Posts Tagged: landscape

Wildlife in your landscape

Did you know that your landscape can support wildlife? There are many birds that overwinter in Colorado, including chickadees, juncos, crows, and the striking cedar waxwing (pictured above). A healthy landscape can provide food and shelter for them.
Many landscape plants can be a home or a meal for birds. Sunflowers, yarrow, and blue flax are among the plants that can give sustenance to our feathered friends. Yarrow can provide nest material as well. Trees and shrubs like blue spruce, Rocky Mountain juniper, and chokecherry are also good choices. Talk with a landscape professional about plants you might add to your landscape next year to support wildlife.
In the meantime, if you put out a feeder, decide which birds are likely to be in your area and which birds you want to see in your landscape. There are many varieties of bird seed; choose a mix that your local birds will eat. According to CSU Extension, black oil sunflower seed is a safe bet that many wild birds in Colorado enjoy.
A suet bird feeder will appeal to chickadees and woodpeckers. Get an inexpensive feeder available at your local hardware store that holds a block of suet—or go DIY with a pinecone coated with peanut butter or fat.
Be sure to provide a water source as well, especially in these dry conditions. A bird bath or simply a shallow tray of water will work. Replenish it daily and clean it weekly to be sure wildlife have a clean place to take a drink.

Just a note: We’re taking next week off, but we’ll be back on December 31 with a New Year’s Eve Tip of the Week!

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

Gifts for the plant lover

This Sunday is National Poinsettia Day. Poinsettias are a great gift for this time of year. While they are not edible and could cause mild illness, they aren’t poisonous to kids or pets. Use them to decorate your home without fear but know that it can take some effort to keep them alive and healthy in Colorado. If the gift recipient isn’t a dedicated plant lover, you might consider a different, hardier gift plant.
If indoor houseplants are more their speed, consider a snake plant (Sansevieria trifasciata), which does well even with a little neglect. It can handle a chilly night or low light conditions, making it versatile to place in nearly any room of the home.
For a gift they can keep outdoors in a container or plant in their landscape when spring comes, consider Rocky Mountain juniper, a native evergreen that is beautiful and aromatic. Outdoors it can withstand Colorado’s cold, harsh conditions.
A green gift is a nice way to give a friend or loved one a bit of nature during the winter months.

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

The Front Range continues to experience drought conditions. To avoid winter drought stress, we need to water our landscapes. Drought stress can dehydrate roots. Freeze damage can leave plants vulnerable to insects or other stressors later. Stressed lawns can attract pests like turf mites. By the time summer heat returns, your plants may no longer be strong enough to survive.

Warm days during fall and winter dry out plants and roots. Supplemental watering during dry spells in the fall and winter can keep plants healthy enough to move on and deal with the next stress factor more successfully. Here are some tips for successful cold-season watering:

If you check the soil and it is dry down to about 3 inches deep, then you should apply supplemental water to the lawn, trees and other plants.
As long as daytime temps are above freezing and the soil is not frozen, plants can be watered.
It’s best to water trees with a deep root watering device attached to the hose so that water gets deeper into the soil where roots live. A landscape or tree professional can help you with this.

Run the hose with a sprinkler attached to water the lawn. Just as you should do in the summer, use a cycle-and-soak approach to give the lawn a long, slow drink that it can absorb.

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

Do your trees need a blanket?

Were you one of the many people who planted new trees during the pandemic? If you’ve got a young tree with thin bark, you should consider wrapping it for the winter.

Why wrap a tree?

Colorado’s big temperature swings can cause frost cracks or split bark. Our sunny winter days can cause sunscald on tree bark that is left exposed after leaves fall. Using a tree wrap can protect the vulnerable bark of young trees against the harsh Colorado climate. Trees like linden, maple, fruit trees and honey locust often have thin bark and may need protection.

Even if your tree has suffered damage from the season’s first frost, wrapping now could prevent further damage. Remove the tree wrap in April or early spring or when the threat of freeze has passed.

What to use for tree wrap?

