Is this serious stuff? Sure, probably the most important decisions you make besides who you marry, what to name your kids, what kind of dog to get, full size sheets of paper towels or the pick a size…… But seriously folks, there are a few very simple things that you can do to not only enhance the look of your landscape but to insure the quality and health of it. Yes, the right answer would be to fertilize it.
One would only need to do this once a year if done properly and if the plant material in the landscape did not meet with some type of stress during the season ( i.e. insects, disease, root issues, lack of water, lack of color, improper pruning technique). If a plant or plants are stressed out, then another round of fertilization would be beneficial. Now where to get the fertilizer and how is it applied. Very simply you can get it at any home center or right here at this blog on the wheel of goodies you see to the right. I have made an entire wheel of things that could help you this time of year. For the trees and shrubs, pick up some fertilizer spikes, use a hammer, and put those bad boys right along the drip zone of the plant material. The drip zone is the area that the water would fall around the plant from the foliage or canopy of the plant. The roots should extend out from the trunk of base of the plant to that area. Follow the instructions on the container of the spikes as to how far apart they should be placed.
Benefits you will receive from fertilizing the plant material are: A better color and luster to the foliage (It should be a deeper green. Pale yellow or faded green is not the indicator of a healthy plant.), increased ability to handle insect & disease damage, thicker branches, better pop to your buds, able to handle drought like conditions better, and a stronger thicker root system. What you don’t want to do is over stimulate the plant material by giving them too much of a good thing and fertilizing them too much, like possibly twice a year after the first year. I can buy into a spring/ fall type thing in year one, or fall/ spring combo, but I would only do it once a year after that. The reason being is that you get increased growth from the plant, this makes you maintain it more (pruning hedges or shrubs, trees getting gangly and misshapen, etc.) The idea is not to do that but to protect and maintain a healthy plant.
The best results you can gain is to reach a point where all your plant stock in the landscape looks uniformly green and healthy, the growth habits are under control and held to a minimum, and that doing anymore would be pointless. That would be achieving success and peace of mind. Go through your landscape and look at the leaves of the shrubs and trees (those that aren’t turning colors, there probably aren’t many), and make an assessment of the percentage that is not a deeper green and could use some help. Is it 10%, 20% or is it more. I think you would be surprised. The cost to fertilize them is so small in comparison to the investment you have in the plant material; it is not even funny. A total no brainer.
Next post is Friday and I will be discussing the theory behind the final cut of the mowing season, so don’t cut the grass this week till you read it. I look forward to the questions that you send me, they are pretty good and right on the mark, keep them coming. Remember we are the guests over at Gelati’s Scoop. Giovanni Gelati has been nice enough to ask us to pop in a post over there, and I have a little something special for the G-man . See you there : http://www.gelatisscoop.blogspot.com
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