FALL MULCH APPLICATION & LAWN MAINTENANCE

Autumn is your last opportunity to prepare your yard before winter arrives. One relatively easy and very effective solution is to give your landscape plants a helping hand is the application of a 2-3″ new layer of fresh mulch. Mulch is very effective at protecting plant roots from frost or freeze damage. It also assists plants with retaining critical moisture during the cold season. This will ensure your plants survive and their beauty is preserved for blooming next season. Davis Kee Outdoor can efficiently and professionally apply new mulch to keep your outdoor green spaces beautiful.

This is the perfect time to apply winterizer lawn fertilizer. This step is the most crucial of all of the steps in your lawn fertilizer regimen. A winterizer application ensures the health of your grass is properly supported so normal growth can occur right up until freezing occurs. This step also ensures that nutrients can be absorbed and stored by the roots to spur lush growth once spring arrives. At Davis Kee Outdoor, we can apply a premium witerizer fertilizer to ensure your lawn is lush and beautiful when spring arrives.

CULLING THE DEAD & DYING

Contrary to popular belief, autumn is not the best time for heavy pruning. Autumn is, however, the perfect time to remove any dead and dying shrubs, trees, plants and leaves from your landscape. Remove dead annuals and blooms and cut back dead and dying perennials and grasses. Lightly prune any dead or dying branches from shrubs and trees. Remove dead hydrangea blossoms, but leave the stalks as these will blossom again in the spring. At Davis Kee Outdoor, our professional leaf removal and landscape maintenance services can help you ensure that your yard is ready for winter.

WATERING TIPS FOR FALL

Proper watering is a crucial element of a healthy yard and garden. Your lawn and beds do not require as much water in the fall as they did in spring and summer. Overwatering is extremely harmful, so it is important to keep to a steady moderate watering schedule. Twenty minutes of watering twice a week in the morning hours should be sufficient in our climate. Once frost is forecast, discontinue watering as this will be when your lawn enters a dormant state. Pull weeds as necessary, and cut your lawn shorter-down to 2-3 inches of height. This ensures sufficient height to help your lawn retain moisture, but minimizes issues with lawn pests and fungal infections.

Spring is absolutely a critical season for lawn and garden care and ensuring your yard is healthy, lush and beautiful, but autumn preparations are every bit as crucial. A well executed and consistent lawn and garden care routine during the fall months will ensure that your entire landscape is healthy when spring arrives. For professional assistance with maintaining your outdoor spaces, contact Davis Kee Outdoor today.

Bonus Tip: Pair annual flowers with ornamental grasses for a spectacular effect. The blooms of the annuals contrast nicely with the dramatic, airy seed heads of ornamental grasses.

Punch Up The Color with Mums and Pansies!
Instant impact! That’s what you’ll get when you add ready-to-bloom chrysanthemums and pansies to beds, borders, and containers. These easy-care plants relish cool weather and provide an injection of color in your September garden. Look for stocky plants that are still in bud so that you can enjoy them longer. Blooming plants are great if you need color for a same-day event, but they’re further into their bloom cycle and won’t last as long as budded specimens.

Bonus Tip: Chrysanthemums are available in two basic types: florist and garden. Florist mums make wonderful gifts, but do not do well outside. For landscape use, look for garden mums.

Improve Your Soil With Amendments
Fall is a great time to improve the soil in your September garden. After you remove dead and dying vegetables and flowers, spread a 2- to 3-inch-deep layer of rotted manure or compost over the surface of the soil. Spade or rototill it into the top several inches of soil and rake smooth. If the area had been mulched previously, just spread the soil amendments over the mulch and then rototill everything at the same time. In smaller beds, use a garden fork to turn the soil. If you want to protect your soil from wind erosion during the winter, sow a cover crop of annual rye grass now in September. It grows quickly and keeps the soil in place until spring. By then, the grass will be dead and you can turn it under to add an extra dose of nitrogen to your soil.

Bonus Tip: If you have a source of fresh horse or chicken manure, spread it directly over your garden in early fall. Winter snows and rains help break it down so its high nitrogen content won’t burn your crops in the spring. At other times of the year, fresh manure needs to be properly composted before applying.

Plant Spring-Flowering Bulbs
Enjoy a bounty of bloom in your garden next year by planting spring-flowering bulbs now. Tulips, daffodils, crocus, hyacinths, and other early-bird bloomers can be massed in beds by themselves or tucked in between established perennials and shrubs. Planting bulbs is easy: Just dig individual holes (8 inches deep for large bulbs like daffodils, 4 inches deep for smaller bulbs such as crocus), drop the bulb in, and cover with soil. Or, dig one large hole and toss in a dozen or more bulbs.  Planted this way, they’ll pop up in one impressive drift of color.

Bonus Tip: Select a variety of bulbs that bloom at different times to ensure color from early spring through to early summer. Some species, such as snowdrops, bloom as early as February, while late bloomers such as alliums flower in early June.

