Governor Perdue announces Georgia Water Stewardship Act
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue announced the Georgia Water Stewardship Act, Wednesday, 3 February 2010. The bill proposes comprehensive measures to go into effect in July 2012. As may Georgians well know, the water conservation measures from the two past droughts have been unduly born by gardeners and green industry professionals. This proposed bill seeks to spread that out.
The proposed legislation will provide for water efficient building standards, incentives for water providers to upgrade delivery infrastructure, enhanced leak detection measures for water mains, and a task force to
"work on additional contingency supply options", read: not enough alternate sources outside of Lake Lanier. More critical now that the Federal government's position is that metro Atlanta counties do not have rights to draw water from Lake Lanier. Incidentally, the entire Lanier watershed falls on Georgia land.
Many of you are aware of the "Water Wars", the ongoing conflict between Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Tennessee, over rights to the water flowing through the Chattahoochee and Flint River basins. One proposed measure would establish voluntary monitoring to establish objective data concerning the true effects of agricultural irrigation draws from these rivers.
"The final piece of the legislation extends the voluntary agriculture monitoring program to include surface water withdrawals. Farmers around the state have voluntarily agreed to have groundwater withdrawals monitored and the results have disproven many negative assumptions about agricultural water use. Extending this program to surface water withdrawals, from our rivers, streams and lakes, will continue to provide the state critical data that informs not only water negotiations with our neighbors but also our water inventory of sources and uses that Georgia’s Regional Water Councils are currently developing." (State website).
twitter.com/Proudland.
Labels: articles, Irrigation, laws, regulation, watering
February Gardening Tasks--Atlanta & North Georgia
It's February in North Georgia, and Atlanta is cold and raining. Gardeners, don't sleep, because Spring is almost upon us. Do not be lulled into complacency because it feels and looks like winter. In just a few weeks Atlanta Spring will begin, and there are things you the gardener needs to do now to be ready. Here is a list:
- Scalp warm-season lawns (Bermuda, Zoysia, Centipede)
- Continue to monitor local freeze warnings, be ready to protect tender plants
- Pick up the clippings and put in your compost pile
- Prune roses (middle of February)
- Cut forsythia to force indoors
- Fertilize seasonal flowers, tulip, and daffoldil beds with a low nitrogen, high phosphorous ferilizer
- Dead head yellowing, brown, or burned Camellia blooms.
- Prune crape myrtles (middle of February)
- Trim unruly shrubs like hollies, ligustrum, and cleyera
- Refresh mulch, if you haven't already
- Nurse your compost pile.
- Inventory and inspect gardening equipment
- Get mowers, chippers, weed eaters that need it to the mechanic (if not done in January)
- Sharpen blades and change oil on mowers
- Sharpen chain saw chains.
- Check the January gardening task list, and do on there what you didn't do.
March is less than a month away, and Atlanta Spring season will be upon us, despite what a certain groundhog in Pennsylvania may say. Regardless, for them it will be winter a bit longer than for us.
Abdurrahim is the lead designer for a local, award-winning landscaping firm. You can reach him via email at: a.jalal@ProudlandLandscape.com
Tweet at: twitter.com/Proudland
Resources:
"Winter chores in the landscape" -- UGA CAES
www.cleanairgardening.com/npkexplanation.html
www.groundhog.org/groundhog-day/about-groundhog-day/
Labels: Crape Myrtles, garden, landscape, maintenance, mulch, Pruning, rose, tasks, winter
January Gardening Rundown--Winter 2010
January 2010 in Atlanta started out atypically cold, cold. But, all was well for the gardener because, we had good rain, not too much ice, and it ended with typically mild Atlanta winter temperatures. Here is the run down of January gardening topics in Atlanta and North Georgia:
- Cleanup those last leaves and start Composting.
- Sign up for a rose pruning class--Be ready to go for February.
- Brush up on winter plant protection practices.
- Check off your list of winter gardening tasks for January.
- Proper time to prune crape myrtles.
- If you didn't sign-up for this pruning class, look here for info on others.
Labels: articles, compost, Crape Myrtles, frost, Pruning, rose, tasks, winter
Check out our articles on Examiner.com
I'm now writing for Examiner.com as the Atlanta Gardening Examiner. Check out my articles . I will still be posting here. There will be some cross over. In fact, some of the articles will be posted here, and vice versa. However, this will created some division between Atlanta area gardening information, and more landcaping and Proudland Landscape specific posts.
At any rate, check me out as the Atlanta Gardening Examiner.
Labels: articles, garden, gardener, misc
Zero landfill update: Compost
The zero-landfill objective is moving along. This past year, we have used predominantly home-grown compost. For example, our recent Spring and Fall seasonal color/annual flower installations were done with 100% home-grown compost. We do this be digesting the softer yard waste and debris we collect from landscape maintenance operations throughout the year. The waste is composted at our facility, and reused in our planting projects.
There are a number of large volume projects where we need to bring in outside compost, like large soil bed preparations and top-dressing operations.
Labels: color, compost, flowers, recycle, zero landfill
Compost Experiment 2007--Update
The compost we made and used in our Spring flower installations is working out very well. The draught in Georgia, and particularly in the Atlanta area has probably skewed our results some. We had to modify our soil mixture to address the lack of rainfall. Irrigation never compensates completely for good old rain. Additionally, Proudland’s land fill reduction goals are looking even more promising with the performance of our flowers in the compost. Autumn flowers compost mixes are underway, and we are very excited.
A.J., Proudland Landscape, LLC, copyright © 2007
Abdurrahim Jalal
Operations
Proudland Landscape, LLC
arjalal@ProudlandLandscape.com
770. 736. 6578
Zero landfill goal
At Proudland Landscape, our green (environmental) goal is to have a zero-landfill production. Albeit, that is some time in the future. However, we have started in a few ways:
- Recycling all roadside recyclables we collect. Currently, we collect a lot of trash and other roadside debris during the course of our landscape maintenance operations. Some of this is recyclable, some not so much. The recyclable stuff is sorted and recycled.
- Planting containers from our planting operations and flower installations are being recycled.
- Pallets from our sod installation and hardscape construction are being recycled.
- Organic waste from our routine maintenance and enhancement operations are being composted, and otherwise reused.
There is much else we can do and plan on doing going forward. The largest challenge will be dealing with waste from large landscape installation and grading projects.
A.J., Proudland Landscape, LLC, copyright © 2007.
Subscribe to this, the Proudland Blog 