You can find tree wrap, often made of paper, at garden centers. It is not recommended that you crochet or knit a tree wrap from yarn. Not only is it time-consuming and costly, but it could also harm the tree. Wrap the trunk up to the first branches.

For evergreens like arborvitae that might suffer damage or split, you might consider burlap wrap to protect them.

Consult a professional

The best way to ensure proper winter tree care is to consult with an arborist or landscape professional who can help you make the right tree care decisions based on experience and by assessing the current conditions.

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

Care for your trees

It takes a little effort to help your landscape ease into the fall and winter. Hopefully you’ve already winterized your irrigation system or scheduled your sprinkler blowout. If not, take a minute today to get it done or get on a professional’s calendar before they book up. Then, turn your focus to preparing trees for winter.
Ideally, you should try to prune your trees when they have gone dormant. Pruning shade trees helps them better handle the snowfall and strong winds of winter storms—especially if you have dead or damaged branches hanging around from previous storms. Take care of them before they become a hazard to people or property.
Once your trees have gone dormant, it’s a good time to prune suckers and water sprouts. For branches that you can’t easily reach from the ground, ask for help. If you don’t have proper safety gear to protect yourself or can’t prune while standing with both feet on the ground, it’s time to call in a pro. Tree pros have the equipment and the expertise to do the job properly.
One exception: Do not prune any spring-flowering trees, shrubs or perennials just yet—late winter or early spring is best for plants like fruit trees or lilacs.
Keep in mind that you are preparing your trees for winter, but that doesn’t mean you can completely stop caring for them when the cold sets in. They still need moisture. If the temperatures are above freezing, you can—and should—safely water your trees and shrubs.

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

Mulch your leaves

Don’t hurt your back bagging leaves. There’s a better way–you might even be able to avoid raking altogether. But you can’t simply leave everything as it is or you risk suffocating your lawn by leaving it under a layer of leaves. Try mulching; it’s good for your landscape and easier on you.
When the leaves have fallen and are dry—don’t mow wet leaves—try mowing your lawn without the grass catcher. If you’ve got a mulch setting on your mower, make sure you’ve got it set. If you’ve got a lot of leaves and don’t have a mulch setting, it might take an extra pass or two with the mower to break up all of the leaves. The smaller the pieces, the more quickly they will decompose. Those biodegradable fragments return nutrients to your landscape, supporting root growth, micro-organisms, and worms.
Mulched leaves and grass clippings also help regulate the soil temperature when it gets cold, retain moisture in soil on dry days, and can reduce weed propagation next year.
Got piles of fallen leaves in your flowerbeds? You might need to use a rake or blower to move those leaves onto your lawn before you mulch or mow. If you end up with too much mulched material in piles on the lawn, put it right back onto those flowerbeds, in garden areas or around trees and shrubs.
Mulching is a great way to reduce, reuse and recycle at one time, and with less effort than bagging leaves.

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

Stay out later

Imagine yourself relaxing on the terrace with a mug of tea or apple cider as you enjoy the cooler nights of autumn in Colorado. But fumbling in the dark with a mug of hot liquid is not a good idea. And candles or torches can be a hazard in our fire-prone state.
Despite continuing warm temperatures, shorter days can limit the time we spend outdoors this fall. One way to extend the time outdoors is with landscape lighting. It’s an investment in safety and curb appeal, and it can add to your enjoyment of your outdoor living space.
Pathway lights make it possible to navigate your landscape safely. Patio lighting can make your yard attractive and cozy past sundown. Plus, technological advances like LED bulbs and quality solar-powered fixtures have made landscape lighting more efficient than ever.
Talk with a landscape professional about the right lighting to enhance your landscape and improve your time outdoors this fall.

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

Get ready for fall

It’s a good time to put in some work to help your landscape stay healthy as it heads into dormancy for the winter. It’s still warm, but autumn begins next week and we look forward to cooler days ahead. A little care now will help make your lawn hardier so that it will return next spring as vibrant as ever.

