Lousy soil can kill a landscape

This week the Rain Rich crew and I worked at a client's home fine tuning his irrigation system. This project, a large custom built home, situated on the water with a view of the New York City skyline has been a 2 ½ year long assignment. Along with construction of the home, the process of working with both the landscape designer and the landscape company, it has been a slow arduous task. The landscaper, a friend of mine, implemented the landscaping work along with the design and direction of a top rated New York City firm.

Rain Rich installed over 30 zones, separated into lawn, shrub, and tree zones. Several independent drip irrigation zones handle the many pots and window boxes exclusively. A Hunter ICC controller was installed and programmed with utmost care. Connected to the controller is a Hunter Solar Sync that automatically adjusts the watering based upon temperature and sunlight. The landscape of this home was healthy and lush until these past two weeks when summer finally came to Long Island.

Two weeks ago we finally started getting hot and humid weather. The temperatures were in the 90's and the humidity was around 90 %. These two factors wreak havoc on lawn and plants. Many different types of fungus thrive in these conditions and if not immediately addressed can wipe out a lawn. Lawn (turf) is a cool weather plant and can suffer from heat, stress, and fungus. The lawn can look like it may not be watered enough and the human reaction is to water more. Unfortunately this is not the remedy and can actually make matters worse. Of course I get the call from my landscaping buddy and when I visit the property, sure enough, in several areas, the lawn looks bad. My first thoughts upon surveying the site are why does the lawn look good in most of the property, 30,000 sqf. Of turf, and 2,000 look bad? I turned on all the sprinklers covering the lawn to make sure the coverage is uniform and it is. Next, I use my soil probe and begin to take soil samples. The results were that in several areas of poor looking turf the soil was so compacted that I could not push the probe more than 1 to 2" into the ground. In the good looking turf areas I could push the probe 5" and more into the earth. I explored these poor turf areas further with my shovel and found the soil to be hard, compacted, heavy clay that neither water nor turf roots could penetrate. This soil had very little capability to hold water and nutrients and support the turf above. Unfortunately, the landscaper will have to remove a few hundred cubic yards of compacted dirt and replace with organic soil. As I keep witnessing over the years that great soil makes for great landscapes. This landscaping and irrigation project was well funded and replacing poor soil with good was not a budget issue. If I were in the landscaping business, guaranteeing turf and plant material, one of my first orders of business would be to address the soil on the site.