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Chris Clemens

About Chris Clemens

https://naturallygreenflx.com

Chris Clemens is a lifelong resident of Rochester with a passion for exploring and improving the Finger Lakes Region.

Posts by Chris Clemens:

Get A Rain Gauge - Featured Image

Get A Rain Gauge For Your Garden

A rain gauge is one of the most underrated tools for your yard and garden. Because they’re so inexpensive, it’s also probably the tool where you’ll get the most bang for your buck. You can find very simple and inexpensive ones or more ornate and costly rain gauges. Whatever you choose, you’ll have it for years and the info it will provide you will be invaluable. Before you run out and grab one though let’s cover a few things. Here’s why you should get one and how you can use it to your advantage. What Is A Rain Gauge? If you’re not familiar already a rain gauge is simply just a way to measure rainfall. (Or, waterfall if you’re using a sprinkler.) Because your plants need water to flourish, it’s important to know if they’re getting the water they need. Local weather data collected by meteorologists can be helpful, but it’s not going to be specific to your yard or even your neighborhood. Weather data scientists have stations that they pull info from, so when you hear on the news that “we got a half inch of rain this week” you have to keep in mind that might’ve been ten miles from your home where the collection station was located. If you’ve lived in the Finger Lakes long, you already know that a measly ten miles can make a huge difference in weather patterns! Instead of wondering about your yard and if you got all the rain your landscaping requires, stick a rain gauge out and you’ll always have the exact rainfall data for your yard. How Much Water Do You Need? The amount of water your yard will need is going to vary based on a number of factors. We’re all going to have different amounts of shade, soil quality, and different plant life in our yards. Different combinations of these factors will mean every yard will have different needs. Most monoculture turf-style lawns in our region require about 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week. On average you’ll get about a half inch of water in thirty minutes of watering with a sprinkler. If you want to keep your lawn lush all season you’ll be doing a lot of watering during the times we’re getting less rain. One of the cases to be made for native plant landscaping is that they require significantly less water than lawns do. What yours will need is based on the types of plants you use, how much direct sun they get, and the soil quality. Some estimates indicate that native plant landscapes use only 1 inch of water per month. That’s roughly 75% less than a lawn needs! What To Get The beauty of rain gauges lies in their simplicity. The only thing they need to do is provide an accurate measurement of the water it collects. That’s it! You can get super simple type like this one made by Taylor for under a few bucks. It’s not much to look […]

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How Much Does Lawn Care Cost?

Investing time and money into the value of your home is important. Our homes are some of the largest investments we’ll ever make and obviously we want them to be presentable. The effort to achieve a perfect looking lawn though is really a rather new thing since the 1950’s. With each year that passes companies have found more and more ways to add costs to maintaining a beautiful lawn. If you’ve never added up how much your grass has been costing you, the numbers may be surprising. Let’s break down how much it truly costs to keep a lawn looking as green as possible. The first problem with attempting to figure out an average cost is that there’s a lot of different services you can do for your lawn. Not everyone is using pesticides for instance. Another obvious problem is most lawns are different sizes and shapes. Plus lawns exist in different climates meaning they require different things. For our purposes, let’s look at the cost of maintaining a one acre lawn in the Finger Lakes region. To make things a little more simple, we’ll just talk about the cost of maintenance, assuming the lawn is already installed. Here’s a quick list, but I’ve broken down the math in each section below. Lawn Mower Costs For a one-acre lot, it’s likely that you’ll want a riding mower. After a quick look on Home Depot’s website, a medium-sized riding mower with at least a 46″ deck starts at $2,800. At the top end, they list a Toro 48″ zero-turn for $6,800. You won’t need a $7k lawn mower of course, but for a 46-48″ deck you’ll average $4,000 just to buy new. Technically, a mower should have annual tune-ups that include cleaning the deck, sharpening blades, and greasing gears plus a few other things. Depending on the size of the mower and what you want done, an annual tune up averages about $50 to $150. (Of course if you’re handy and up for the task you can save money by doing it yourself.) With a $4,000 mower that you keep ten years, that averages about $500 annually. Remember: we didn’t even talk about the cost of gas you’re using to fuel it or any other maintenance costs! If you’re looking for a total on your lawn care cost estimate, you’ll want to add those costs. Watering Watering costs will depend on two things: 1. How green you want your lawn, and 2. How much rain you’re getting. Usually in the Finger Lakes springtime means more rain. Unless it’s an unusually dry spring or you’re doing a new lawn install, you probably won’t need to water the first couple of months after the thaw. Once we hit late June the rain usually comes less frequently and grasses tend to slow their growth. If it’s a particularly dry summer, they may even go dormant. Even with water being the cheapest of a homeowner’s utilities, if you water regularly it’ll add up. To keep […]

