Our Blog

Early Fall Lawn Care to prepare your yard for the coming winter 

1. Clean up your garden beds: Remove debris, leaves, and weeds. You can put in edging and re-mulch for the winter.
2. Put potted material inside: to protect them from the upcoming freezing temperatures.
3. Plant bulbs for spring: Popular bulbs are tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and crocuses.
4. Remove dead and dying plants: and cut back ornamental grasses for the fall.
5. Add new plants to your landscape: and get them established before winter. They can get a better head start in the spring.
6. Clean up leaves: around the yard. Don’t let leaves smother the grass. It will allow lawn disease to settle in. Also, it prevents sunlight from hitting those areas.
7. Fertilize your lawns: It is an excellent time to rejuvenate by aerating, overseeding, and applying fertilizer.
8. Protect evergreens and soft winter plants: spray them with “wilt stop” or any frost protection spray to help against the cold months.
9. Winterize water lines: Avoid possible damage to pipes by removing hoses and splitters from outdoor spigots and turning them off so water doesn’t get trapped inside.
10. Blow out your irrigation lines: and remove all water. Also, cover your outdoor spigots. Cover outdoor backflows with an insulated bag and cover the copper pipe with soft tubing.
11. Clean up the gutters: Excess leaves and debris can clog downspouts and create overflow or potential flooding on roofs in certain areas.

    Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

    

    Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado

Check out these easy and practical end-of-summer landscaping tips designed to extend the season and keep your outdoor living area healthy and comfortable.

• Watering- Watering your lawn and garden can be problematic, depending on local limitations.

About 1 inch of water is all your lawn needs to push through the dog days of summer.

• Sprinkler System- If you planted late or plan to water late in the season, get a backflow wrap to protect your backflow preventer from mild freezes.

• Flowers- Deadhead your flowers to encourage growth and maintain a neat appearance.

Annuals like petunias and pansies take just a few minutes to deadhead, while other annuals and perennials require cutting.

• Aerations- Fall aerations are recommended to break up soil, redistribute nutrients, and improve air transfer between soil and atmosphere.

• Shrubs- Most plants require pruning in early spring and mid-winter, but summer provides an excellent opportunity for light pruning.

Trimming roses helps promote an additional series of blooms, and many flowering shrubs and trees could use a quick pruning now. Be sure your pruners are clean and sharpened; otherwise, you risk harming vulnerable plants.

Always clean your tools after dealing with diseased plants, and keep the blades free from debris and sap.

Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado

With days getting shorter, now is a great time to think about how lighting can help you make the most of your yard. We are almost a month from the first day of fall; landscape lighting can help give us more time outdoors. Lighting can enhance our outdoor experiences, accessibility, security, and ambiance.

Landscape lighting benefits

Whether it is lighting a walkway or stairs, adding light to darker parts of the yard, or making a patio more welcoming, landscape lighting can make your yard useable for more of the year.

Landscape lighting technology options

Landscape lighting is continually advancing with technology. LED is standard for improving efficiency. Intelligent controllers are available to retrofit an existing system and start a new one. You can even add color-changing lights that give extra fun outside for a special event.

Let BestYard design, install, or enhance your landscape lighting to make your yard more usable for more of the year.

Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado

Now is an excellent time to think about how to keep our four-legged friends safe while maintaining our landscapes.

Avoid potentially dangerous plants.

Many dogs dig up or chew bulbs and plants. If your dog is curious and likes to dig or taste what’s growing, keep dangerous plants in an area that pups can’t access or avoid altogether.

Some plants that could make your dog sick:

• Spring flowering bulbs like daffodils or tubers like dahlias and irises
• Grapes, peach stones, and apple seeds
• Chrysanthemums, clematis, and horse chestnut tree

ASPCA offers a list on its website of potentially toxic plants to dogs.

A landscape professional can also help you choose the right plants to keep your yard beautiful and your dog safe.

