kiss my children in my life. And so
I had an ultimatum for myself that I just had
to find something better. And this was almost twenty years
ago now, and there really wasn't much for organics on

(16:04):
the market, and we've come a long way with the
organic pesticize and organic fertilizers. But really it just wasn't
the complete holistic approach answer that I was looking for.
And when I found out that the University of Minnesota
was doing a five year research study on helping pollinators
and what they call lawns, the Legumes program, I just

(16:25):
had to learn more and more and more, and I
just picked their brain and read everything that they published
and I started doing this. I created my own lawn
care company and started feeding lawns with these different flowering plants,
and we've continued to adapt and grow and add more
varieties so that we have different you know, different flowers,

(16:46):
different times of the year, different colors, different microcliments, and
we're really trying to help the widest range of pollinators possible.
And so if you think about the mouse parts of
a butterfly of Froboscis, or a small mason bee or
sweat bea, there's different plants that work better for different pollinators.
And that's why it's really great to have diversity in
a wide range.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
I'm loving it. So you know this again, remember this
is the best time of the year if you want
to start and seed and start a flawn. So if
you want to do that, and now's the time to
do it. Go again to their website flowering lawn dot
com and if you have any questions, Anthony, we'll get
right back to you and answer all those questions. Anthony's
thanks for spending time with us this morning. Appreciate it.

(17:27):
Pretty cool. I think it's a great thing to do,
whether you go full bore or partially or whatever. Something
I think everybody should take a look at as far
as considering make part of your lawn or all your
lawn a flawn. Thank you, Anthony, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Ron.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
All right, you too quick break, we come back. We'll
be opening the phone lines for you at eight two
to one WTVN eight hundred and six to ten WTVN.
Here on news radio six y ten WTVN eight two
to one WTVN eight hundred and six to ten WTVN
talking to Yardening here on the news radio six to
ten WTVN, real quick, before I go back to the
guarding phone lines. Had a great question talking about pruning

(18:05):
as we get into the fall season. What can I prune,
what do I not prune? Et cetera, et cetera. And
one of them that came up that I see happen
a lot in the fall. And again there's a lot
of plants that I don't recommend doing in the fall,
but if you do, sometimes you can still pull it
off and their plants can be very forgiving. But this
is pruning evergreens, and for the most part, you know,

(18:25):
whole branch removal can be done anytime you want to
do that. Clip off a branch, the whole branch, you
can do that anytime. Evergreen, deciduous, doesn't matter pretty much.
Any time of the year can be done. But looking
to do a severe cutback a rejuvenation pruning of a
Japanese yew hedge, and they showed me a picture of it,
and it's way overgrown out over the sidewalk and all

(18:47):
of that, but worth saving. And one of the only
evergreens that's out there that you can actually a needle to.
Evergreens that you can cut back really hard, and they
do a pretty good job as far as rejuvenating coming
back out again, even on branches that don't have any
needles left on them. You do that with most all
other evergreens and you lost it not going to happen,

(19:10):
But Japanese you or taxes is one that you can
do that.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Now.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
You always take a risk when you cut them back
that much, but have done it myself, have done it
many times that other folks do it as well, and
pretty good success rates. So but the point being is
if we want to cut these back to do a
rejuvenation pruning, can I do that in the fall? Or
when is the best time to do that? Well? Could

(19:36):
you cut them back in the fall? You can. I
don't think i'd do a really hard cutback, but you
could prune them. And again we're going to wait till
we get into the fall a little bit more. We
don't do any major pruning right now that would stimulate
new growth on a lot of different plants. So that's
out no matter what you're looking at as far as
woody plants. But for an evergreen you could a little

(19:57):
bit if you needed to cut them back because they're
hanging over the side wall or whatever, and do some
hand pruning and hatches to make it easier to get
by them over the winter. But if you cut them
back really hard in the fall, a lot of times
those ends don't get to seal off because of the
cold weather. It can be bad. You don't sometimes those
branches don't come back because of the cold weather, and

(20:20):
what you see is what you get. For Let's say
you cut them back late October, November, December, and January, February, March,
and April, you got six months of looking at this
thing that got hacked back over the wintertime. So you know, overall,
looking at that, could you do it, Yeah, but you
take more of a risk of it not recovering nicely

(20:43):
versus doing it in late winter early spring. For the
most part, when it comes to pruning evergreens, typically the
best time to do that is late winter early spring,
whether it be leafy or needled evergreens, And what happens
is you cut them back at that time, they're just
starting to send that energy back up into those branches,

(21:05):
and as they send that energy, everything goes back into
reliefing or rekneedling and coming back out again. So your
best time to do that would not be in the fall,
but to do that late winter and early spring or
sometime in the spring before the new growth actually starts
to come out. And then you know, the new growth

