10/26/2019 Halloween Ideas for your LandscapingHalloween night brings plenty of foot traffic to your house, making it one of the best holidays for decorating. It’s also the heart of fall season, which is why so many Rochester homeowners are thrilled to give their yard a festive facelift as soon as October comes. If you’re looking for some Halloween ideas for your landscaping, here are a few tried and true favorites. Countryside Porch The porch is the best place for mums, pumpkins, mums, and other fall goodies. If you’re not the one who likes goblins and ghosts, an old-school country porch is an excellent way to ring in the fall season. Your decorations will be right until Thanksgiving. Keep your pumpkins upright on your porch using mulch. You can find mulch at any stump grinding business. Spooky The best Halloween decorations don’t have to be the scariest. Keep your props lighthearted and cute, instead of putting the highlight on fall annuals and a bright green lawn, with your house as the centerpiece. Halloween Scene If you’re going to go all out for Halloween, have a good time. Don’t stop at just decorations. Picture your yard as a blank canvas to produce an entire Halloween landscape. The more you can pull everything together, the more exciting your final presentation. Pathway to Patio If you have a patio or backyard, you can imitate a haunted house with a dimly lit path with scary surprises. Safe by the Fire There’s no better time than now to have a fire pit built so you can enjoy it through the cold months. Contact a local stump removal company if you want help getting wood for your fire. Most significantly, have fun and don’t forget to get lots of candy and goodies for the trick-or-treaters. There are lots of fun ways to assimilate some spooky ideas into your landscape. From witches to ghosts to skeletons, there are plenty of ways to have some fun with your outdoor space while delivering some frightening fun. Regardless of how old you are, Halloween decorations can help you make the most of your landscape. If you want to get trick-or-treaters to come by, you want your outdoor space to catch everyone’s attention. People love a good scare this time of year. 10/19/2019 Improving the Clay Soil in Your YardIf your yard has heavy clay soil, you understand what a challenge it can be for plants. Heavy clay drains gradually. This means it remains wet longer after rain. When the sun dries the soil, it forms a hard surface. Below are some ideas about improving the clay soil in your yard. On the positive side, clay soil has more minerals than sandy soil. And clay's inclination to hold water can be an advantage. Healthy soil possesses clay particles, sand, and silt. Heavy soil has too many particles and not enough sand or silt to give plants the nutrients and moisture they need to grow. Soils with too much clay in them get waterlogged when wet, choking out the oxygen to plant roots. When dry, it compacts easily, stopping roots from getting into the soil and withstanding drainage. Amending the soil correctly enhances texture and reinforces plant growth. Improve Your Clay Soil Dig the soil and do a soil test to get the pH and nutrient level of the soil. Spread some compost over the soil and work it in with a spade or garden fork, breaking up any chunks of clay. Put on another layer of organic matter, including fertilizer and work the mixture into the soil with a spade. Turn the soil until the compost is distributed evenly. Rake the area smooth and plant according to the spacing and depth for the specific plant. Construct raised beds. Since clay soils hold water, build raised beds can help perfect drainage by making the water runoff. Raised beds can be just a pile of dirt or can be made out of stone, wood, or brick. To reduce compaction, measure the beds so you can get to the middle without walking on the bed. Mulch beds over the wintertime. Heavy rain hardens bare soil. So, beds should be applied with eco-green mulch both in the winter and the growing season. You can get organic mulch from a stump grinding business. Putting some straw over the beds will reduce erosion and safeguard the soil from compaction. It can also aid in reducing weed growth. 10/12/2019 Common Diseases of the Ficus TreeFicus trees are grown for their fantastic foliage and are standard houseplants. The species include the Weeping Fig, Fiddleleaf Fig, and the Rubber Tree. Ficus trees are simple to maintain. Avoid over watering or wetting the leaves to help stop diseases. Below are some of the common diseases of the ficus tree. Fungal Leaf Spots Ficus trees that are set outside during warm weather could develop fungal leaf spots, but they never happen inside. Leaf spots usually aren’t harmful, though they affect the look of infested trees. Care for leaf spots with a fungicide particularly for ficus trees. Anthracnose created by Glomerella fungi or Colletotrichum darken yellow spots to brown and produces hordes of spores. Botrytis blight creates large brown or tan spots with concentric rings and multitudes of fuzzy gray spores. Little raised red or dark green spots on the bottom part of the leaves are symptoms of Cercospora leaf spot. These spots emerge on young leaves as red spots. Fungal Diseases Many other fungal diseases influence ficus trees. Twig blight makes small twigs turn brown and die. Twig cankers produced by fungi are lesions that can encircle and destroy the infested limbs. Trim and extinguish infected plant material to stop the spread of disease. The fungus Sclerotium rolfsii produces Southern blight. Loads of white cottony mycelium develop on the leaves and stems of infected plants and make them die. There is no treatment or for Southern blight. Infected trees have to be destroyed. Contact a tree and stump removal company to get rid of the diseased tree. Bacterial Diseases These maladies are deadly to ficus trees. Galls on ficus trees are created by Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Swollen areas on infected stem, roots, or develop and get corky. No chemical control will work. Affected trees have to be destroyed to stop the spread of infection. Xanthomonas leaf spot starts as little water-soaked spots on the tree. The spots multiply and might produce yellow margins. Using bactericides according to the manufacturer’s instructions can stop Xanthomonas leaf spots. Infected trees and their stumps have to be cut down so the disease won’t spread in your lawn. 10/5/2019 How can I get my Magnolia Tree to Bloom?Magnolias are a desired tree among many gardeners. They are simple to maintain, needing just a good start in most cases to thrive into a self-sustaining, healthy tree. Though, magnolias have been known in some cases to have a hard time flowering. There are many things to consider when you want your magnolia tree to bloom. If your tree isn’t growing, there are reasons you can explore that may help the tree start to grow once again. If your magnolia tree hasn’t ever bloomed, you may be in for a long wait. Magnolia trees are grown from seeds that could take up to 20 years to bloom. It will probably be close to three years after planting before the roots are set enough for the tree to flourish. Verify Your Variety Flowers are a fragment of the reproductive cycle of plants. Based on the variety and type of plant, flowers come forth at various times of the year according to the climate. Magnolia trees early-blooming happens in late February or March. As such, it can be vulnerable to harmful late frosts that can disturb flower blooming. Test the Soil Nitrogen-rich soil assists magnolia trees in producing beautiful vegetation but could constrain the number of blooms the tree makes. You can call your local tree care and stump removal service business to test the soil and decide whether you have too much nitrogen. You may need a more significant amount of phosphorus or other nutrients that will invigorate the roots and help the magnolia tree to develop more flowers. Feed the roots by creating some deep holes near the drip line of the tree. Put the holes at least six inches apart. You can make the holes with a crowbar, and they have to be big enough to add the nutrients. Add phosphate to the holes. You also can use the holes to put in any other micronutrients that are suggested based on the outcome of your soil test. Eliminate any barriers that could block the magnolia tree’s sun. Magnolias require at least six hours of full sun every day to get to their full potential. Contact Rochester Stump removal if you have any questions about the health of your trees. |
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December 2020
CategoriesAll Insects & Diseases Questions & Answers Tools & Safety Trees & Landscaping Tree Stump Basics |