You are probably well aware of the benefits of a Spring startup and a Fall blowout of your Denver sprinkler system. But there is an important service that a lot of folks don’t know about. This service is the mid-Summer checkup of your sprinklers to make sure your system is in harmony with the weather and conditions present in the middle of the hottest, driest part of the year. At American Arbor Care, we provide Denver lawn care services of aeration, fertilization, overseeding, and top-dressing to keep your lawn looking its best. Here are a few good reasons to do a mid-season irrigation system check:

1. It’s important to schedule mid-season maintenance to keep your system in tip-top condition. Correcting any problems with watering not only helps regulate your water bill, it also ensures that your lawn and landscape are getting what they need to stay healthy and beautiful, which is why you have an irrigation sprinkler system. Every day during the summer, your irrigation system is making sure that your lawn, garden, and landscape are getting just the right amount of water to just the right places. With a little bit of preventative work, you’re ensuring cool, green, beautiful grounds and avoiding many potential pricey dangers that could stem from neglect.
2. Properly operating and maintaining a home irrigation system is important throughout the entire watering season. The mid-summer checkup makes sure your sprinkler system is getting attention when it’s working the hardest, and when your lawn needs your sprinkler system the most. Your irrigation timer needs to be reprogrammed for the hot, long, dry days of summer, because in these conditions, your sprinkler system needs to be operating at peak performance. It’s the perfect time to scrutinize your spray coverage now that all your shrubs, trees, and flowers are in full growth to make sure they are getting the correct amounts of water to ensure their longevity and beauty. Necessary adjustments to heads and zones for watering times protect your landscape investment and ensure your lawn and landscaping will be beautiful through the hottest days of summer.

A basic checkup will include an examination of the condition of the irrigation heads, a check for damaged or missing spray heads and leaking lines, heads that spray a hard surface or that leave part of the landscape without water, and clogged nozzles. By maintaining the functionality of your sprinkler system in the Spring, Fall and Summer, you avoid the common irritating problems that Mother Nature and time inevitably cause on your irrigation system.

Watch a video for additional lawn tips! 

American Arbor Care offers professional tree, shrub, lawn, and landscape maintenance services across Colorado. Our services include tree and shrub pruning (and removal), insect and disease management, tree planting, fertilization, weed control, stump grinding, mulching, consultation, landscaping, free estimates and more. Call us today at 303-639-8584 to get other mid-summer maintenance scheduled and find out more about our services.  

Now that we are in the middle of July and the outdoor temperatures have become significantly higher, changes are of course needed in terms of your landscape management. With a second application of aphid and mite for your shrubs and trees, landscapers have to now consider being vigilant against spider mites and Japanese beetles because these insects become quite active during this period of the season. The Japanese beetles have reached their adult stage and landscapers must apply a variety of treatment methods to keep them at bay.

Small Pests
What are spider mites? These small pests love the idea of drinking the sap of your plants. They take their attack to the underside of your plant’s leaves and suck the daylight out of the plant, creating noticeably large infestations that may destroy your plant. Once you notice the infestation, it is then time to put your landscaper to work in an effort to eradicate these insects.

Two Spotted Spider Mites
While spider mites may get under the leaves of your plant, they will also eat up the sides of your flowers and leaves. Ultimately, the spider mites will eat until they make holes through the leaves themselves, subsequently causing infestation. The two-spotted spider mite has a reputation of infesting more than a hundred different plant species. As a property owner, you need to be aware of this.

The Methods
It is important that the plants outdoors are sprayed with a hose. All infested plants must be watered with a high pressured water hose, specifically targeting the underside of the plant’s leaves. This method should aid in washing away the spider mites. However, there are several commercial miticides available if you are looking for another way to rid your plants of those spider mites. Many of these miticides have natural ingredients that won’t ultimately harm your plants. There are particular products that help to kill leaf eaters. Most are very safe to use and can even be pleasant smelling.

The Japanese Beetle
The most destructive pest that can be found during the summer on urban landscape plants is the Japanese beetle. The rainfall from the mid-summer rains coupled with sufficient soil moisture will prevent newly-hatched eggs and grubs from being dried out. The female beetles are drawn towards the moisture of the grass where they go to lay eggs. For that reason, irrigated lawns will have a higher population of grub. This is especially true during the drier summer months. During the drought when the earth has less moisture, older grubs tend to be found deeper in the soil. Most grubs from the Japanese beetle species are able to withstand a great deal of soil moisture. Therefore, heavy lawn watering or excessive rainfall is no bother to them.

Avoiding Damage
As pests chew the grass roots, it is harder for the grass to effectively take up sufficient water in order to withstand the stresses caused by a hot and dry summer. This causes vast dead patches to grow in an area infested by Japanese beetle grubs. Early detection of this problem could prevent further destruction. To avoid those summer battles with Japanese beetle grubs, choose your plant species carefully. The plants prone to being destroyed by these grubs include the Japanese maple, sassafras, roses, and Norway maple. If you can, remove the beetles with your hands when they are low in number. You could also try to shake them off the plant during the early hours of the morning since this is when they are most sluggish. You can set traps for these beetles too using bait – but it is best to let your Denver landscaping professionals assess the situation and determine the best course of action.

To reduce damage to your landscape and plants, it is always best to hire a landscape professional. Contact the experts at American Arbor Care for all things tree and plant health services in Denver to discuss your needs or call for a free consultation at 303-639-8584.