(21:25):
comes out kind of starts to cover over the plan
doesn't look quite so bad. Couple seasons you get underneath
the belt there and the next thing you know, they're
looking pretty darn good. So Japanese use one of the
few needled evergreens that you can do that with. And
the best time to do that would be in late
winter early spring before the new growth comes out. Give

(21:45):
them a light feeding and you're good to go and
watch stand back and watch what happens. And again, like
I say, you know, if you do them a really
hard cut back, you do take a risk if they've
been in there for a long, long long time. But
they're pretty good about coming back out of a pretty
hard cut. All right, to the guarding phone lines, we
shall go, said, good morning.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Good morning, Ron.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, sir, I had.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
An unusual question that came from a realtor that refers
us work. The lady has bamboo outside of her house
and it was taking over, so she was trying to
get rid of it, but was asking me about removing

(22:29):
the bamboo from her crawl space. So the rhizomes have
gone under the lentil and have come up inside, and
she was like, well, we'll just remove the outsides. We
might just want to encapsulate. I go, I'm not sure
since it's a rhizome that's come up or a tuber.

(22:50):
Just because you cut them off outside doesn't mean they're
going to stop growing inside. Am I kind of going
in the right direction?

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah? Yeah, so they're actually well I think twofold it's
a cross space, right, yeah, stays dark in there, So
that's not a good thing over the winter time that
the weather'st you know, wonter, why is it? That would
be okay, but I don't know. The darkness, I guess
would be one thing in your favor. Are they trying

(23:19):
to get rid of the bamboo totally? Yes? So what
are you gonna do there? You're gonna just cut it
off at the top of the ground and try to
starve it to death.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Well, I wanted to talk to you about that because
I'm worried that if we cut it off that it'll
start to decay and that'll cause a lot of odor
from that decaying tuber in the ground.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
You know, remember, it is a grass. I mean, it
is a grass, and so our goal is to like
a rhizome and grass, and so our goal would be
to take everything off the top and try to just
starve it to death. Now as those roots break down,
would it be a bad smell. I don't know, it
would be a probably an earthy smell. I mean as
it's decomposing, but I don't know that it would be
that bad. But that is one of the best ways

(24:08):
to do it. The other only other way is that
sometimes I mean we've gone in with a bacco or
whatever and actually dig it out and get it out
of there physically, and then replace the soil and go
from there. But cutting off the tops and starving it
to death is a great way to go. As a
matter of fact, you could even you can even cut
it down close to the ground, spray what's left there

(24:29):
with a little bit of a kills all or whatever.
Then let's give it a few weeks. Then go go
ahead and cut it all back to the ground and
then just let it, you know, decay or it won't
come back up over the winter obviously, and then in
the springtime go after what starts to come up with
a vegetation killer like kills All, a round up, something
like that, and don't let it grow anymore, basically again

(24:50):
starving out the roots. I don't I can't say one
hundred percent, but I don't think that's going to cause
any issues. As far as the smell, and I think
if you do that and you get rid of the
growing top source that's you know, that's feeding back into
those rhizomes, I think that should take care of what's
going on in the cross space as well. And I

(25:13):
can't see that regrowing either, so I think I just
simply attack it from not seeing it, attack it from
the outside. And again, this is a great time to
do that, you know, like I say, you could cut
it back, spray what's close to the ground, give that
a couple of weeks, and cut it all off right
a ground level, and just let us sit through over
the winter, and as it starts to pop back up

(25:33):
in the springtime, spot spot spot spot, keep starving it
to death, and eventually I think at the end of
the season, you probably won't see it anymore.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Well, I'm going to go see it for the first
time this week, So.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Take a look at it. Yeah, take a look at it.
Sit And I was going to say, take your cell phone,
take some pictures of it and share that with me
through the email, and I'll try to, you know, see
what I can see that as well, and maybe I
can help you out there too. Try to get a
better feel for what we're looking at.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
It's definitely unusual request that I've had for this, so
I thought, wow, this is the best place to ask.
I see something else this week and I wanted to
ask you about it. I was driving on Groveport Road,
going down out of O Betsy and they sit right
by the cemetery. There was some flowering like crab apples

(26:28):
or whatever, yep, and they bloom yep.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Okay, we gotta go, so hang, we're gonna We're gonna
cut you off right there.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
There's a term for that. It's called remontant. And sometimes
these flowering plants will flower. They're kind of confused, will
flower in the fall as well. A few here and
there enjoy them, but they will still also flower in
the springtime. I'll address that again next Saturday. Thanks to
our callers, thanks to our sponsors, Thanks to uh Ella.
Have a great weekend. See it