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Ramps - Featured Image

Ramps: How To Eat This Native Plant

Foraging and finding plants to eat that naturally grow in the woods isn’t always easy. Luckily, ramps are one foraged edible that can be easily identified. The problem though, is that the popularity of eating this native, wild plant has put its future in jeopardy. So many people are foraging for wild ramps each spring that in some areas they’re diminishing in growth and not reproducing quickly enough to keep up with demand. You can purchase them in stores like Wegmans when they’re in season. Presumably these have been responsibly sourced or farm-grown to ensure that wild patches continue to thrive. Or, there are plenty of places to find them growing naturally around the Finger Lakes, but you have to ask permission of the landowner. It is illegal to take plants of any kind from federal, state, local, private or conservancy properties. If you’ve been hearing about ramps in recent years, it’s because the culinary scene can’t get enough of them. For roughly the last decade, ramps have been super popular each spring. Eating a wild plant found in the woods might make you trepidatious, but fear not. By the time you’ve finished reading this, you’ll be fully prepared for spring. What Are Ramps? A ramp (Allium tricoccum) is a species of wild onion that grows naturally in wooded areas in North America. They’re also called “wild leeks” and they are a bit like a leek, except their greener ends are more leafy. They’ve got a mild garlic aroma that you can catch just by gently rubbing the leaf between your fingers. A few years ago I found a patch here in the Finger Lakes so bountiful that even just walking by offered a faint garlic bouquet to the spring breeze. Above the dirt, they have wider, dark green, hearty leaves that droop so they kind of look like floppy bunny ears. Just a couple inches below ground, the pale white bulb has tiny little roots similar to a leek. Most of the time they’ll also have a maroon-ish transition between the bulbs and the leaves. The aroma is mild, but still pretty powerful. Even just smelling a leaf on a plant that is still rooted will remind you of garlic right away. In flavor the leaves are slightly bolder, but the bulb offers a bit more texture. Unfortunately, ramps also can appear similar to Lily of the Valley which are poisonous to humans. If you’re not able to smell garlic, it’s probably not a ramp. If you’re unsure, just leave it. How To Forage Ramps Sustainably As I mentioned before, ramps are becoming somewhat scarce, so the topic of foraging is controversial. If you have permission of the property owner, then it is important to know how to forage for them sustainably. They reproduce two ways: they flower and go to seed, and also can reproduce by planting their bulbs. Naturally in the woods, they obviously only reproduce by seed. Their growing season is a quick 5-6 weeks in […]

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Celebrate Earth Day In The Finger Lakes - Featured Image

How To Celebrate Earth Day In the Finger Lakes

Since 1970 when it was first officially celebrated, Earth Day has become one of the most prolific world-wide events to promote environmental conservation. Finding ways to celebrate Earth Day in the Finger Lakes is pretty easy, because our region is packed with nature! Getting out and going for a walk in the woods is great, but there’s so many other ways to get involved. This of course is by no means a complete list. Finding an exhaustive list in the Finger Lakes would make this an entire book! Instead, we tried to collect a few ideas that maybe weren’t already on your radar. Hopefully there’s a few things listed here to inspire you this April while you’re looking to celebrate Earth Day! Learn Something New One of the key tenets of Naturally Green’s mission is education. The better we are at understanding the world around us, the better we’ll be at preserving it. There’s a number of museums and learning centers around the Finger Lakes dedicated to nature and the environment. Plan a trip around visiting at least one of them on Earth Day, and check ahead because they might even have a special event planned! Cayuga Nature Center – Ithaca The Cayuga Nature Center has some great outdoor activities including a six-story treehouse and live animal exhibits. If it happens to be raining, there’s still plenty to see inside like turtles and snakes. Museum of the Earth – Ithaca The Museum of the Earth is a good option if our April weather isn’t cooperating. This indoor museum is filled with interactive exhibits that tell stories of our planet’s history. This is a great one for all ages! Cumming Nature Center – Naples The Rochester Museum and Science Center in Rochester owns the Cumming Nature Center in Naples. They’ve got a lot of great educational programming and a small visitor center with some exhibits. Around their visitor center they’ve also got some great trails for walking. Even More… Though we’re not hosting any right on Earth Day, we’ve got some classes in April you can checkout! Visit our classes page to see the upcoming workshops we’re hosting or our helpful links page to find other places to learn. We’ve also got a glossary to help you tune up some of your knowledge! Eat Local Food The way we produce and consume food makes a huge impact on our environmental health. There’s a long list of amazing producers of maple products, wines, honey, and livestock in the Finger Lakes to support. If you’re going to be out and planning things to celebrate Earth Day in the Finger Lakes, make sure you plan to eat! Many local producers in our area recognize the importance of environmental stewardship. They incorporate a lot of best practices into their work. Here’s just a few stops you’ll enjoy while you’re out and about. Honey Bee Embassy – Trumansburg Anyone with even a casual understanding of our local ecology knows how important bees are. You can visit […]

