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Owning your Lawn

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Guest Columnist
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Owning a lawn is more than just watering and mowing. Lawn and garden watering represents about half of outdoor residential water use. Much of the water applied to lawns is wasted due to overwatering, leaks, evaporation, and wind. It is possible to maintain a lawn of the same quality with less than half as much water through efficient watering and lawn management. Weather, soil, mowing, and fertilizing all affect water needs, but the type of grass and use, thatch management, pest control, and other lawn care practices have an effect, too.
When and how much to water is largely determined by weather and soil conditions. During adverse weather conditions applying enough water to ensure turf survival is all that is necessary. Maintaining a dark green lawn at all times during the growing season takes a lot of water.
It is recommended that you apply enough water to soak the soil to a depth of 6 to 8 inches at a rate that allows all water to be absorbed by the soil with no run-off. Wait until the grass shows signs of wilting, but do not wait until severe wilting and browning of the foliage occurs.
It takes about an inch of water to soak the soil properly, but some soils require more and some less. Poke a long screwdriver or rod into the soil to reveal the depth of water penetration. Moist soil is easily penetrated. The probe will stop when it reaches dry soil.
The watering interval varies from once every two or three weeks during cool spring and fall weather to twice a week during severe drought. Watering too much is not only wasteful, but it can be harmful to the turf. Watering a lawn every day causes shallow rooting. Consequently, the turf will not survive for more than a few days if water restrictions are imposed. Frequent watering and shallow rooting hastens thatch buildup, increasing the chance of disease.
Applying one inch of water to 1,000 square feet requires 623 gallons of water. Multiplying this amount by each thousand square feet of lawn area and the number of times the lawn is watered during the season adds up to a tremendous amount of water. The results demonstrate why you should water no more often than necessary.

Scott Eckert
Director/Horticulture Agent
K-State Research and Extension-Harvey County
Box 583
Newton, KS 67114
(316) 284-6930

KU News: Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute appoints interim director

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Guest Columnist
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From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu

Headlines

Contact: Valerie Hawley, Jayhawk Global, [email protected]
Jayhawk Global Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute appoints interim director

LAWRENCE — Michelle Mohr Carney, founding vice provost for Jayhawk Global, has appointed Jennifer Johnson to serve as interim director of Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute (KFRTI). Johnson has held leadership roles with KFRTI since January 2020. Johnson succeeds KFRTI director Kelly McCoy, who announced his departure in April after serving as director for almost three years. McCoy has accepted another position as the assistant director of certified public manager programs within the Public Management Center, KU School of Public Affairs & Administration.
“After 31 years serving the fire service, I am moving away from the specific domain of fire and emergency services training and more broadly into teaching, educating and credentialing public sector leaders and managers from several domains at the federal, state and local levels in Kansas and Missouri,” McCoy said. “Jennifer and I have worked closely together at the strategic level of organizational leadership over the past two years, advancing public safety training infrastructure in the state of Kansas. Jennifer is an experienced and creative leader, able to meaningfully collaborate with others and lead change. I am confident Jennifer will be highly successful.”
Johnson started with KFRTI in January 2020. For her first two years of service, Johnson was the certification program manager responsible for KFRTI’s certification program and its unit International Fire Service Accreditation Congress and ProBoard Accreditation. In January 2022, Johnson obtained the assistant director position with KFRTI where she managed accreditation and credentialing, course registrations and reconciliations, grant management and all other fiscal activities for KFRTI.
Johnson was a member of the Kansas City Kansas Fire Department for 22 years, retiring Aug. 1, 2019, as the chief of policy development and implementation and the Commission on Fire Accreditation International accreditation manager. Additionally, Johnson served seven years as an adjunct professor in the Fire Science Department at the Kansas City Kansas Community College and currently teaches as a part-time faculty member of the College of Safety and Emergency Services for Columbia Southern University. Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from KU, a master’s degree in public affairs from Park University and a certified public manager certificate from KU.
“I have spent my entire career in the Kansas Fire Service, first as a career firefighter in Kansas City, then as an adjunct in the community college fire science program, and now with KFRTI,” Johnson said. “To get an opportunity to serve my fire service family at this level is a great honor. Our amazing team at KFRTI has accomplished so much in the last three years, and I am so very proud of the work we’ve done under the leadership of Director McCoy. Kelly and I have worked closely together over the last year and a half to set our team up to be successful. I am excited to continue working with them and to provide excellent training for our state firefighters.”
“KFRTI is an important unit within Jayhawk Global, and I am pleased that it has benefited from two seasoned leaders who have shown great dedication to the emergency services community through their longevity in the field and support of the KFRTI mission to provide accessible, comprehensive training and credentialing for fire and emergency response personnel in Kansas,” Carney said. “Kelly’s contributions throughout his tenure have led to the creation of a strong team and have set KFRTI up for a successful future. I am extremely confident in Jenn’s abilities and strengths as an innovative leader, and I am honored that she has agreed to guide KFRTI during this interim period.”
KFRTI was instituted by state of Kansas legislative law (K.S.A. 76-327) in 1949 as the state fire training entity to train firefighters for Kansas communities. In 2002, the Fire Service Training Commission was established within KU by state of Kansas legislative law (K.S.A. 76-327a) and consists of 12 members appointed by the governor and provides overside for KFRTI. The KFRTI director must be approved by the commission.

