Tag: soil

New rooflite blender in Houston: The Ground Up

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Joe DiNorscia, 610-268-0017, [email protected]

Landenberg, PA, September 19, 2018 – Skyland USA announced today that The Ground Up has joined its official blender network in Houston, Texas, expanding its coverage in North America to 20 regions. The Ground Up is a green waste recycling company, specializing in mulch, soil, and compost manufacturing for the landscape contractor and homeowner market.

As the premier provider of green roof media in the United States, rooflite regularly assesses areas in the country that are primed for growth in the green roof market. The sprawling Houston area is one that looks to be ready to embrace the green roof trend. As the city shifts to high-rise buildings for residential and office needs, residents and tenants are starting to demand a more complete set of lifestyle amenities including green space. The year-round temperature of Houston, with hot and mild seasons, also makes it an ideal environment for green roofs.

As The Ground Up becomes an official blender, the greater Houston area can now begin to use rooflite’s soil products for local green roof projects. The Ground Up, founded in 2010, has a solid presence in Houston, with several locations within the city limits, including two production facilities and two wholesale nurseries. As one of the largest green waste recyclers in Houston and a manufacturer of engineered soils, the company is seeing huge growth in projects that require rooftop engineered soil. This makes the new partnership with rooflite a natural fit.

Luis Chamorro, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at The Ground Up, says the company already works regularly with landscape architects to provide engineered soil, and the partnership with rooflite sets it up to take advantage of growth in the green roof market. “Now that we’ve partnered with rooflite, we are the only player in the city in green roof soil,” says Chamorro. “With the combination of great technical and marketing support that rooflite gives us, we are confident we can get rooflite soil into specifications for local green roof projects because it’s a quality product.”

In the past few years, rooflite has seen steady growth in its official blender network with new blenders in St. Louis, Florida, Kansas City, and Melbourne, Australia. rooflite blenders are critical partners in ensuring both the quality and availability of its green roof media products for projects across the country. “Houston is an area of the U.S. that we think is ready to embrace green roof technology and all the benefits that come with it,” said Joe DiNorscia, President of Skyland USA. “The Ground Up is just the kind of established and reliable blender partner that can help us bring our products to a new city, and we look forward to working with and supporting them as they begin selling and manufacturing our soil.”

The Ground Up joins a blender network of more than 20 strategic locations in the Americas. Each blender location provides rooflite products that are regionally sourced, produced and shipped.

About Skyland USA

Skyland USA produces rooflite®, the highest quality green roof media, and offers a full line of lightweight, green roof soil products, meticulously engineered for a diverse range of green roof applications. With more than 20 strategically located blending locations within the Americas, the rooflite network provides unparalleled expertise in job site logistics and order fulfillment, along with vast technical knowledge and experience. Dedicated to exceptional customer service, rooflite provides a variety of packaging and delivery options, cost-effective, just-in-time logistics, and continuous monitoring of your project through completion. Visit rooflitesoil.com for more information on our green roof media products.

Sources: https://www.rooflitesoil.com/blog/new-rooflite-blender-in-houston-the-ground-up/

Sources: https://www.rooflitesoil.com/blog/new-rooflite-blender-in-houston-the-ground-up/

TGU Welcomes Mark Bowen – Sr. Account Manager & QC.

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Mark Bowen joined TGU on Monday, September 17th and will be managing accounts in a Sr. capacity as well as working with our production team in Quality Control and working with Luis Chamorro in the product development.

TGU is very excited to welcome Mark to our family. If you would like to contact Mark:

email: [email protected] & Cell: 281-381-1259

Bowen

The Underground Secret to a Better Garden

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Mycorrhizal Fungi: 

Let’s talk basics. What exactly is Mycorrhizal Fungi? 

 

The term mycorrhiza refers to the role of the fungi in the plants’ rhizosphere, its root system. (Illustration by Michael Rothman)

 

A Mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between a fungus and the roots of a vascular host plant. It’s major function being the ability to exchange nutrients between their surroundings and their host plant. A white fungal network called hyphae (resembles roots) is the principal structure for the uptake of many important nutrients in the plant kingdom. The hyphae are only a single cell wide and facilitate nutrient exchanges between the root tip and fungi. While you may see them spread like a web surfacing a decomposing log, they usually remain hidden underground and invisible to us. 

In the Garden

As a gardener, you want to take advantage of this symbiotic relationship that fungi and plants have been developing for millions of years. The key lies in maintaining a healthy community of fungi. One trick is to use caution when dealing with fertilizers and stray away from the use of chemical fertilizers specifically those consisting of phosphorus. Since phosphorus can reach levels that actually discourage the formation of mycorrhizae, avoiding fertilizers with high percentages of the chemical will prevent beneficial microbes from weakening or breaking apart. You can also maintain your soil in prime condition by minimizing disturbances apart from occasional light tilling, weeding and mulching. 

Increasing Beneficial Fungi

One of your main challenges perhaps will be ensuring that this nutrient-infused goodness survives all year round. The fungi that support garden crops are not capable of living or reproducing independently so it is up to us gardeners to ensure we are maintaining and increasing the population of beneficial fungi.

We can start by preventing a decline with simple tricks such as rotating crops within your beds and avoiding empty beds by keeping plants growing at all times. Additionally, you want to take it a step further and consider growing plant rye, oats or hairy vetch. These plants have extensive root systems and readily harbor mycorrhizae. Orchards will serve you well for overwintering fungi because they don’t require as much attention and buffer strips of a grass-and-legume blend will help retain fungi.  

The Benefits

    • Improved plant establishment and growth.
    • Dramatically expand access to moisture and nutrients from the soil. 
    • Increased nutrient and water uptake. 
    • Increases efficiency of water use.
    • Drought tolerance. 
    • Improved disease resistance.
    • Assists in weed suppression.
    • Improves soil structure and stability.
    • Improves root growth.
    • More blossoms and enhances nutritional value. 

    Mycorrhizae are the principal structures for the most nutrient uptake in the plant kingdom.

    Are you familiar with Mycorrhizal Fungi? Tricks of your own? What has been your experience? We want to hear all about it! Shoot us your comments below! 

    #TGULab No. 1 – Expanded Shale H2O rentention

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    We placed a cup of water and a cup of expanded shale side by side. At 2:34pm on March 14th 2018, we poured the cup of water into the cup containing expanded shale. 17 hours later we drained the cup and poured water back into the original cup.

    The test showed Expanded Shale retained half the water poured into the cup.

    The benefits of ES are many and include and not limited to:

    1. increases hydraulic conductivity
    2. retains moisture
    3. help loosen compacted clay soils
    4. can be mixed and blended with compost and soils to make planting media
    5. can be used as gravel and as a road base

    Sold in Bulk and Supersack. Individual 1/2cuft bags coming soon.