TRADE-SHOWS!
LUCAS OIL – Come see us THIS WEEKEND at the Lucas Oil Home and Flower Show!? It’s in its 2ndyear, and is a really great show in a spectacular venue.? We have once again built a really cool pondless waterfall feature with a bubbling rock, similar to last year, but ‘bigger and badder’!? We are set up at the North end of the stadium at the Leveridge Landscaping booth.? Leveridge specializes in very cool, both small and large scale hardscape and retention wall projects.? Come check out this great show this weekend, I’ll be at the booth all of Saturday afternoon.
FLOWER AND PATIO – They twisted our arm into doing a booth this year, so come see us at booth #118 near the food concession at the Fairgrounds.? We will have a 10’x10′ booth w/some hardscaping and several smaller water features and plantings.? It will be small but COOL!? It will be a LONG show, so PLEASE come and say hi, March 11-20.? Every day (OK, at least once?).
From The Landscaper
Hello friends, I’d like to take this opportunity to officially tell winter to ‘Go Away’ and welcome spring.? Do you agree?? We sure had a winter.? I’d like to recap what has occurred over this past calendar year with weather, it’s been very unique and has created some serious challenges.? I was at an Indiana State Chemist training last week in Seymour Indiana.? The consensus was that this is the most stressed anyone has ever seen plant material and turf going into a spring.? One old?timer (he’s been at it since almost before I was born)?said, ‘I thought that if I survived the summer of 1988, nothing could compare, but this is much worse’.? Here’s what’s happened.? We had a very wet spring through June.? Surface roots were always being fed, and nothing had to ‘work’ for water or ‘dig deep’.? Then, the faucet was ‘shut off’.? We missed several critical rains, and essentially had no measureable rainfall until Thanksgiving.? Overall, this was the longest dry?spell?combined with?heat?that Indiana has experienced since 1896!? Around August we began?noticing some evergreens starting to brown.? By October, the extent of the damage was becoming more evident.? Particularly affected were Arborvitae, Yews, Spruce, Hemlock, and lawns.? And there are a lot more surprises yet to come.? From the rain at Thanksgiving, we basically went straight into winter, a long, full out winter.? Plants and turf had no recovery time, thus going into winter stressed.? Going into winter, the water table was 19″ low, after the winter we just had we’re back to par.? December was the 3rd overall snowiest since 1896!? We never had any truly ‘big’ snows, just lots of it.? So what is ‘normal’, and what should we expect this spring?? One thing for sure, unless you had irrigation or were able to aggressively and deeply water, there are a lot of lawns to renovate this March-April and a lot of plant material that needs replacing.? Keep reading for some tips on what we can do about it!
Lawn, Tree, and Shrub Care – What do we do now?
TURF – If your turf is patchy, thin, or just plain dead, here’s the approach we plan on taking and that I would recommend for our 5 step Turf Fertilization program.??
STEP 1 – Heavy aeration/over seeding OR slit seeding (a machine with knives that ‘drops’ seed into the cuts).? This ideally will occur in March, and include starter fertilizer.
STEP 2 – Fertilizer w/ Pre-Emergent.? This can’t occur to soon, as new seed needs to germinate and get a min. of 4 weeks of growth.? This puts us at a window of somewhere around late April/early May.? You will likely experience crabgrass, which can’t be helped.? Last years heat and creation of patchy, dead spots is the perfect recipe for crabgrass.? We actually lost clients last year that complained of not controlling the crabgrass, but then gained clients who said their previous company couldn’t control the crabgrass, and could we help!?!?!? ANYWAYS…
STEP 3/4 – Mid summer and late summer/early fall fertilizer and weed control application.
STEP 5 – Winterizer fertilization only.? This is a program we’ve had good results with and that we promote.? We’d be happy to include you on our schedule!
TREES/SHRUBS – How to determine if your trees or shrubs are dead?? Sometimes it’s very obvious, other times it’s not.? If you have Spruce or other evergreens (conifers) and they are totally brown or have dropped their needles… THEY’RE DEAD!
If you have?deciduous?shrubs or trees that didn’t drop their leaves and were looking a little ‘pekid’ going into fall, there’s a couple things you can do.? Bend some of the branches.? If they snap or break, and if this is consistently happening in several different spots on the plant, it’s likely dead.? You can also scratch the trunk and bark in various places with your thumbnail or a knife.? If it’s not tender green, but hard and brown, then bad news, you’ve got a dead plant!? Then you will have a difficult decision to make.? Remove, then ‘to replace or not to replace?????We can help!? We plant trees and shrubs almost all year long, and we also have a small nursery in April-May with GREAT prices.? So let us know!