Last Chance to Drench

The leaves are turning hues that would make Crayola jealous just before making their pilgrimage south. Lying quietly having fulfilled their annual duty. Now giving one last bit of life before they wind up behind steel teach and black plastic. Content knowing their offspring will start the cycle again in the spring. A life well lived......

But I digress. A great way to honor the fallen leaves of yester year is to give their replacements the best possible shot at completing their cycle without disease or insect infestation. And believe it or not that starts now. This is the perfect time for a soil drench around your shade trees.

The soil drench is a systemic treatment full of nutrients and insect control that will be absorbed by the root system and stored until spring. This gives the tree a great shot at those early spring insect larva and diseases. The new growth is particularly vulnerable and needs all the help it can get. A late fall soil drench coupled with a dormant oil spray in the spring is a great way to head off disease and infestation.


If you have any questions let us know by calling 1-800-LAWNCARE or visit our website www.livingwaterlawncare.com. 

Just A Little Off The Top

Today we will continue along the same path that we did in our last couple of blogs: getting the landscape ready for winter. The unique thing about today's blog however, is that we are going to reverse fields on you. We're going to do an about face. We're flipping the script. We're doing a 180. You get the idea. Something we told you to do earlier in the year is now not a great idea. But I would like to assure you that we are not crazy people. No it's about the weather. Earlier in the year during the summer we hammered mowing your lawn at your highest mower setting. This helped with keeping the grass healthy. That is not best practice when it comes to fall though.

The thing we have to keep in mind when preparing your landscape for winter is this; limit liability. Deep root feedings help a tree over winter and come out in spring better. Sprinkler blowouts help you avoid a costly sprinkler repair in the spring. Spider sprays help with insects trying to find a warm place in your house for the winter. It's the same thing with mowing short for winter. This practice limits the surface area of the plant which does two things: 1) Allows greater air circulation before and after snow and 2) there is physically less plant to get matted down over the winter so it's harder for snow mold and other early spring fungi to take hold.

So.... scalp it! Take it all the way down. Set your mower at the lowest setting and bag the clippings. Our best guess is you probably won't have to mow more than once or twice more this year. Make sure before you put you mower away for the winter to do one short mowing. You'll thank us come spring.

If you have any questions call us at 1-800-LAWNCARE. Or check out our Tips, Tutorials, and FAQ's page. There's a good chance you'll find the answer there.

Sprinkler Blow Outs, It's Time

There can be two huge benefits to not having your sprinklers blown out before winter. The first is obvious, I mean who doesn't enjoy the beauty of a twenty foot tall geyser in the spring caused by an exploding sprinkler head. They're beautiful and the sound of running water is so peaceful. The second is less obvious but still fun and that is the pond you can create from a frozen line breaking under ground. If you let it go long enough you could probably add koi and some lily pads. You may eventually develop a safe haven for various water fowl.

However, if you don't want to turn your yard into Yellowstone Jr., we would highly recommend a sprinkler blowout. They're inexpensive and could save you a lot of headaches down the road. What happens is this: As the temperature cools and the ground freezes, so does everything in the ground including water left in sprinkler lines. As water freezes it expands often time bursting the plastic lines that transport water to sprinkler heads. You could also have similar problems with the heads themselves. They can retain enough water in the housing to break when it freezes. Costing time and money.

A simple solution is to let us come out and blow the lines out for you. The method is simple. We just hook a big air compressor to your system and turn it on. This forces air through the lines, driving the stored water through the lines and out of the sprinkler heads.

It's pretty painless and gets you all set for winter.

Call us at 1-800-LAWNCARE to get one scheduled. Or go to our website and request we contact you.

Trees: Feed em' good

It's about this time of year we start enjoying the crisp morning air and dreading the rake and black garbage bag brigade that inevitably follows. The leaves will fall covering our nice landscapes and we are forced to clean up after them. It's at this point we typically tell them "we'll see you in the spring" and figure our responsibility has ended for a few months. Not so fast, I say.

While you can take this route for sure, we would highly recommend a deep root feeding. Our method is pretty simple really, we spread a special blend of nutrients around the root system under the canopy of the tree. This will help you trees in a number of ways. First of all the trees soak up the treatment as the last little bit of nutrients before they go dormant and this helps them to winter healthier. Secondly, we find that the trees come out of dormancy with less winter damage. Finally, we typically don't see the early spring fungi and diseases in the trees we feed in the fall. They also fend off the insects better the next year.

The great thing is that this is part of our Fall 40 Special running now until the end of the season. The treatment is 40% off for any customer not currently getting a deep root feeding. So there is no better time to call. 1-800-LAWNCARE, or email us livingwaterlawncare.com/contact-us/.

