Tag Archives: lawn care

Fall Landscaping for Spring Beauty

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Autumn is here! Yet, with plenty of fantastic fall days still ahead, now is a great time to tackle a few easy tasks that will elevate your backyard and outdoor patio landscaping for seasons to come. In fact, fall is a key season for yard maintenance, setting the stage for a lush and vibrant landscape come spring. Read on to discover our top recommendations for creating a beautiful spring landscape through fall preparation:

Raking Leaves in Phases

One of the most obvious and necessary tasks in fall landscape maintenance is raking leaves. While it may seem like a purely aesthetic endeavor, there is more to it than meets the eye. When leaves accumulate on your lawn, they block sunlight, hindering photosynthesis in the grass and depriving it of oxygen and sunlight. This weakens your grass and can lead to flooding, fungal issues, or pests. We recommend raking and removing your leaves in phases through the season, allowing your lawn to dry out and absorb sunlight as much as possible.

Lawn Aeration

Fall is an ideal time to aerate your lawn. Aerating involves perforating the soil with holes to allow better air, water, and nutrient penetration. It also helps break up compacted soil, improving root growth and overall grass health. Here in Wisconsin, where the ground can become compacted from heavy winter snow and foot traffic, aeration is crucial. It’s like giving your lawn a breath of fresh air, ensuring it can absorb nutrients effectively and withstand the harsh winter conditions.

Our team begins lawn aerations in mid October as part of our fall cleanup process to ensure the healthiest lawn conditions moving into the winter season. If you have questions or are interested in these services, please reach out to our team!

Lawn Overseeding

Fall is an excellent time for overseeding your lawn.  Seeding now helps to repair any damaged areas and allows grass seeds to establish strong root systems before winter. These roots will continue to grow even in cold temperatures, ensuring a robust and healthy lawn come spring.

Planting Perennials, Shrubs, and Trees

Believe it or not, fall is also an ideal time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees. The soil is still warm, providing an opportunity for roots to establish before winter.  Additionally, planting in fall puts less stress on the plants compared to the heat and drier conditions of summer.  This reduces the risk of transplant shock and provides a gentler transition for the plants. If you have spring-blooming perennials that need splitting before next season, now is also a great time for dividing and transplanting. By splitting them now, when they aren’t blooming, all of the plant’s energy can go toward root and leaf growth.

Visit our Appleton nursery for a selection of perennials, shrubs, and trees to complete your garden and landscape design this fall.  Just make sure to continue watering until the ground freezes, or as we like to say, “Put them to bed with their feet wet”! 

Pruning

We recommend waiting to prune trees, shrubs, and roses until they are fully dormant, preferably late winter for most. Perennials like hostas and daylilies, however, can be trimmed back as long as their bloom cycle is complete. When cutting perennials back, be sure to hedge trim all foliage down to 3″ – 5″ above the soil, using a sharp set of pruners. Keeping a few inches of foliage above the soil will help insulate the roots during the winter months, and will help you locate the plant in the spring, preventing possible damage from spring yard work or mulching. As you work through fall landscaping, though, keep in mind that overwintering the foliage of some perennials like grasses, coneflowers, and black-eyed susans can actually provide food and shelter for birds during the winter months. These perennials can be cut back and cleared during early spring bed work.

The season may be winding down, but the effort you put into your fall yard maintenance will be rewarded with a lush and vibrant outdoor space come spring.  Embrace the fall season and watch your landscape flourish in the seasons to come!

As always, our team of dedicated horticulturists, designers, and gardening specialists are here to help you with any questions or concerns you may have. Reach out to us at 920.788.6344 or stop into our garden center; we’ll be happy to help you on the way to a healthy, successful landscape this season!

5 Common Questions from Spring Gardeners

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The snow has finally melted, those first few signs of growth are peeking out of the planting beds, and the sun is warming up a little more with each passing day. Many of us are starting back in on lawn and landscape care, hoping to nip last year’s problems in the bud, and setting sights on improvements for the coming season. Here at our garden center, we receive many questions and concerns this time of year, and strive to help you build a backyard you’re confident in and comfortable with. Here are a few of our most common spring inquiries and the solutions we recommend:

  1. I had dandelions and crabgrass in my lawn last year. What do I need to do this year to prevent them?

For crabgrass, the best way to avoid a recurrence this year is to apply a preventive herbicide prior to May 10. We use a fertilizer with an herbicide built in as our first step in our lawn care program. Thus, you take care of two early lawn needs at the same time. For dandelions, you need to wait until they begin growth in spring to kill them. Although there are lawn fertilizers with broadleaf weed killers built in, the best way to control them is to use a liquid application of broadleaf herbicide. This does a better job of coating the weed and allows more of the active ingredient to be taken up by the weed to kill it.