Provide shade
When the sun shines, dogs need a place to escape the heat.
If you don’t have mature trees to offer shade, be sure your pet has access to a covered porch,
patio, or other shade structure so they can cool off when they aren’t sunning themselves.

Make water available
Ensure your dog has access to clean water when outside.
If you have a water feature, ensure the products used to keep it clean are safe for pets.

Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado

Flower breeding companies invest years of time and money in developing new plant varieties, colors, and traits.

They are constantly improving current varieties, like the ability to withstand extreme weather conditions.

Some specific traits they look for in flower breeding are; more flowers, larger flowers, different flower shapes, specific colors, and disease resistance.

This same process happens for vegetables, roses, perennials, trees, and shrubs.

Flower Trials

• Every year the plant breeding companies hold “Flower Trials.”
• Each company is working on new, improved, or crosses of plants.
• The trials are fun and an excellent opportunity to see thousands of new plants on the market in the coming years.

“Best of” Annual Flower Winners from the 2022 CSU Trials

• Best of Show – SunPatiens® Vigorous Peach Candy from Sakata® Seed America
• Best New Variety – Salvia Rockin’® Deep Purple 2023 from Proven Winners®
• Best Novelty – Senecio Angel Wings (‘Senaw’)PP28,830 from Concept Plants Plus, 39 Best of Class by variety.

Click CSU announces the annual Flower Trial Garden’s 2022 winning flowers to see Colorado State University picks now available for 2023.

• Garden centers have these new varieties for sale.
• Could you check them out? You can try them.
• You never know what beauty they could bring to your landscape.

***the web link to the CSU site above is: https://agsci.source.colostate.edu/csu-announces-annual-flower-trial-gardens-2022-winning-flowers/  ***

Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado

• Learn what is damaging your tree and how to stop it.
• Distinguish between plant damage brought on by diseases, insects, or a nutrient deficiency.
• Learn to identify these pests and how to protect the trees.
• Beetles and bugs are damaging our trees.

• Ash Bark Beetle – These beetles account for most of the decline of the Ash trees.
• Bark beetles infest and reproduce in live trees. They may infest the entire tree.
• Spring pruning and disposal of infested branches can limit the population development of the beetle.

• Anthracnose – Anthracnose is a group of fungal diseases that affect various plants.
• Shade trees such as sycamore, ask, oak, and maple are especially susceptible.
• Anthracnose causes the wilting, withering, and dying of tissues.
• Other symptoms are girdled dead twigs and areas of sunken bark.
• Good sanitation is the first line of defense; rack and safely destroy all fallen leaves from infected trees and roses.

• Maple trees – What’s happening with Maple trees where the leaves are more yellowish than green or red?
• This is not from beetles but from micro-nutrient chlorosis. This occurs when a tree shrub is lacking micronutrients.
• Treat this by incorporating chelated formulas of iron, manganese, or zinc into the soil.

Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado

Now that the rain seems to be slowing down and we are entering 90-degree days, what should we be looking out for in our gardens?

• With these warmer days, the existing planting in your garden may start to look as if they need more water.
• Some leaves will become droopy in the hot part of the day, however, it may not mean they need water.
• Plants wilt when roots are unable to supply sufficient moisture to the stems and leaves.
• Wilting for short periods of time does not harm plants.
• Sometimes a plant wilts on a hot day because moisture is evaporating from the leaves faster than the roots can take it up.
• If there is ample soil moisture, the plant will absorb water in the evening to restore turgor to the stems and leaves.
• You could end up doing more damage by giving them water when they really do not need it.

What if the plant does not bounce back in the evening?

• Feel the ground with your finger, if it’s moist past your first knuckle it’s not a lack of water. It may mean that the soil is over compacted hindering the ability to uptake water.
• If the leaves are yellowing, it could mean that the plant has had too much water. Most plants that are newly planted die due to overwatering.
• It is actually dry, and you should water more!

Click “DO IT FOR ME” to request a FREE quote.

Source: customer-service@bestyard.com in collaboration with Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado