Staten Island Lawn Care Month to Month Procedures
March Lawn Care
As March sets the tone for spring it is also the time to start your professional lawn-care. Winter is over and it is time to start your lawn and garden preparation.
At Staten Island Lawn Care we access your property first. We do a consultation to access your wants, needs, and budget so that we can tailor a program to give you the curb appeal you desire; while giving you the expert recommendations to ascertain what chemicals and procedures will keep your grass healthy and green, and your shrubs and bushes thriving.
At Staten Island Lawn Care the month of March is when we tend to your lawn which has been battered by the inclement weather of the winter months. We always start by thatching the lawn to remove the remnants of the old grass which will not grow and remove the debris accumulated during the winter months.
This also enhances your lawns soil to accept and thrive on the spring chemicals and other chemicals that will be applied throughout the season. Thatching allows the grass to receive the maximum results of the lawns future growth. In return your grass will flourish and you too will have the lushness of beautiful green lawn.
At Staten Island Lawn Care we do not use powdered lime. It is an inexpensive solution, and shows minimal effects for your lawn’s health. We utilize professional grade lime pellets; however before we apply any chemicals to your grass we first test the PH levels of your soil. This ensures we are applying the correct amount of the lime pellet chemical and enough to penetrate the soil.
As professionals we know that chemical application is not a one size fits all. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. When we determine your soils PH we know how much of the application your lawn needs to grow green and healthy. Our goal is always to maximize the perfect growth of the lawns we take care of. At this time we apply professional grade fertilizer and a crab grass preventative treatment.
In March Staten Island Lawn Care does your property clean-up in conjunction to the thatching and chemical application. Again the winter months allows debris to land all over your property from your lawn to your flowerbeds and around your shrubs and hedges. There may be some annuals you planted which also will be removed if they weren’t discarded before the winter season. The flowerbed soil will be prepped for the season by turning the soil. During the winter months flowerbeds undoubtedly become stagnant and this process too allows for the chemicals to penetrate the soil. The treatment Staten Island Lawn Care applies during this month is a fertilizer and a weed block. We use the best of professional products, not a some big box store chemical.
The professional chemicals we use are different than those used for lawns. The professional treatment is a slow release of fertilizer which will not shock your shrubs. Slow release chemicals for your hedges and shrubs leads to strong growth.
No one enjoys looking at weeds growing between their shrubs and hedges. In March we prepare the flower beds by applying a weed growing preventative chemical.
At Staten Island Lawn Care we take pride in our service. March is the beginning of the growing season for your lawn, shrubs, and hedges. The preparation for the season must be handled with expertise which we always provide.
April Lawn Care
April showers bring May flowers. The rain while watering your beautiful lawn, shrubs, flowers and hedges, will also allow the growth of the unwanted weeds. Staten Island Lawn Care in April will attack your pesky weeds, as different varieties emerge during the springtime.
During the month of April to prevent the multiplication of unwanted weeds Staten Island Lawn Care will perform two different weed treatments.
The first of the weed treatments is spot spraying the lawn. We spray the different weeds that emerge in varying areas of your grass. This application is great for treating most every variety of weeds.
Towards the end of April again we apply another form of weed treatment to your entire lawn. The professional grade weed and feed treatment is a granular formula. We take pride in giving you the lush bright green lawn that looks perfect, and makes you the envy of the block.
Staten Island Lawn Care always gives directions and will let you know if you and when you need to water and tell you when not to walk on your lawn. To be honest, never walk on your grass if you don’t need to. Treat it like the rug or carpet you don’t want anyone to walk on.
By Mid-April you will see your lawn has already began to grow. During this time of the month Staten Island Lawn Care begins to do the first of your seasonal lawn mowing. Its like the first haircut of the season. The start of the manicure of your grass.
Staten Island Lawn Care offers turn on service of lawn sprinklers and installation of new sprinkler systems. April is the time to install a sprinkler system. When we install or modify an existing sprinkler system they too aren’t a one size fits all. Sprinklers systems must be designed keeping many factors in place. They include plant material, sun exposure, and location of shrubs, flowers, and grasses.
May Lawn Care
April Showers bring May flowers! May for landscaping is the busiest month for the season. May is the month when not only is lawn maintenance at its peak it’s the time when we make planting decisions.