Sulfur, We Promise It Won't Stink

Do you know that rotten egg smell? The one that stings the back of the throat it's so bad. That's what sulfur smells like. Except, not when we use it. Sulfur is smelly, real smelly but ours doesn't stink. Do you want to know why? It's simple really, our supplier makes it that way. Which is good because who wants their lawn to smell like a natural gas leak.

We use sulfur for a handful of things but primarily it's a late season fungicide and it's a great application to put your turf to bed for the winter. We've seen quite a bit of fungus this year and we'd highly recommend a late season application for any of our customers who've received notes from their techs about melt out, or red thread, it even helps necrotic ring spot. These fungi can tend to reappear. Obviously Necrotic Ring Spot tends to stay around year in and year out. Every extra sulfur application you can get on it will help move it along.

The other reason to order a late season sulfur application is it really helps your lawn go into dormancy healthy and in turn wake up in the spring healthy. Our customers who get the application in the fall not only see their grass come back quicker in the spring but usually there is very little if any of the early spring fungus we tend to see, fungus like snow mold.

It's a very inexpensive treatment and we will start applying it any day now. We usually do our sulfur treatments all the way through the end of the season. Check out our website for more details. Or email us for an estimate. You can always call us too at 1-800-LAWNCARE.

Overseeding, Not Just For The Grassless

Yes, I'm pretty sure grassless is a word. If it's not I will create a Wikapedia page for it just to avoid being wrong. I have issues. Not major issues, but issues none-the-less. I only eat corn if it's on the cobb in it's natural state, I only wear black socks, and I cannot be wrong when it comes to grammar. That's it. It's those three things. It could be so much worse, right?

Enough of my ramblings. Even if grassless isn't an actual word, the truth about overseeding remains. It is not just for barren patches of dirt. You see overseeding, if done correctly, does wonders for new and mature lawns as well. Our process is a little involved but as you can see by the photo it works.

If your lawn is sparse with lots of ground showing through the turf we can help. Overseeding would be a huge benefit to you and will help thicken the turf up. If your lawn is decades old and tall fescues and bent grasses are creeping in, we can help. It would help push out the grass variations and give the lawn a nice uniform look. If you have a nice established lawn that you are looking to take to the next level; again, we can help. Overseeding will give your lawn the kick in the pants it needs to be the envy of your neighbors.

Our process is involved but it's certainly not rocket science. First we aerate the lawn. This allows for faster root development and more seed to dirt contact. Next we spread a top of the line blue grass seed. Not all seed is created equal. We are looking for results so the seed we use needs to reflect our commitment to that end. Finally we spread a special blend of grannual fertilizer over the top. This helps the soil germinate a greater ratio of seeds. The results are undeniable. It works. It's more affordable than you might think and it's not too late to do it this year. We probably have another month or so of growing season left and seeds will winter if we have a cold snap.

Call the office, 1-800-LAWNCARE, to schedule an estimate.

More Than Backpacks

I've already written about our partnership with Willard Elementary, but I wanted to give you a few quick takeaways from the day. You see, at Living Water we're not new to community outreach events. It's in our DNA. Over the years God has poured out His blessings on us and we honestly believe that the more we honor Him with our finances the more he blesses and sustains us. So when it came to Willard it was a no brainer, it's in our wheel house. What we didn't realize is how deeply personal this relationship would become and how the backpack drive would affect a few or our employees.

Most of the time our outreach is done behind the scenes. We prefer to donate time and money anonymously but we knew that for some reason we were supposed to take the lead in regards to Willard. Lisa Fairburn, one of our owners, has worked countless hours with the principal and staff to get this backpack drive off the ground. When it came time to hand the backpacks filled with school supplies to the students and parents we wanted to include some of our employees to help them understand that this is part of our company culture. Here are few stories and takeaways from that evening.

Kaileen recalls; "I was giving out backpacks to 4th through 6th graders, and it was an amazing experience. Parents had such fantastic reactions when they realized that they didn't have to pay and the backpacks were filled with school supplies. I didn't see one unhappy child, they were all so excited. One little boy was almost in tears when he said 'I've never owned a new backpack before.' It was all I could do to hold back tears. Such a great experience."

Brenda said; "The children's faces were priceless. When they realized that they were getting new backpacks.... it was like Christmas for them. Several of the parents eyes welled up with tears because they weren't sure how they were going to afford either backpacks or supplies. Words can't describe how appreciative they were. Perhaps the icing on the cake for me was how welcoming and appreciative the staff was. Amazing all around!"

Christina echoed; "Something that I took away from the event, was when a mom broke down in tears because she couldn’t believe the backpacks had all the supplies in them. I was raised in a household that didn’t have a ton of money, so I thought this project was a great idea. It was cool to be able to give back to the community and I look forward to future opportunities to serve locally!"

These are just a few of the stories coming out of just that one night. We thought this might brighten some of your days. If you would like to get involved with our partnership with Willard Elementary please  go to our "contact us" page and put "Willard" in the comments section.