Here are some steps to consider. Be sure to talk with a landscape professional about which of these steps are important for your landscape:

Adjust the sprinkler timer to water less. Daylight hours are growing shorter, overnight temps are getting cooler and day-time temps will become more moderate. Don’t stop watering altogether but do adjust watering frequency and length. Make changes according to the temperature—not by the date. Keep in mind that if you add any new plants this fall, those will be the exception as they are still becoming established.
Zap weeds. Here’s your last chance this year to take care of weeds. The weeds you eliminate this fall are weeds you won’t see at the start of next season.
Apply a final application of fertilizer. Using the same fertilizer formulation you used earlier this season is fine. But if you need to buy more fertilizer, look for one high in nitrogen and potassium which are good for healthy roots.
Core aerate the lawn before winterizing the sprinkler system. Aeration pulls plugs of soil and sod out of the lawn and these holes open the soil so that roots can take in maximum moisture during the winter.
Get expert help if you have had fungus or other turf disease or insect problems this summer. Have problems properly diagnosed so you know what to do now and possibly into next spring to get things under control for good.

Contact your landscape professional to help you get your landscape ready to be tucked in for winter. If you have an irrigation system, schedule your winterization service now, before schedules are booked up.

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

It’s good to be a drip

When your faucet drips, it wastes water. But when your irrigation drips, it could be using water wisely. Drip irrigation uses a low pressure, low volume method of applying water directly to the base of plants or at the roots. If you have a small landscape area, are setting up a container garden, or need to water individual plants instead of a large area of turf, drip might be the watering method for you.
As mentioned a few weeks ago in this Tip of the Week, watering slowly is an effective way to use water efficiently. A drip irrigation system waters slowly and with precision, getting the water right to the spots that need it most and takings its time to do so.
Talk with a landscape professional about where drip irrigation might benefit your landscape. When used correctly, it can make every drop of water count, saving you money and helping your plants thrive.

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

Lose the lawn bag

Emptying your grass catcher can be a hot, messy job in the heat of summer. Save yourself the work and improve your landscape in the process by grasscycling. Leaving your grass clippings on the lawn helps return nutrients to the soil and reduce evaporation from the soil.
If you’ve got a mulching mower, you’re ready to grasscycle. Be sure the blades are sharpened, and your mower will cut your grass into lengths that are perfect for leaving on the lawn.
If you’ve left your lawn a little too long and fear the clippings would be too heavy, you can still skip the bag by using your grass clippings as mulch in your vegetable garden. Just like other mulches, the clippings help hold in moisture and keep weeds at bay. Then, be sure to schedule mowing so that you aren’t cutting more than 1/3 of the lawn’s total length. That will leave you with just enough grass to leave on the lawn and reap the benefits of grasscycling.
Worried that clippings will make your lawn look messy? Be patient. It may take a few hours, but the clippings will settle into the soil to decompose. If you can’t wait that long, you can gently rake the clippings to spread them and help them settle more quickly.

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

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Dec 12, 2022

You all are the best

- Susan

Nov 11, 2022

They are doing a good job getting everything under control.

- Janet

Nov 8, 2022

Great service with great staff.

- Ken

Nov 14, 2022

All good

BestYard have done our fall leaf clean up for a few years now and we really appreciate this service!! We have a dozen trees in our small backyard so over the years we have more and more leaves as we get older. BestYard are good at communication and getting the job done!

- Margeret

Nov 2, 2022

It was quick and our lawn looks great!

- Paul

Wonderful job, team. The fall yard cleanup was perfect and the house looks great again!

- Trent

Oct 27, 2022

Excellent service!

- Tonyetta

Oct 26, 2022

Thanks Weed Man for aerating our lawn! The guys were fast, friendly, respectful of directions and most of all, did a great job of taking care of readying our lawn for winter and into the spring. Thanks so much for texting the day before to remind us of appointment!

- Ryan and Roxanne

Oct 25, 2022

Excellent customer service!!

- Lisa

Posts Tagged: landscape

Wildlife in your landscape

Gifts for the plant lover

Water your landscape

Do your trees need a blanket?

Care for your trees

Mulch your leaves

Stay out later

Get ready for fall

It’s good to be a drip

Lose the lawn bag

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