Clean Up Herb & Vegetable Gardens
The best way to prevent insects and diseases from affecting your vegetable garden next year is to clean it up this fall. Always remove rotting fruit, diseased foliage, or dead vines as soon as they appear. This is especially true with crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, melons, and squash. Pests and diseases love to overwinter on these vegetables if they are left in the garden to rot. Compost your garden refuse as soon as possible and, if your crops have been ill over the summer, consider burning the remains or bagging them for garbage pick-up.

Bonus Tip:  Make sure any leaves or tendrils are cleaned off tomato cages and supports before you store them for the winter. It only takes one insect egg case or spore clinging to the support to cause problems in your garden next spring.

Bring Tender Houseplants Indoors
If you haven’t done so already, bring vacationing houseplants indoors before frost. Give each plant a cleansing spray from the garden hose, then inspect them closely for insect hitchhikers hiding in the foliage. Wipe the pots clean to remove any soil that may have splashed up on them during the summer. Let them dry and then carry them into the house placing them on saucers to protect your floors from runoff. Some plants may also have put on a lot of new growth over the summer and will require a bit of pruning to shape them up before you bring them inside.

Bonus Tip: To prevent unexpected soil pests from moving indoors, sink each pot in a bucket of water for a few hours before bringing the plant indoors. This process drowns or uncovers any slugs, snails, worms, or beetles hiding below the surface of the soil.

Enhance your Landscape With Trees & Shrubs
September is an ideal time to add shrubs and trees to your landscape. Hydrangeas, roses, and other flowering shrubs and trees flourish during the cool, moist fall weather. Just be sure to do a little research before you add any plants to your landscape: Look for varieties that are hardy in your climate and won’t grow too large for the space you have. And always remember that even the smallest sapling will eventually grow into a tree that could swallow your home if planted too close.

Bonus Tip: Improve winter survival of trees and shrubs by watering them deeply right up until hard frost.  The soil should be moist before it freezes solid.

Improve Your Lawn With Some Maintenance
Give your lawn some attention this month. Most cool-season lawns benefit from dethatching, aeration, and fertilization. You can also seed or sod new lawns at this time or fix bare spots in older lawns. It’s also the season to control perennial weeds such as clover and dandelion. In the fall, these weeds prepare for winter by pulling nutrients and starches from their leaves into their roots. When you apply a lawn herbicide in the fall, the plants will also draw the chemical into their roots and die. Southern grasses such as bahia, Bermudagrass, zoysia, and St. Augustine can also be fertilized this month. Choose a fertilizer that contains controlled-release nitrogen that will feed the turf as it needs it.

Bonus Tip: There’s no need to purchase lawn tools such as aerators, dethatchers, or rototillers: They are all available to rent at your local home improvement store.

Dry Flowers For Winter Enjoyment
Savor the colors of your September garden all winter long by creating dried bouquets of your favorite flowers. Strawflower, globe amaranth, celosia, sedum, statice, yarrow, and artemisia are just a few examples of flowers that are easy to dry and preserve beautifully for winter bouquets. Just cut the blooms (leaving as long a stem as possible) in the morning after the dew evaporates. Bundle them, and hang them upside down in a dry, well-ventilated, dark location. After a week or two they can be taken down and mixed together to create everlasting bouquets or wreaths.

Bonus Tip: Use a piece of foam core at the bottom of your vase to keep dried flowers in place. Just stick each stem into the foam base for stability.

Engage With a Child
Now that school is back in session, engage the budding scientist in your life with a terrarium project. Terrariums are fun and allow children to create a miniature world all their own. Plus, kids learn valuable lessons about how soil, plants, water, and air interact in a perfect environment. They can even choose between a jungle or desert themes.
Jungle-theme terrariums can include plants such as peperomia, pilea, fern, nerve plant, selaginella, begonia, philodendron, and saxifrage. In a desert garden, try mammillaria, echeveria, sempervivum, portulacaria, crassula, kalanchoe, sedum, and haworthia.

Bonus Tip: Any glass container can be transformed into a jungle terrarium. Avoid the urge to water too frequently: Misting your plants once a day provides needed humidity without flooding the container. Dish gardens planted with desert plants should only be lightly watered once or twice a month.

1. Make sure your plants are getting enough water, especially newly installed landscaping. You’ll want to keep the soil moist, but resist the urge to overwater your plants.
2. A basic guideline to follow: Yellow leaves means you are giving plants too much water and brown leaves mean not enough water.
3. Either water early in the morning or in the early afternoon. The best time is in the morning as plants make best use of water at this time and this helps prevent rot and fungus.
4. It’s been a hot summer, so you’ll want to take care of your lawn. Only feed your lawn with slow-acting fertilizers and be sure to mow your lawn and trim the edges regularly.
5. Do not mow your lawn too short!  This is a common mistake that is unnecessarily hard on your lawn, and actually promotes the growth of noxious weeds.
6. To prevent a heat stressed lawn, cut your fescue grasses at 3 – 3 ½” or higher.
7. If you notice any yellow patches or areas of your lawn that aren’t growing well, make sure you increase the water distribution. Look for areas that are getting overwatered and underwatered and take steps to correct this imbalance.
8. During the summer heat, continue to weed your garden bed areas. You can weed by either spraying selective weed killer or pulling weeds by hand. If you’re hand weeding the best time to do it is when the soil is damp- it’ll be much easier.
9. Summer is a great time to do light pruning and clean up and improve the health and look of your landscaping. Remove any dry leaves from your perennials and annuals and any faded blooms.
10. Add or replace mulch around trees, shrubs & in bed areas to a depth of 3” to 4″ This helps maintain moisture during dry weather.
11. Make sure you’re monitoring your plants for insects and disease damage. If you notice any, treat the area as needed. There has been a large increase in insect pests due to mild winters. Spray as needed!
12. Wait to plant your fall perennials until the outside temperatures begin to drop over night. This typically will be some time in September.

That initial impression of your property is critical. Our design professionals at Davis Kee Outdoor can help you craft desirable curb appeal for your home, and also help you with providing the regular landscape maintenance services necessary to keep everything flourishing and looking top notch.

At Davis Kee we are routinely asked how to increase curb appeal on a modest budget. The improvement of your home’s curb appeal doesn’t have to be a gargantuan project. There are lots of small and simple steps you can take today that won’t break the bank, and will have a positive impact. One example is adding some is adding a pop of color pizzazz to the front entrance of your home for an instant facelift.

Start by giving your front door a fresh coat of paint. Choose a color that both complements and contrasts with your home’s facade. If your house is white, or grey, consider a bold color like bright red to add vibrance. This would also be a good time to make sure your house numbers are visible and appealing in appearance. Lastly, use potted and hanging plants to frame the steps, walkway, or porch, and the entrance itself.

We are also routinely asked what steps can be taken in the yard to increase curb appeal. The single most imprtant factor in yard curb appeal is a consistent design. Ideally, all the elements should come together to create a beautiful tapestry. In addition, their should be attention paid to making sure the landscaping suits the aesthetic of the home, and the needs of the homeowner. The design professionals at Davis Kee Outdoor can start with your vision and create a plan that suits your needs, meets your budget, and increases curb appeal.

If your home already has an excellent landscape design outdoors, nothing is more effective at increasing curb appeal than maintaining it all properly. As you already know, mowing the grass regularly and removing weeds is absolutely essential. Taking the extra step to ensure the edges of your lawn are crisp and clean greatly enhances curb appeal.

Keeping your garden beds well tended is also important. A well groomed weed free garden bed sends the message that your home and garden is your baby, and that you are the sort of person that takes great care in ensuring it is well maintained and beautiful. Make sure that fresh mulch is applied every season. Mulch helps create that well manicured, fresh look that greatly enhances curb appeal.

The planting of annual flowers is a wonderful life hack for quick color that lasts for a long period of time. Carefully choosing the right flowers will result in planting beds that are inexpensive, grow quickly, and bloom for a lengthy time frame. At Davis Kee Outdoor, we recommend a strategy of planting bright colored annuals in spring and summer, and switching gears to fall colors in the autumn. This simple changing of color palette with the seasons help reinforce the idea that your home is inviting and warm. Annual color is a wonderful and inexpensive tool for increasing the curb appeal of your home.

Next, plant annual flowers for quick and long-lasting color. Choosing the right plants allows you to have a flowering bed that is inexpensive, grows quickly, and blooms longer. The best strategy is to plant brightly colored annuals for your spring and summer beds, and autumn colors for the fall. By changing the color palette with the season, you create an image of your home as warm and living. The colors can play a significant role in increasing the curb appeal of your home.

An often overlooked aspect of curb appeal is the exterior structure. Your home’s exterior is built to hold up under inclement weather and keep the outside world outside. It takes a beating from mother nature in the course of protecting your family throughout the seasons. As a result, the exterior of your home can get very dirty without you necessarily noticing. Something as simple as putting a pressure nozzle on your hose and periodically washing dirt and debris from your home can be helpful and effective. Alternately, you can rent a pressure washer. Don’t forget to wash off your paved surfaces too! The pros at Davis Kee Outdoor can be hired to perform these services with a pressure washer and ensure that your home’s exterior is optimally cleaned.

Another simple idea is removing clutter from your driveway. Look for a way to get your garbarge and recycling bins out of sight. This could be at the side of your home, or behind a small fence, screen, or bush. Alternately, keeping them in the garage is an alternative.

If you have cracks in your paved surfaces, sealing them up to prevent water damage and unsightly weed growth is recommended and is another way to increase curb appeal.

Don’t forget your windows. Keeping those clean will make them sparkle and significantly enhance your curb appeal. As an added bonus, your outlook from indoors will be much brighter!

Contact Davis Kee Outdoor today for more information about how our services can help you increase the curb appeal of your home.