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Scouting For The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid in Rochester - Featured Image

Scouting for the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid in Rochester

There are a number of invasive insects that environmentalists are tracking, but this year there’s some extra attention on the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA). This invasive insect feeds on the sap of eastern hemlock trees and its well past becoming a nuisance. It spreads at such high rates that it currently is on track to decimate New York’s hemlock population. This time of year is a critical point in the insect’s gestation, so we went to see if we could locate any infestations in Rochester. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long at all. We found egg sacks within just minutes of stepping into Washington Grove near Cobbs Hill Reservoir! Why Hemlocks Are Important To truly understand the potential devastation the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid might cause, it’s important to understand why eastern hemlocks are so critical. Eastern hemlock trees are what’s known as a foundation species. A foundation species is a local species that is plentiful, but most importantly it controls the ecology immediately surrounding it. In the case of the hemlock, one way they are critical is how their root systems help stabilize cliffs in our gorges. You’ll see examples of this throughout Watkins Glen State Park and Taughannock Falls State Park. If those hemlocks at the edge die, their root systems no longer provide the structural integrity for the soil. That could ultimately mean crumbling gorge walls. Hemlocks also provide an ample tree canopy. That shade assists with controlling the temperature in those forests allowing other plants and forest life to thrive. As the third most common tree in New York State, the eastern hemlock’s absence would devastate much of our natural landscape. The tree is so prolific here that if the hemlock was suddenly erased overnight, you wouldn’t even recognize most of the scenes you’re familiar with in the Finger Lakes. If you’re thinking that just replanting more hemlocks would solve the problem, there’s trouble with that solution. Eastern hemlocks are also known as a climax species, which means they are an indicator of a mature ecosystem. It can take hundreds of years for them to reach a state of maturity. How the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Causes Destruction The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid first made its way to North America in the early 1950’s by way of Japan. The first place it was spotted was in Virginia and in the 70 years since it has spread to nearly half the country. Back in Asia the adelgid has natural predators that help keep the balance. Here in the United States though, there is nothing to stop the bug, so reproduction continues unchecked. The adult HWA is super tiny. In fact, it’s about .8 millimeters wide. (For reference, the width of a human hair is about .12 millimeters.) Imagine walking through the woods and trying to spot a hair laying on a branch in a tree! Needless to say, spotting an adult is nearly impossible with the naked eye. As an adult, the HWA is asexual so it can reproduce without the […]

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Difference Between Exotic and Invasive Plants

The Difference Between Exotic And Invasive Plants

There’s a lot of terminology used when referring to plant life. Sometimes marketing lingo borrows loosely from scientific terms and then things can get confusing. In recent years horticultural experts have been paying closer attention to natural habitats featuring native plants. While a lot of non-native plant life can be interesting and unique, it’s not always best to feature them when designing your outdoor space. Let’s take a quick look at how horticulturists define exotic plants, and when they fit the definition of being invasive. Exotic Plants: Defined The easiest definition of an exotic plant is one that simply never grew naturally in that spot. Exotic plants are also sometimes referred to as introduced or alien species. All of the terms are meant to explain that a plant is living outside its natural distribution range. As far back as humans have been traveling, we’ve been discovering plant life in other locales. In some cases we brought them back on purpose and in some cases by accident. Sometimes we found a flower that was beautiful and wished we could have it growing nearer to our home. Or, plenty of fruits and vegetables have been transported so we could grow them in the places we live. Tomatoes, for instance, are native to the Andes but are now grown all over the globe. While tomatoes feel as common as any other plant in our daily life, they technically are defined as an exotic. They never would have naturally found their way to the United States without human intervention. Invasive Plants: Defined Sometimes exotic plants do okay in their new environment, and then sometimes they just don’t survive at all. My African coffee tree does okay in the summer here in Rochester, but in winter it is miserable! If I left it outside all year, it wouldn’t even make it to see Thanksgiving. While tomatoes and coffee are exotic, they’re never going flourish to the extent that they’ll take over and become a nuisance. It’s the exotic plants that don’t have a natural check in place that end up taking over. They not only survive and flourish but they proliferate. There’s a few dangers to an exotic plant reproducing to that extent. To start, any plant growing faster than the others could potentially take over and kill off the other plant life. In many cases, those species don’t naturally fit into the local ecosystem. Without natural balances in check, they can spread and take over. So an invasive plant is defined simply as an exotic plant that has flourished so well that it has now become either a nuisance or even a danger. Invasive Plants In The Finger Lakes Region Unfortunately, we have a list of invasive plants here in this area. Japanese knotweed for instance is so damaging, it can grow right through the cement foundation of your home! Wild parsnip and Giant Hogweed are invasive species that can cause serious burns to human skin. Touching them even just once can cause complications […]