Staten Island Lawn Care is a full service company. While we cut lawns and are one of the few NYS licensed chemical applicators in the borough, we are also a premiere landscape design company. May is the month when we begin designing new landscape designs.
We buy all our planting products direct from growers from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, whether it is hedge material, shrubs, plants, or annual and perennial flowers. May is when our clients new and old completely redo their landscape design, or choose to enhance the beauty of the plants, shrubs, and hedges that already exist.
May is when Staten Island Lawn Care plants annual flowers. It is the best time. If flowers are planted too late in the season, they are generally old flowers, leftovers. These flowers will not thrive as will the flowers that are planted in May. We treat the flowers with fertilizer before and after they are planted. Flowers in flowerbeds, and pots are a beautiful addition to curb appeal and the welcome of summer.
May is Staten Island Lawn Care’s busiest month for planting and maintenance. In May its time to trim your hedges and shrubs. Trimming in May allows your hedges and shrubs to absorb the sun from the warmer weather to thrive and grow while maintaining their health. It is the time to apply new mulch which is vital. Mulch isn’t about only making your landscape look manicured although it does, it gives your landscape the finishing touch. Mulch has therapeutic asset as it serves as a great barrier for the roots of trees, shrubs, hedges, flowers, and all planting materials. Mulch doesn’t allow too much water to penetrate the roots. Mulch is an anchor for the roots of all planting materials in every season.
May maintenance is imperative. In May you may see some bare spots on your lawn where grass growth is lacking. If bare spots do appear we seed using only the best, Johnathon Green Black Beauty. This brand of seed works superbly to fill in the bald spots of your lawn.
The Black Beauty of Jonathon Green is the best market brand which allows tall fescue grass to grow. Fescue grass holds up in drought, resists disease, and holds up from traffic. Tall fescue offers greater heat tolerance than other cool-season grasses and greater cold tolerance than warm-season grass options, contributing to beautiful year-round lawns in this challenging area of the Northeast.
At this time Staten Island Lawn Care will watch and look for signs of fungus. We will chemically treat any fungus if needed and educate you on watering of your lawn while also giving you a schedule of when, and how long you should be watering the grass.
Like I said the month of May is one of the busiest months of the season for the experts at Staten Island Lawn Care!
June Lawn Care
Staten Island Lawn Care sees our lawns and landscapes flourishing in June. We continue our weekly maintenance of mowing your grass at this time. In June we see summer it’s on its way. The flowers we planted in May have taken root and the landscape reflects the season.
In conjunction with weekly mowing we still continue the necessary maintenance to make you the gem of the neighborhood. In June the soil of your grass PH will be tested again to determine if we need to apply Magical and Love my soil from Jonathon Green. We will continue with seeding and fungus control where applicable.
As the temperature is beginning to rise and the dog days of summer are near we look to apply Scotts Fertilizer and Insect control. This is a summer guard. The summer guard has a slow release. Slow release is a must, it ensures your grass will not burn and growth promotion will continue throughout the summer months.
This is also the time we may adjust the timing on your sprinklers. We make this determination based on a few factors. Has it rained excessively or are we in a drought? When to water your lawn and how long is imperative to keep your lawn healthy, lush and green.
June while being the beginning of summer we look for also brings pesky mosquitos. We do organic mosquito and insect spraying while being safe is also efficacious to their removal. We all want to enjoy our outdoors whether it is by the pool or during a bbq.
The application of mosquito and insect spraying needs to be done every month to be effective.
July Lawn Care
Staten Island Lawn Care continues to inspect the conditions of your lawn throughout the year; however by July we are in the dog days of the hot summer. Watering your lawn is first and foremost. Just as people need to keep themselves hydrated in the summer your lawn needs the same. It is a living thing.
The rule of thumb for watering your lawn during this time of year is to water very early in the morning or later in the day when the sun isn’t at its peak. Grass during the month of July should generally be watered every other day for 20 minutes or every day for 10 minutes with a fixed head sprinkler system. If you have a rotary sprinkler system you will have to adjust watering time by increasing the time you water. Watering your grass is an important aspect of its success.
We continue with your weekly mowing of the lawn, and always remove the grass clippings. Mowing the lawn is the haircut all grass needs to continue proper growth, it is also important not to cut grass too low during this time.