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KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-3256
Fax: 785-864-3339
[email protected]
http://www.news.ku.edu

Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]

Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs

Blueberry Syrup

By
Debbie Dance Uhrig
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I enjoyed a past due, quiet weekend at home, on the 10 & 11th, it was wonderful!
Didn’t go anywhere, kept the laundry up, reviewed things on line, and read. Wrapped up with some delicious pork steaks on the grill. I put out a jar of my rhubarb sauce and it was a nice side to the pork.

There are signs everywhere for blueberries here in the Ozark Mountains. We have the wonderful Persimmon Hill Farms in Lampe, MO, but folks from Cassville were also advertising berries for sale. This past week I made 2 cheesecakes, one plain and the other peanut butter. I wanted a bottle of Persimmon Hill Amaretto Sauce to go with my vanilla cheesecake. Since I didn’t get it I’m thinking I may need to go purchase fresh berries next weekend along with their fabulous sauce. As I always tell folks, ‘I could just put a straw in their amaretto sauce and slurp’, it is so delicious.

The blueberry sauce I’m featuring this week has been featured before in the column. In all sincerity it’s absolutely perfect for your pancakes, ice cream, pound cake and more! I haven’t ever put the amaretto in this sauce because I want it to be used in multiple ways. However; that doesn’t mean you couldn’t add a bit of the amaretto when you’re using the recipe for desserts, crepes, etc. Crepes, oh yes, that’s something I need to get busy making for the freezer. They would also be delicious with this sauce. My dad, Jerry, was telling me tonight how he had blueberry pancakes for lunch this past Sunday. There was, however, one missing ingredient, blueberry sauce, they ran out! He said they were still good with maple syrup, but bah humbug! Let me go run and check a price for you real quick….
OK, the Great Value, 12 oz. blueberry syrup is 3.32. If you go for Smucker’s blueberry syrup you’re probably going another dollar in price. Personally, I think you’ll be a great deal happier with your homemade versions.

The recipe attached will provide 48 ounces of syrup. Berries will cost about 10.00, sugar and sure-jell will be the biggest costs following the berries. 4 containers of the Walmart syrup will cost 13.28, and it is not the top in taste/quality. You do the math, I think it’s worth it to wash and de-stem berries and make at least a double batch of the syrup. Ut oh, my creative side just interrupted me to suggest Christmas gifts for your neighbors this year. Pick up a box of blueberries, pancake mix and your pint jar of syrup. What a delightful gift to enjoy during the holiday season. Holiday season? Why wait? This makes a good birthday present, thank you gift, hostess gift, and so on. Sure you could purchase it from the store, but it’s so much more meaningful with your special touch of ‘homemade’ in the bag.

Flavor switch outs will work just fine. One of my favorite pancakes is banana or banana and pecan. I haven’t figured out a homemade syrup for these just yet. Currently I think regular maple is a good topping or maybe something on the nutty side.

Besides the syrups you’ll also enjoy the blueberry jams when the cold winds blow.
When you’re preparing syrups and jams you’re going to realize how easy they are to implement into cake layers and toppings. On the fourth of July my husband likes ‘trifles’. Blueberries and strawberries are the perfect fruit for a patriotic trifle. Use a cut up pound cake or angel food cake and the dessert is complete. One thing I will note regarding strawberry jams. I prefer strawberry freezer jam over regular canned strawberry. The flavor is fresh on the palate, compared to cooked jam. When you put a layer of fruit into the trifle, come in with a layer of plain pudding drizzled with a matching sauce. I don’t always use pudding either, frequently I do a rich cream cheese style fill.