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Dutch Connection at George Eastman Museum - Featured Image

The Dutch Connection Flower Show

One of the first signs of Rochester’s upcoming spring is actually indoors. The show is typically an anticipated respite from the dead of winter. Even with an unseasonably spring-like February the Dutch Connection flower show at George Eastman Museum is still a breath of fresh air. The show just opened on February 10th and is open to visitors through February 26th. Naturally Green is a proud sponsor of the Dutch Connection flower show in 2023. Even though it just opened we’ve already been a couple times! If you’re not already familiar, here’s what you can expect and why you should make it a point to visit. It won’t take much for first-timer to recognize why it’s nearly a ritual for so many locals to visit. History Of The Dutch Connection The tradition of the show is an homage to a practice that George Eastman himself started. During a trip to Holland in 1895, Eastman took a bicycle ride through the hillsides near where he was staying. On that ride he was taken by the fields of tulips and daffodils. According to the museum’s website, he talked of the experience in a letter to his mother. After returning to his home he started an annual tradition. Each year he ordered flowers for himself each year from Dutch bulb companies. Each year he was ordering tens of thousands of bulbs. Even with the outside air being cold and grey, inside Eastman could enjoy fresh flowers all winter. The first Dutch Connection flower show at George Eastman Museum was in 1995. Since then the museum has annually carried the show each February. Countless volunteers assist with potting the bulbs as far back as the previous June. With many different varieties of bulbs needing to bloom for the February show, they put a ton of planning in ahead of time. Visiting In 2023 This year’s show opened on February 10th. It will be open 10:00 am to 5:00 pm Tuesday through Sunday until February 26th. George Eastman Museum members can get access at no additional cost. Non-members can purchase tickets here in advance or at the reception desk. The majority of this year’s 14,000 bulbs will be found on the first floor, but don’t forget there’s some to be seen on the second floor too. Even with the outside air feeling a bit springlike, this year’s Dutch Connection show really is a great reminder that spring will be here before we know it!

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5 Reasons To Have A Sustainable Landscape

Reasons To Have A Sustainable Landscape

Ditching your lawn for a sustainable landscape can be an overwhelming concept. It might be even more than overwhelming for someone who has always had perfectly manicured grass around their home. Recently businesses and homeowners have begun to realize the benefits of transforming lawn space by introducing native plants. For most environmentalists the list of reasons for replacing is a long one. If you’re a homeowner, consider just a few reasons why replacing your grass might improve your world. Maybe even more importantly, improve the world around you. Costs Less While the start up costs of installing a sustainable landscape on your property may initially seem more costly than you currently pay to maintain a lawn, consider the longterm average of both. With a lawn, you’re paying for a mower and maintenance, and the fuel to run it. You’re paying for fertilizers and weed killers, and maybe even pesticides. While it may be minimal, you’re still paying to water your lawn, especially if you prefer to avoid it going dormant later in the season. Once a sustainable landscape is established, you won’t need to worry about expensive lawn care equipment. With many natural landscapes, there is little to no maintenance once installed. More Free Time Consider how much time you spend mowing your lawn (especially in the spring) and then edging the lawn along the sidewalks, and then cleaning up the clippings, etc. Think about how you plan your week and realize it’s going to rain Tuesday and Wednesday and you already have plans on Thursday but by Friday the grass will be too long. You have no choice but to mow today even though you’d rather do something else. With a sustainable landscape in place, you can do some trimming and low-level maintenance, but if you feel like putting it off or not doing at all, you can! Fewer Pesticides And Fertilizers Has a big box store convinced you to build a plan where you buy a special fertilizer for the spring, and then a grub killer (do you even have grubs??), then a winterizer, etc? Some of those programs include six steps of spreading different chemicals across your lawn. In most cases, most of those steps aren’t actually needed at all! (If you’re not convinced, take a photo of your lawn. Then skip one of the steps, and compare that photo to the following year.) While all those huge bags you’re lugging back from the store are inconvenient, they’re also pretty expensive. Even the smallest bags serving a 5,000 square foot lawn could run over $200 a summer depending on how many steps you choose. The worst part though is that most people will over fertilize and over spray their lawns. Even if you don’t mind throwing money away, those extra chemicals runoff into our water systems–even in the city! Energy Conservation That pristine lawn doesn’t just require the maintenance you put into it. The root system in those grasses is considerably different than the root system in […]

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