Organic Lawn Care Program
Organic lawn care can produce a lush, green lawn and a safe environment for your family and pets. Our experts will design a customized organic program based on your property's site conditions. To design a customized program, we must first understand your property's soil conditions.
Soil is the first building block to any lush landscape. We will take soil samples to find the soil's pH. This will help us determine the levels of organic matter, as well as the macro and micro nutrients that already exist in your soil.
Our experts will also determine the level of soil compaction. Soil compaction restricts oxygen and water movement throughout the soil. Oxygen is vital to a healthy root system, and a healthy root system is needed for a lush, green lawn.
Integrated Lawn Care Program
An integrated lawn care program helps to cultivate a proper growing environment for your lawn. Our experts will design a customized program based on turf type, site conditions, and most importantly, our client's desired results. Your customized program will incorporate slow release macro and micro nutrients at carefully timed intervals throughout the growing season. Slow release fertilizers enhance turf vigor with controlled growth, while reducing possible leaching.
We use preventive crabgrass treatments in the spring with balanced fertilizers to encourage green up and improve lawn density in preparation for summer stress. Your lawn is monitored during each visit for weeds and surface feeding insects. These issues will ONLY be treated if they are present. These treatments are ONLY applied to the area needed and never to the entire lawn. This greatly reduces the amount of pesticides used on any one property.
Hybrid Lawn Care Program
A hybrid lawn care program is a combination of our organic and integrated programs. This allows us to treat for weeds at carefully timed intervals, while using organic fertilizers during other applications. The hybrid program is an environmentally responsible approach to lawn care.
Supplemental Services
Grub Treatment
Grubs are a root feeding insect found in the soil. This makes them hard to detect until the damage is already done. Grub damage results in lawn replacement and can be very expensive. If your lawn gets direct sunlight for a majority of the day, it is highly recommended to have a grub treatment once a year. This preventive treatment guarantees against grub damage or we will repair your lawn at no charge.
Lime Treatment
This is a natural and non-toxic product that is applied during the year to help adjust the soil pH to be more neutral and the optimal pH level for your grass type. Neutral soils make nutrients in the soil available to the turf. This is a very important service for sandy acidic soils.
Sulfur Treatment
Although rare, sometimes this treatment is needed for alkaline soils. A soil test can help to determine if this is needed.
Disease Treatments
There are hundreds of diseases that can infect your turf. Some are relatively harmless, while others can destroy an entire lawn in a very short time. Lawn Diseases are difficult to tame if the environmental conditions are favorable.
The most important thing is to first correctly id the disease! This will allow you to determine if treatments are needed.
Disease travels by foot, water, and air. Fungus spores spread on the wheels of mowers, on the shoes of children, on the droplets of water that bounce from plant to plant during rain or watering, or blow with wind across the landscape.
Prevention is the best cure and can be done through proper feeding, mowing, watering, and thatch control measures. Treatments are not designed to eliminate the disease, but rather to suppress the activity over a period of time.
Core Aeration
Core aeration is a very important component to any lawn care program. All roots need oxygen and water. Aeration pulls small cores of soil from your lawn allowing air, moisture, and fertilizer to move easily into the turf's root zone. Aeration also helps break down harmful thatch and minimizes soil compaction. After an aeration, this is the ideal time to seed or amend the soil structure.
Tick and Flea Treatments
A Tick Program helps control the tick population on your property and reduces the risk of Lyme Disease for your family and pets. Surprisingly, the main carrier of the deer tick is mice, not deer. Trying to manage the outdoor mice population on your property is futile, but we have options to manage the tick population on the mice.
Fleas are not only a nuisance to both humans and pets but also can be vectors for disease. We offer both Organic and Traditional treatment options for these disease harboring insects.
Contact your Nature's Ally Certified Arborist to discuss your tick and flea control options.
Seeding Options
Broadcast Over Seeding
This is only done in conjunction with a core aeration. After an aeration is the ideal time to seed or amend the soil structure. The small cores of soil pulled by the aeration helps ensure seed to soil contact. The best time of the year to seed is in the fall. This is highly recommended for all lawns and allows opportunity to introduce the correct grass type ideal for your landscape conditions.
Slice Seeding
Slice seeding is used in lawn renovation and seeding large areas. The slice seeding equipment cuts into the soil while planting seeds and can be done to bare soil or an existing lawn. This eliminates the need to apply herbicides to kill the current turf and then the labor to remove it. The best time of the year to seed is in the fall. Proper watering is key to seed germination and successful seeding. This may require watering the seeded area two or more times a day. We ask our clients to sign a watering agreement along with pre- and post-seeding instructions to ensure best results.
Hydro Seeding
Hydro seeding is used in lawn renovation and in seeding large areas, when regular watering may not be possible. A mixture of seed, fertilizer, and moisture components are sprayed over the desired area. The mixture can be made thicker for applications on bare soil or lighter for applications over existing lawn. This seeding should always be done with a core aeration to ensure best results. The best time of year to seed is the fall. However, the mixture and application of this seeding option does allow for some flexibility in regards to timing.
Soil Analysis
A soil analysis is important in customizing a successful lawn care program. The soil analysis is used to determine the level of nutrients and soil pH found in a soil sample.
This allows us to correct the soil pH and make nutrients in the soil available to the turf. We can also customize the fertilization mixture to replenish nutrients that are found to be low.
Things to Know
Weed Control
The best defense is offense. A healthy, thick lawn will win against most weeds. This is why proper fertilization, watering, and yearly aeration with over seeding are vital to a good weed control. Carefully timed treatments help to minimize the impact weeds have on your lawn. We only use systemic products when it comes to weed control applications. This means the weed absorbs the product and cannot re-release it into the environment, which minimizes risk.
Watering
Water is essential for life and lawns are no different. A good rule of thumb is that a lawn requires two inches of water per week. Natural rainfall does not supply an adequate amount in most months and is not distributed evenly over the lawn.
It is important to water less frequently and for longer periods of time. Watering each or every other day for 15 minutes is detrimental to lawn health. With this watering schedule, the water does not penetrate deeply enough and can cause shallow roots and lawn disease.
When determining a watering schedule, factors such as system output, grass type, amount of shade, soil type, and slope should be considered.
We can help in setting up the timing of your irrigation system properly and to ensure it is supplying the proper amount of water throughout your landscape.