The American Lawn Monthly Newsletter-June 2006 In This Issue - Helping Your Lawn and Landscape Survive the Summer - Summer Lawncare Tips - Early Summer Ornamental Diseases _______________________________ Helping Your Lawn and Landscape Survive the Summer It is getting hot and dry in many areas, which can be brutal on your lawn and landscape. Now is the time of the season where we really need your help to provide adequate irrigation, if Mother Nature does not cooperate. Water Deep, but Not Every Day. Most turf grass will need about 1.5 - 2 inches of moisture per week in order to perform their best. Warm-season grasses such as Bermudagrass love hot weather, as long as there is adequate soil moisture available. Cool-season grasses, such as Fescue and Bluegrass, can go semi-dormant in some areas with hot temperatures and inadequate soil moisture. Another problem is that during July and August, not only is the turf absorbing and using great amounts of water in order to grow and cool off, but the hot sun is drying out the soil moisture also. Turf roots can grow deep though, so one key is to water deeply so that the soil will be moist 6 - 8 inches below the surface. This trains the roots to grow deep, and be able to absorb that deep soil moisture. We find that many homeowners with sprinkler systems actually can hurt their turf's ability to withstand summer stress by watering every day. This keeps the top inch or two of soil so moist that the turf roots just concentrate right at the surface. Roots are a lot like people-they will only go where they need to! So by daily watering, you are actually training your root system to be shallow, making it become addicted to daily watering. So go ahead and allow the top surface of your soil to dry out a little between waterings. It'll be OK! A little stress will help your root system to grow deeper. Then when you do water, water well, supplying up to an inch of water so that the deeper soil layers become moist. If you have a clay soil or one that has a hard time absorbing water well, you will need to water in increments so that the water will not run off. I'd suggest going through your sprinkler cycle twice, allowing some time for the water to be absorbed in-between cycles. If we receive rainfall during the week, then obviously you can cut back on your irrigation. A general rule of thumb is about 1.5 to 2 inches per week, either from rainfall or irrigation. So if we have no rain, as often is the case during summer and early fall, you will need to water 2-3 times per week, as long as you water long enough to put out _ to 1 inch of water each time you irrigate. End Your Irrigation at Sunrise. The best time to water is early in the morning, before the sun comes up. This will allow the water to penetrate into the soil, while allowing the morning sun to dry out the grass so that it will not stay damp too long. Watering too much in the evening can lead to turf disease, such as Brown Patch, Rust, and Pythium. Hopefully your paper delivery guy will use a plastic bag for your morning newspaper though, because it is really hard to read a wet newspaper! ________________________________ Summer Lawncare Tips We are currently applying a balanced, granular fertilizer to our lawns. The fertilizer needs to be watered into the soil with about _ inch of moisture if no rainfall occurs within 4 days. We also treat any existing broadleaf weeds with broadleaf herbicide, along with grassy weeds and Nutgrass with other types of weed-control products. If existing weeds were treated, irrigation needs to be delayed at least 2 hours or more in order for the products to be fully absorbed by the weeds. Early summer is a great time to aerate warm-season turf. Contact your local LawnAmerica Operator to schedule this important optional service. If you are tired of mowing your lawn too often, Primo is a turf grass growth regulator that does a great job of slowing down the growth of the grass by about 50% over a 5-6 week period. Call your local LawnAmerica office for more information. Azaleas need to be fertilized sometime before mid-summer. Our Azalea fertilization service not only provides proper feeding of your Azaleas, but we also add a booster treatment of granular Merit insecticide to cut back on Lacebug problems. Call our office for more information. Yellow Nutsedge or Nutgrass is a troublesome weed in turf during summer. It is a tall, thin grassy-looking weed, which is actually a sedge. No pre-emergent will stop it from germinating, so it needs to be sprayed as it comes up. It is best to treat 4-5 days after mowing, while it is sticking up taller than the bermudagrass. If you have just mowed and we come out to treat, Nutgrass is very hard to even see, and there is not as much weed surface for the liquid herbicide to adhere to. We therefore need to you call us several days after mowing if you have a nutgrass problem, and we will try to time our visit to your lawn about 4-5 days after your mowing to provide a service call. If we can spray the nutgrass when it is sticking up nice and tall, our control will be much better. _______________________________ Early Summer Ornamental Diseases Warm, humid weather of early summer can bring about fungus diseases not only on your lawn, but on certain ornamentals also. Photenia is one common shrub that is succeptable to Leaf Spot. This disease is very common, and can render your plants very unsightly and even lead to death in severe cases. With LawnAmerica tree & shrub service, we can apply 2-3 consistent treatments of fungicide, insecticide, along with foliar fertilizer to help prevent damage from this and other disease and insect problems. Your ornamentals will look and perform better with these services, especially when coupled with late fall deep-root feeding. For more information, go to www.LawnAmerica.com/treeandshrub, or contact your local LawnAmerica office. _______________________________ $5 Off - Tree and Shrub or Insect and Disease Control With this service, we apply a liquid insecticide, a fungicide, plus a foliar fertilizer for the health of your ornamentals. Your Name ________________________________________ Your Address ______________________________________ Phone __________________ City ______________________ ZIP ______________ Customer # _____________________ www.lawnamerica.com/treeandshrub.html Present this coupon for $5 off chosen treatment (not valid with any other offers). _________________________________ Go Out To Dinner On Us! We appreciate your help in growing our business. Our main focus in growing our business has always, and will always be, to try to please our customers so much that the will tell others about us. When dealing with lawns and the havoc Mother Nature throws our way sometimes, that can be a real challenge! As our way of saying thanks for sending us a new customer, we have created a new Customer Referral Program. For every new customer you refer to LawnAmerica that begins service with us, we will send you a $25 Gift Card from Applebees, or other local restaurants. You can go to our website at www.LawnAmerica.com/referral and go to the homepage of your local operator and enter in the contact information for your referral. We will take it from there and provide them with a free estimate and information on LawnAmerica. You know us well enough that we are not going to slam them and use high-pressure sales techniques. We will treat them right, and make you look good for referring LawnAmerica. If they begin service with us, we will send you a $25 Gift Card in the mail for you to enjoy. _________________________________ Refer A Friend! For every new customer you refer to LawnAmerica that begins service with us, we will send you a $25 Gift Card in the mail for you to enjoy! www.LawnAmerica.com/referral Your Information Your Name _____________________________________ Your Address ___________________________________ Phone __________________ City ___________________ ZIP ___________________ Referral Information Their Name _________________________________________ Their Address _______________________________________ Phone __________________ City ___________________ ZIP ___________________ _________________________________