In the month of July, it is the right time to prune or trim evergreen bushes in your yard.

Why?

By July, they should have already completely most of their seasonal growth – at least 90 percent. The most essential feature of pruning is to know when you should prune your plants. Appropriate timing will help to ensure that your plants are healthy, productive and attractive. Below is a guide of the pruning and trimming suggestions for specific shrubs.

Deciduous Shrubs

Many of the deciduous shrubs such as broadleaf evergreen, forsythia and lilac that have been planted on your property tend to thrive in a our Colorado landscape. During the spring, you will typically find your shrubs blooming from growth that took place in the previous season. For shrubs that have flowered in the spring and summer, the time to prune will usually depend on the shrub’s current condition and the amount of potential pruning they need – evergreen shrubs in particular, are best to prune during the month of July.

After Neglect

If the flowering shrubs are neglected in the spring or summer, they may need extensive trimming and pruning in order to renew or rejuvenate the plants. The ideal time for major plant rejuvenation on overgrown shrubs is during the late winter months or the early spring months prior to the plant’s leaf out phase.

Heavy Pruning

If you did heavy pruning in the latter part of winter or early period of spring, it will eliminate or reduce your floral display for just a few years. However, restoring your shrubs back to health is more important. Never try to prune your deciduous shrubs in the middle of summer. Try to do so in August, encouraging a delayed flush of growth.

Evergreen Shrubs

Whether you have needle bearing or broadleaf evergreen shrubs, you should try to prune after new growth emerges in the springtime. After all, it is primarily new growth that provides an opportunity for the shaping of your hedges, assuming that you were already making sure that the hedges were maintained all this time. If the branches to be trimmed are sufficiently small, you can use a shearer with a hedger. Prior to when the new growth starts for your evergreen shrubs like yew or juniper, pruning is actually best performed in the latter weeks of March to the early weeks of April. Try to avoid doing so in the fall. Your evergreen shrubs could become injured by the colder temperatures when they were recently pruned.

Modern Roses

For the upper section of modern roses, low winter temperature exposure or drastic changes in temperature will kill the plants during the winter if pruned during the season prior. Therefore, the dead wood should be pruned in the late summer to keep things healthy. Any roses that bloom throughout the entire summer should be pruned in the month of March to early April, with minor pruning throughout the summer to maintain shape and health.

If you want to have your evergreen shrubs pruned or trimmed, speak to the tree and shrub health management specialists at Denver Tree Services or contact us today for an appointment or consultation at 303-639-8584.

During the month of July, it is a time to revive your lawn instead of using lawn fertilization. The heat can cause a lot of stress on your turf. This is the time many Denver homeowners make an effort outdoors, usually with a deep desire to make sure that they have pristine lawns to host barbecues and invite guests over. However, many homeowners fight against nature by overdoing it, using fertilizer, too much watering, and other means in an attempt to cajole new grass growth. It might feel like the right way to go about things, but this is actually the wrong approach. It is more ideal to respect the seasonal changes that happen to your turf and take some extra measures to gently treat your lawn.

Cool Season Grass

Kentucky bluegrass, for example, is a cool season grass that does better in temperatures of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the temperature rises to more than 80 degrees, this and other similar types of grass will begin struggling to stay fresh and green. Some of these cool season lawns will take on a dormant state, showing brittle and brown blades. If your lawn is struggling in the summer heat, resist the temptation of fertilizing. Instead, stop using fertilizers approximately thirty days before the onset of summer. If you apply additional fertilizer to already damaged grass, it can burn the grass and create growth that will be hard to keep up with during the summer heat. Fertilizing a dormant lawn is not the best approach. You should adopt a routine of applying Revive treatments for the summer months for a healthy lawn and control of broadleaf weed, especially if you notice an invasion beginning in your lawn. Our team of experts begin applying Revive in the month of July to keep grass healthy and provide an alternative to fertilizer.

Fall and Spring

Control of broadleaf weeds is best done in the early spring and fall. This will give you an opportunity to take advantage of new turf growth during those seasons. A healthy lawn should be your primary defense against all types of weeds. When your lawn is infested weeds, it is a warning sign that you may have soil problems such as an imbalance in nutrients.

Green Lawn

For an attractive green lawn without weeds, you should place emphasis on the grass and soil health; giving it a few months to be strong enough to apply any weed control products. You can reduce the areas of turf throughout your yards to only grow grass where it can easily thrive. It is more attractive to have a small patch of healthy grass than a large spread of weedy and thin lawn.

Smaller Areas

Some weeds are able to be controlled in smaller areas by digging and pulling them up. This is a method best used after it rains or after you have done a lot of watering of your grass. However, for weeds that are deep rooted, this method of digging and pulling is usually ineffective and will require additional treatments.

The Ongoing Practices

Quality ongoing care is essential to control weeds. This includes maintenance, wise applications of treatment, and the appropriate mowing. This should result in a healthy lawn of dense blades with little chance of unwanted weeds. It is safe to say that applying Revive treatments combined with routine maintenance and care is the recipe for effectively controlling most broadleaf weeds in your lawn. Once you identify the lifecycle of the weed, you will be better able to determine a control strategy to use.

If you want to learn more about lawn care in Denver, Revive treatment options, and seasonal maintenance, call American Arbor Care today at 303-639-8584 for a consultation!