AGLD - Austin Ganim Landscape Design, LLC

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Landscape Storm Recovery Recommendations

In the aftermath of hurricane Sandy & winter storm Athena many of our clients and community members in Connecticut’s coastal region have begun to return home and begin the process of cleaning up both their homes and landscapes. For those in areas prone to flooding by salt or brackish water the AGLD staff has provided some tips on how to try to minimize the impact of salt water damage on your plants:

Once the waters have receded from your property, and the water table has had a few days to drop you can begin to treat the lawn and planting areas to reduce the concentration of salt that may have been left behind in the soil. Although we understand that many of you want to immediately begin the recovery, you may need a bit of patience as we wait for the water table to drop – you can always dig a shallow hole to see if there is still standing water several inches below the surface.

The best solution to dissolve the salt and percolate it through the soil would be to apply Gypsum or CaS (Calcium sulphate) to your lawn and around trees, shrubs and other plantings. One application may not be enough, a second application may be necessary in a couple of weeks if the weather allows. (We received a shipment of gypsum at Ganim’s Garden Center earlier in the month, it is available for homeowner to purchase and apply on their own; or AGLD can provide installation services). We also recommend running your sprinkler\soaker hoses in conjunction with the application, as if you were doing it in the summer for regular watering purposes, so the fresh water will help dilute the salt, repeat periodically as long as weather permits. The results from these methods are not guaranteed to work at every site; however we do feel that people who applied these methods after Irene had better results.

Debris or residue that has clung onto plant leaves can be washed away with water from a hose, or with time the rain will wash it away. In the case of deciduous shrubs and trees as well as perennials, these will soon drop their leaves for the fall. We have seen many deciduous shrubs that were wind burned (the leaves become dry and crinkled) due to the high winds, this is just cosmetic and these leaves will eventually drop off. For the evergreens, washing the plants down with clean fresh water will help to clean their pores and aid in there recovery. There is of course no way for us to know exactly what may have been in the water at your property, so please take caution when cleaning up and stay tuned for public advisories.

Lastly it won’t be until next spring that we know for sure whether your efforts to save your lawns and landscape will be effective, so patience is a must, last year we were pleasantly surprised in a number of instances with plants that were slow to leaf out but did recovered.

We wish those members of our community that have been impacted by these storms all the best in your recovery efforts and please let us know if we can be of assistance with any of your landscape clean-up efforts or in evaluating your plantings

Last updated 11/15/2012


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