Staten Island Lawn Care will do a subsequent PH check because summer often decreases the PH levels as the heat is more intense. If we find the PH is too low we do an application of Magic Cal to raise the PH level.
August Lawn Care
Staten Island Lawn Care will continue your lawns weekly maintenance of cutting the grass weekly and removing the grass clippings as we did in the month of July as summer is still here.
Again it will be necessary to check the PH level of your soil. We need to ensure the PH level is steady, if you needed treatment the month prior with Magic Cal we need to ensure another application is or isn’t needed. The PH levels are contingent on exposure to sunlight. The PH levels are important for the grass and the chemicals we apply to the lawn and its efficacy. The following months chemicals also need to perform as intended.
In mid-August another application of lime pellets will be performed. This ensures the start of our fall lawn renovation. We continue to be on the look out for any fungus and apply a control chemical if needed.
September Lawn Care
In September the weather is finally beginning to cool down and as the days get shorter there is less sunlight absorbed by your lawn and landscape. As Staten Island Lawn Care sees the beginning of a new season coming we thatch the lawn again. Thatching allows us to remove the summer damaged lawn and preps the soil for fertilizer.
The first week of September fertilizer will be applied, while we will continue to inspect and apply fungus control as needed. Mid-September Black Beauty by Jonathon Green tall fescue seed will be applied to areas of your lawn that may have become roughed up by the heat.Tall fescue is Well-suited to northern lawns and has greater cold tolerance. While it takes a minimum of a month to grow it will hold up much better in the winter months, and fair well for the season to follow.
September has a tendency to find many lawns with grubs. Typical lawn grubs, often called white grubs, are white, C-shaped beetle larvae about a half inch in length. A grub may be the larvae of the masked chafer, European chafer, Japanese beetle or other beetle species. Lawn grubs have soft bodies with legs near the head. While we can’t prevent we can evacuate them.
At Staten Island Lawn Care we aggressively evaluate the situation by digging a square of grass 1 foot deep and apply grub killer weekly. Unfortunately they can get to the roots of the grass and kill it off. It is an issue that needs to be addressed at the onset.
Staten Island Lawn Care will access if seeding is required again in September. We will also spot spray your lawn for weed control this month. If you have crab grass there is no need to worry it will naturally die off.
October Lawn Care
October sees the fall at its peak. During this time as the weather chills we apply a lawn fertilizer 20-0-8 with iron. We will continue seeding when necessary and weed control as needed.
Mid-October is when you’ll see we cut the lawn lower. This is advantageous for the winter that is ahead and for the lawn to succeed the following season. As the leaves are also falling it is imperative to remove immediately.
The fallen leaves have a tendency to burn holes in the lawn. We still look to ensure the grubs are eliminated and apply the grub control if needed. Staten Island Lawn Care always has our expert eye on your lawn, shrubs, and hedges.
By now your summer annuals will be removed and replace with fall mums. Mums in a variety of colors planted in flower beds and in pots creates a unique and beautiful allure to your landscape.
November Lawn Care
Staten Island Lawn Care will continue to cut your grass low to keep your lawn’s integrity. We also will continue to remove the fallen leaves so not to damage your manicured lawn. The leaves must be removed before the lawn is mowed as they will become clippings which will destroy your lawn.
In the middle of the month it’s also time to do a mulch evaluation. Mulch isn’t only an inexpensive way to give your landscaping a finished look its advantageous to all your shrubs, hedges, and bushes. Mulch is a barrier for the roots of each shrub, hedge and bush. In the winter you may see the destruction of rooted hedges and shrubs of any species big and small this happens due to not enough mulch. Mulch acts as a blanket for roots of any shrub. It protects from the cold and inclement weather such as snow and ice.
December Lawn Care
December marks the end of the season for landscaping. In December we do our last cut of your lawn mowing the grass very low for the winter ahead. We clean up all remaining leaves and debris.
At this time we will winterize your landscaping with Scott’s Winterizer. This will ensure further root development throughout the winter. If leaves continue to fall after our last cut the first week of December, please call Staten Island Lawn Care for their removal. We want to start the following season with an even greater success. Staten Island Lawn Care has thrived for over two decades because of our
Expert analysis, care, top of the line chemicals, and plant materials from the finest growers.