This should have you off and running in the kitchen! Simply yours, The Covered Dish.

Blueberry Pancake Syrup

2 tablespoons and 1/2 teaspoon of dry pectin*
24 ounces fresh blueberries
16 ounces cold water
1 teaspoon butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon lemon extract

Yield, 3 pints blueberry syrup

After you have purchased the pectin you will need to measure the contents and then use only 1/2 of the pectin. With Sure-Jell this was the amount listed
above.

Consult the recipe, in the sure-jell box, before making the syrup. Because this is a syrup and not a jam you can use fewer berries, as indicated above.

You will need 16 oz. of cold water and it is not listed on the jam recipes. I have implemented only 1 cup of sugar. The amount is 1/4 of what is ‘usually’ called for with regular pectin for jam.

After the fruit is washed I like to use a potato masher and crush about 1/2-2/3rds. of the berries.

Follow the instructions for making jam except you will use my changes.

Immediately fill sterilized jars with syrup. Boil flats in a saucepan for five minutes & lightly dry. Clean rims of jars removing any wet product and begin sealing. Place jars on grates in the bottom of a deep stockpot. Pour warm water over the tops of the jars until there is at least one inch covering the tops. Adding 2-4 tablespoons of vinegar will assist with sediment forming on the jars. Bring to a boil and time for ten minutes. Turn off heat and remove jars from stockpot. Allow to cool completely, moving jars without too much jostling.

Syrup will thicken a bit as it cools. Keep in mind this is a syrup, not a thick jam.

*Dry (1.75 oz.) Sure-Jell was used in this recipe

Wood Bee Bustin’

By
Steve Gilliland
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When my brother had his cabin deep in the southern Ohio woods, carpenter bees, known there as wood bees were a big problem. They look for all-the-world like our big bumble bees, but they drilled and burrowed into the beautiful wood siding of his cabin and made a real nuisance of themselves.  Over generations, farm boys, country kids and outdoorsmen have developed numerous ways of entertaining themselves, many of which actually serve a purpose at the same time. One such game developed by my brother and his family was called Wood Bee Bustin.’ The object of the game was fairly straightforward and simple; swat those suckers into oblivion using anything available, without breaking windows or threatening life and limb of those around you, the first being the most important. The two most popular weapons used in the sport of wood bee bustin’ were the common baseball cap (or just plain “cap” as my dad would have said,) and a tennis or badminton racket.

First let’s consider the qualities of the baseball cap. Caps are cheap and easy to find, plus all farmers and most other households already have dozens of them on hand. In the sport of wood bee bustin’ a cap was held by the bill, so another plus was that one size fits all. Those hats made of thick heavy material packed the hardest wallop, but those nice light ones with the mesh in them were fastest in the air. One word of caution here; be sure to hit the critter with the top of the hat, as hitting it with the underside could simply scoop it from the air rather than killing it. This could cause the then ticked-off insect to remain alive inside the hat when placed back on your head, making for an even worse outcome than if you’d just let the creature fly past in the first place.

Since the only hat I ever wear is a stocking cap in the winter (which is absolutely useless when trying to swat a bee) my chosen armament for wood bee bustin’ was the badminton racket, although a tennis racket, ping-pong paddle, dish towel or even the newspaper you’re reading right now would get the job done in a pinch. The strings on a badminton racket are closer together than those on a tennis racket, giving the user the best possible chance of connecting with an incoming bee. When I was a kid, we had nests of those big bumble bees in our garage every summer and that’s when we found out how good a badminton racket worked. A hit anywhere on the rackets surface would zing those big bumblers’ clear across the garage and bounce them off the far wall.

There were 2 basic styles used in wood bee bustin’; the chill-and-kill maneuver or the mauler-brawler approach. Since you usually hear the bee before you see it, the players using the chill-and-kill approach waited quietly until they actually saw their quarry, then put it down with one well-placed swat. The mauler-brawlers however began swinging wildly at the first “buzz,” savagely chasing the critter until they connected. A word of warning here; young bee busters usually resort to the mauler-brawler approach and can put innocent bystanders in peril.

Form in wood bee bustin’ was not important at all, as you were often caught off guard and had no time to properly get your feet under you and square-up your body properly for the shot. So, whether forehand, backhand, overhand, underhand, firsthand, secondhand or dead-mans-hand, it really didn’t matter as long as you hit the critter the first time, if at all possible, as the more swings you took, the more ticked-off it got. This is the rule no matter your choice of weapons.

