Treecycling is coming to town

Q: You said you’d offer places where we can take the cut tree for treecycling? When does this service start and end? — N. K., Albuquerque

A: I got the information you’re looking for from the city’s website, and it’s pretty much like years past, with one exception.

Starting Tuesday, Dec. 26, through Sunday, Jan. 7, you’ll have three locations where you can drop your tree and have it treecycled. The hours for drop off are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., but here’s the listed exception. For those in the South Valley, you can pop in to Montessa Park Convenience Center, 3512 Los Picaros Road SE, just know they will be closed Thursday and Friday. That still gives you Saturdays through Wednesday.

With no other listed exceptions, in the northeast part of town you can drop off the tree at Eagle Rock Convenience Center, 6301 Eagle Rock Ave. NE, or for those on the West Side, the Ladera Golf Course, 3410 Ladera Drive NW, will be accepting Christmas trees.

If you’re a considerate neighbor, you can bring up to five trees at a time to any of the tree-cycle locations, and best of all, it’s a free service the city is offering. These trees are mulched and kept out of your landfills. According to the city’s website, last year over 6,400 trees were kept out of our landfills. That’s a lot of trees. The best part is they weren’t dumped illegally, creating a messy nuisance for everybody.

The city asks that you remove all decorations and any type of tree stand from the tree before adding it to the treecycle pile. You bought it naked, so please, treecycle it the same way.

When you are transporting the trees, kindly remember to tie them down for transportation. Your tree weighs three times less than it did when you first bought it, so the ability of being blown out of a pickup truck bed is enhanced three-fold. Trust me, playing dodge the tree on the interstate isn’t a lot of fun. You cared enough to transport it home safely, take the responsibility to get it treecycled safely.

Keep in mind, this service is for real Christmas trees only. Kindly, don’t bring tree prunings or landscape trimmings. So you can see, it’s not a difficult thing to have the tree that decorated your home for the holidays continue doing good works.

I also poked about on the city of Rio Rancho’s website for current treecycle info, but as of yet haven’t found any, but will keep you posted if I find good news on that front.

Q: We moved from the northwest part of Indiana to get away from those cold winters. One thing we miss is our green, green lawn. Even under blankets of snow, it stayed green. Here, the lawn we have is now brown, brown and brown. Not dead brown, just crispy light brown. No matter how much we water, it’s just crispy light brown. What gives? — T.I., West Side, Albuquerque

A: I’m going to bet that the lawn that is at the home consists of what is classified as a warm season grass. Usually Bermuda but also buffalo and blue grama grass fall into this category. No amount of water nor fertilizer this time of year will green up any of these grasses. They aren’t wired that way.

The lawn you miss probably was a cool season grass like fescue or bluegrass, and yes, they have the ability to stay green most all year. I’ll recommend that you enjoy the respite of constant lawn tending until next late spring when the temperatures warm thoroughly and the lawn reawakens from its slumber.

Meanwhile, you could apply a pre-emergent type of treatment to keep any weed seed that might blow in from germinating and infesting the lawn. Also, keep any fallen leaves raked up. If allowed to congregate and stay piled up, the grass underneath might become diseased with fungus. It’s much simpler to keep the leaves raked and gathered rather than have to treat, maybe repeatedly, with a fungicide next growing season.

That goes for any lawn too. Allowing leaves to stay piled on turf is just asking for trouble.

Now if it stays really dry for weeks at a time, an occasional watering wouldn’t be a bad thing, but don’t expect this slumbering lawn to pop green anytime soon. Like the lawn, take time to rest and enjoy the downtime.

Happy Diggin’ In!

Tracey Fitzgibbon is a certified nurseryman. Send garden-related questions to Digging In, Albuquerque Journal, 7777 Jefferson St. NE, Albuquerque, N.M. 87109, or to features@abqjournal.com.