If you have a sprinkler system then you see some of these in your yard. Better yet, I bet you have chopped a few up with the lawn mower or had the dog eat one or two! The are valve covers and are a part of your sprinkler system. The green lid is a top for the total valve box that protects the valve underground. They are very important and you need to make sure they are clear and easy to find. The valve box keeps dirt and other debris from covering the valve up. This matters most when you go to perform maintenance on your sprinkler system. If they are covered up and start to have issues it could get pretty costly trying to use a locator to find them all. We buy ours at Ewing Irrigation & Landscape Supply on Lynbrook Ave. Hope this helps!

Have you ever noticed Indian Hawthorns in your landscape getting very thin and losing all of their leaves?  You may even notice the leafs turning red and orange before they fall off.  Before long the entire plant looks dead and bald.  Chances are your shrubs are suffering from a disease called Leaf Spot.  It’s a fungus that attacks shrubs like hawthorns very hard.  Typically you will first notice dots or spots forming on the leafs then the plant starts to drop all of the leafs.  Once it forms in one plant it will also start to spread to the others nearby as well.  We typically see it in areas where there is excessive moisture or not much air flow.  It also is common in areas where the plants are planted very thick and form a hedge.  The good news is unless you have let the issue go on to long the plants can be treated using a fungicide.  The entire plant and surrounding plants will need to be sprayed at least once and sometimes twice depending on how advanced the issue is.  We also recommend removing all of the affected leaves that have been dropped.  Reducing the amount of water the plants get and allowing them to dry out is also a very good practice.  Here is a link to a effective product we recommend to use if you decide to tackle this project!

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Most people have heard of thatch in your lawn but do you really know what it is?  Basically it is a bunch of dead grass in your yard.  Some thatch is actually a good thing.  When it gets out of control and builds up a super thick layer is when you will start to see issues.  There are several ways you can get an unhealthy layer of thatch.  The most common is allowing the grass to get to0 tall in between the times you cut it.  Most lawns have a mulching mower used to help break down the grass into smaller sections.  This issues start when there is more grass to break down than time will allow.  It’s pretty easy to tell if you have a thatch issue in your lawn.  Is it hard to see the dirt below the grass?  When you walk across the yard does it feel very soft or like a cushion?  If you pull a rake through the yard do a lot of dead grass come to the surface?  These are all simple signs that you may have an issue to address.  When the layer is allowed to get too thick you will start to notice the lawn getting thin.  This thick layer prevents water from getting to the soil where the roots are.  It also makes it hard to fertilizers and other nutrients to get to the ground.  The solution can sometimes be as basic as aerating the lawn.  This can help break down small amounts of thatch.  Other times you need a more aggressive approach like using a power rake or de thatcher.  The de thatcher has several metal “fingers” that run through the grass and pull all of that thatch to the surface.  It usually surprises people when they see the amount of dead grass that gets removed.  We must warn you, don’t try this unless you have a way to haul off an excessive amount of trash and debris.  As you can see in the video there is a lot of old grass that will need to be raked up and thrown away.  If you try to take this on by yourself there are a few places to rent them like Tubbs Hardware in Bossier or Home Depot on Bert Kouns.  Bailey Bark and Material is a good place to consider dumping the trash when the job is done.  Hope this helps!

Each Spring we get calls about peoples sprinkler systems smelling!  Let me explain…during the winter when you winterize your sprinkler system you are actually only draining water from the vacuum breaker.  In a lot of homes there is still water left in the pipes.  It’s been just sitting there stagnate for 4-6 months now and will develop a foul smell.  When you turn your sprinkler system on for the first time it will start to flush all of this water out of the lines and also spread the bad smell.  The good news is it will go away pretty quick.  The bad news is if there was a lot of allege or dirt build up you may need to flush your lines out.  Trash as fine as sand can cause your vales and heads to not function the right way and prevent the sprinkler system from spraying the lawn in the right way.  The easy way to clean these line out would be to remove a nozzle on each zone and let the water flow freely until it becomes clean and clear.

If you start cleaning up your flower beds early this year be careful about trimming certain plants to early. One of those are Loropetalums. This is the purple shrubs you have seen all over town. They have a wispy natural look to them and are very hardy. One benefit is they bloom several small pinkish purple flowers in the Spring. However if you trim them to early you will actually be removing most of these blooms and will not get the full effect. Typically by May they are done blooming and can be cut to shape and size you were hoping for. Hope this helps!