May Landscape Tips
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| It's Warming Up! Temps are coming up, grass is greening up, of course those weeds are coming up also, but with warmth comes the good and the bad. For the lawn, you should have already put down pre emergent herbicide to help keep the crabgrass out. For landscape beds and flower beds you should have already done the same. A granular product that is pre emergent only for the beds. Remember to read the label on any product you put on your lawn or landscape. Just one slip up and using the wrong chemical in the wrong place can cost you thousands. We get calls each year from distraught people who have "something wrong" with their shrubs and flowers. Sometimes it takes some detective work to finally get the people to admit that they put something on the plants or the lawn, but it is a terrible thing to see. And I'm sure the people are just crushed that they are responsible for killing their Lawn or Landscape. The main point, read the label, don't guess. By now your probably mowing, just to get out of the house if nothing else, but maybe farther south you have real grass to be cutting, Bermuda and Zoysia isn't out of dormancy yet but any weeds sticking up could be cut. Be sure to have your mower serviced before you get started, and keep an extra set of sharp blades around. One very simple things you can do to keep your lawn looking better is to always have sharp blades on the mower. A dull blade will tear the grass instead of cutting it. This leaves a brown or tan haze across the surface of the lawn as the grass grows back out. Lawn grass grows from the bottom out, so the frayed edge of the grass blade will stay frayed and yellow looking until you cut it again. You may not even realize it until you get down and examine the grass closely. You will see a torn grass blade tip if your mower blades are dull. It doesn't cost you a thing if your sharpening your own blades to keep them sharp, even if you have to pay someone to sharpen them for you, it's one of the least expensive things you can do for your lawn to make it look better. Aerating can still be done, which is another very inexpensive thing to do and for the money invested, it returns more to you than any other lawn care item you can do. Your irrigation system is ready to be turned on and checked out now. It should be warm enough in most parts of the Country to not have any freeze damage, however use your own common sense, if your in an area that is still cold and freezing, you won't be needing any irrigation for a while. In our area of West Tennessee, we start using irrigation in March if we have seeded a new lawn, and surely by May we are needing the occasional watering. Given the last couple of years rainfall totals we are hoping for a little more rain, but if not get the system up and running, check out all the heads to be sure they are working properly, make sure all the zones come on and turn off like they should. Funny things happen to an irrigation system through the winter, it was working just fine last fall when it was winterized, but now it wants to act funny, heads pointing the wrong direction, valves won't work, who knows why, but it happens. Get it working now when you don't need it so when you actually do need it, it will be working fine. Annuals and Perennials can be planted in most of the areas in the south by now. As long as your past the average last date of the last frost in your area you can be pretty safe planting those delicate annuals outside. You may need to keep some sheets and buckets at the ready in case you get a rogue cold spell coming through. As your planting those plants remember to use a fertilizer/weed control product like Preen n Green or a similar product. These combo products will provide the fertilizer the flowers need while doing weed control. The product doesn't kill an existing weed, but it keeps a weed seed from coming up. And as you may know, when you work in your garden, you turn over the soil and expose weed seeds that were buried, but now they can get the light and temps they need to germinate, so you give life to the weed seeds. If you have some shrubs that need a little pruning, you can do it now with no harm to the plant due to heat stress, but keep in mind any shrubs that have not yet bloomed will not bloom as much if you prune them now. General rule of thinking is prune after they bloom. But not always, for a detailed explanation of pruning how to's look at our Pruning Page. If you have any questions that you cannot find the answer to here, feel free to email us, our customer service people will be glad to help you out. Answers to Questions about your Lawn & Landscape |