2. When can I begin planting my garden?

Wisconsin weather can be very unpredictable in any season, especially spring. (And definitely this year!). For most plantings, you need to know the average last frost date. In the Fox Cities area our average “Last Frost Date” is May 27. If you want to take your chances, the “Typical Last Frost Date” (when you still have a 30% chance of getting hit by frost) is May 10. That said, we normally recommend most plantings of frost-sensitive plants such as annuals, tender perennials, vegetable plants, and seedlings be made after Mother’s Day. Cool season vegetables and annuals can generally be planted out sooner, though; these would include broccoli, lettuce, parsley, carrots, beets, leaf lettuce, radishes, and even peas! Please note, you may have to cover or take in plants showing lush growth if heavier frosts are predicted.

3. My soil is hard. What can I do?

Add compost to your soil and till or work it in to a depth of 6 to 8 inches to provide nutrients and better soil structure. This can be done a couple of times a year. Also, covering your vegetable gardens in the late fall/early winter with compost, straw, or chopped leaves will help prevent hard soils the following spring.

4. When potting planters for yard accents, what are the best tips for success?

Make sure your pot allows room for plants to breathe; that is, allows water and air exchange in some way either through its sides, bottom, or both. Drainage holes are very important. Add compost or worm castings to your potting mix for extra organic nutrients in your soil, which will help fuel your plants to produce more blooms or fruit. Know the plants that you want to use and place plants with similar needs together. In other words, don’t put plants that prefer moist soils with plants that prefer it dry, or shade plants mixed with sun-lovers. Finally, make sure that your overall soil level is a couple of inches below the rim of the planter, allowing room for water to soak in (and not run all over your patio!).

5. What is the best way to clean up my lawn in spring, and when should I start mowing?

Assess if your lawn needs to be dethatched. We don’t recommend dethatching if the thatch layer is less than 1/2″ thick. In fact, those thatch levels are beneficial to your lawn: they act like a mulch to conserve moisture and temperature, and aid in root development. Thatch layers over 1″ aren’t good for your lawn, though, as they block water and fertilizer from reaching roots, resulting in drought stress and lawn disease. If you do need to dethatch or rake your lawn, do so as weather conditions permit. Raking when lawns are too wet will result in pulling out large amounts of roots and live grass parts. As you assess the state of your lawn, know that now is a great time to reseed or sod lawn areas injured by the winter, too.

Do not mow the lawn until it has grown at least 2 inches.  The roots are being renewed in the spring and grass needs vigorous initial top-growth for a healthy season.

As always, our team of dedicated horticulturists, designers, and gardening specialists are here to help you with any questions or concerns you may have. Reach out to us at 920.788.6344 or stop in to our garden center; we’ll be happy to help you on the way to a healthy, successful landscape this season!

Why the Lawn Face? Fun Facts and Lawn Care Tips

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April is National Lawn Care Month and we want to share 10 fun facts and 10 fun tips about lawns and caring for them. With these facts you will not only appreciate your lawn more, but also learn how to take your lawn game to the next level. No more lawn face, it is time for your lawn to show that fresh cut, pearly green smile. 

Fun Facts About Your Lawn

  1. A 50×50 foot area of healthy lawn generates enough oxygen to supply a family of four.
  2. Lawns are 3x more productive at producing oxygen than trees. 
  3. 1 acre of grass produces more oxygen than 1 acre of rainforest.
  4. Using turf instead of concrete on road embankments reduces traffic noise by 200%.
  5. Eight healthy lawns have a cooling effect similar to air conditioning needed to cool 16 homes.
  6. There are about 10,000 different species of grass worldwide.
  7. Lawns trap about 12 million tons of dust annually.
  8. Lawns reduce runoff, the average golf course receiving one inch of rain absorbs 4 million gallons of water.
  9. Well maintained turf grass can increase the property value of a home by 15-20%.
  10. Various species of grass are found in bread, whiskey, and beer, some of our favorite things!

Lawn Care Tips

  1. Make sure your mower blades are sharp. Sharp blades prevent the grass from tearing which can result in brown tips 
  2. Aerate! Compacted grass does not grow well. You can even use a garden fork by pushing it into the grass about 3-4 inches and gently rocking it back and forth. 
  3. Smart irrigation saves about 15-20% on your water bill and has sensors that determine how much water your lawn actually needs.
  4. Water in the morning or later in the evening. This helps prevent large amounts of water from evaporating.
  5. Different species of grass have different needs. Talk to a professional to ensure you are using the right fertilizer, at the right time, in the right amounts. Do not over apply fertilizer and pesticides!
  6. Leave your lawn longer in the summer (~3.5 inches when cut) to help prevent drought. 
  7. Cut your lawn short before the winter to prevent vole/mice damage (~2 inches).
  8. Fertilize when rain is in the forecast or water in your fertilizer so it gets down to the roots.
  9. Thatching your lawn pulls out valuable organic matter and is not recommended except for in extreme cases.
  10. The best time to sow grass seed is late summer to early fall when the temperature is more consistent and many competitive weeds are at the end of their life cycle.

 Give Vande Hey Company a call today to set up your lawn care package! With our help there will be no more lawn faces, only pearly green smiles you can show off to your neighbors.

Sources: Vande Hey Company Professionals, National Association of Landscape Professionals, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension, International Society of Agriculture