So, there you have an overview of the popular but behind the scenes sport of wood bee bustin.’ It’s cheap and easy to get into, it can offer hours of entertainment and it provides a necessary service in the process. So, roll up this newspaper, don the “cap” you like the least and head for the bumble bees (and please leave the honeybees alone) as you continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].

 

 

 

 

Stealing Rusty

By
Sandy Pugh
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I met Herb Parker when I was working as a soda jerk in the soda fountain in my hometown. He was the delivery man for 7-up. He came to town every week and stopped at the gas station, the restaurant and at the soda fountain. I think he saved the soda fountain as the last stop so he could have a soft drink and tease the soda jerks that were working.
When we moved to Macksville I discovered Herb lived there, and his wife ran the soda fountain. Lucy and I became friends right away because of our love of the soda fountain. She also loved the fact that I could keep up with Herbs teasing.
Herb and his wife lived north of the soda fountain on Main Street. They had a huge front yard with one tree in the middle. They never had a good looking yard, and I never understood why until I stopped one night to visit Lucy.
Herb asked me to come into the kitchen to see his latest batch. I wondered on the way to the kitchen, a batch of what; cookies maybe? When I walked into the kitchen there were bottles everywhere and I discovered he made his own wine.
That night it was rhubarb wine, but he also made dandelion wine. So now I understood the yard full of little yellow flowers. The rhubarb wine felt like fire going down my throat. It hit the bottom of my stomach and came back up my throat to burn its way down again.
I reluctantly tried the dandelion wine. It felt like it was eating the lining of my throat as it went down, and hit my stomach like a ball of fire. A couple sips of his wine hit me like a sledge hammer, and I was glad it was only a few blocks home.
Herb and Lucy had a Pomeranian named Rusty. He was a cute red ball of fluff. They’d tie him to the tree in the front yard in the evenings so he could watch the cars. One night, while riding around in my convertible with a friend I drove up main and there was Rusty sitting by the tree.
I stopped the car and ran up to Rusty. He was excited to see me and was leaping as high as he could. I finally caught him in mid jump, removed his collar and dropped it and ran. All the way to the car I had my hands full of a wiggling ball of fluff, who was so excited he didn’t know what to do.
When I got back to the car I tossed Rusty to my friend and slid onto the seat closing the door gently, then pulled away as quietly as I could. (My convertible had glass packs so being quiet was impossible.) Once we were down the street she allowed Rusty to look over the side of the car and enjoy the ride.
He had been with us 15 minutes, when we met Herb on Main in his car. I pushed Rusty down on the floor and held him there between my feet as Herb flagged us down. Once we were side by side I asked him what was going on. He said that Rusty had gotten out of his collar and was loose. He wanted to know if we had seen him.
Rusty could hear his voice and was squirming, but I managed to keep him down and fairly quiet. I told Herb we hadn’t seen him but would look for him. We headed on down the street and I let Rusty loose. We met Herb 4 more times. Each time I would shove Rusty to the floor and hold him there when Herb passed by and I would shake my head and tell him we hadn’t seen him.
About 45 minutes later we met Herb on Main Street again. I had Rusty down on the floor again, but he started to bark and wiggle around and I couldn’t keep him down. He came bounding up into my lap and put his paws on the window ledge and barked at Herb.
Neither my friend nor I could contain our laughter. It only took a few seconds for Herb to realize we had taken Rusty and had him all that time. He called us a few choice names, swore revenge and started to laugh as he got out of the car and took Rusty back.
A few weeks later, I left work to go home and my car was not sitting out front where I’d left it. (You never took the keys out of your car in that small town.) I went straight to the soda fountain and started to yell at Herb. He wouldn’t admit to taking it so I had to start looking for it on foot.
I found it parked in the alley behind Herb’s house. When I arrived back at the soda fountain, I put it in park and then revved it up to make the glass packs roar before shutting it off. When I walked in the door Herb was almost rolling on the floor because he’d gotten even with me.
Over the next 2 months, even though we tried several times, we only managed to steal Rusty once. But that time when I got back in the car I really stepped on the gas and the glass packs really roared.
Awhile later we met Herb on Main Street and we stopped to talk to him. He said he knew we had Rusty so I let the red ball of fluff back up on my lap to look over at Herb. After a few threats Herb got out of his car and took his dog back. We had fun that summer stealing Rusty. To contact Sandy: [email protected]

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