Best St. Louis Landscaper Tips for August
The Heat of Summer – Best St. Louis Landscaper Tips
The best weeding advice we could give is to stay on top of them. By weeding for just a few minutes every couple of days, we can save ourselves a back-breaking Saturday afternoon when we’d rather be taking in a ballgame or at the park!
Take a moment in the evening to relish in the beauty of your landscape and while you are there, quickly dig out a few weeds that are trying to creep in or snap off that dandelion seed head before it blows away. Prevention also goes a long way to keep weeds at bay.
Adding a few inches of mulch to your garden beds will smother and kill most weeds. It also has the added bonus of helping the soil to retain moisture on those hot days!
Some plants get a little messy this time of year and tend to shed a few things. Before we even get into the falling leaves of autumn, there are other little messes to clean up. Clip off (‘deadhead’) any spent flowers on shrubs, perennials and annuals that you see.
All of them will look a lot neater for it and will produce more flowers as a result. Just be sure to clip off the entire flower, including any developing seeds. This will encourage bloom production in roses, dahlias, nigellas and more.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to pick up any ripe or rotten fruit that may drop from your (or your neighbor’s) trees. Leaving it on the ground just attracts all kinds of critters and makes quite an unsightly mess. Cleaning them up also keeps the bugs at bay and any seedlings as well!
It’s worth the extra effort to mow a lawn frequently enough to maintain the ideal height. Even during peak growth, you’ll probably only be mowing every five to seven days-at most. Your mowing frequency ultimately depends on your lawn’s ideal height, which varies during the growing season and depends on growing conditions.
In the heat of summer, it’s a good idea to cut your grass a little taller than normal. This helps it retain moisture and stay greener longer. The general rule of thumb for mowing is never to remove more than one-third of total grass blade length at a single cutting. The best way to do this is research your turf’s ideal height and let it grow one third higher before mowing.
If you have some bare spots, now can be a good time to reseed so that new grass has a chance to grow and become established before cold weather hits.
You can fertilize your lawn at this time as well, to give it a boost of growth for the fall. But be careful not to over-fertilize because it can burn your grass, especially in the heat.
At Environmental, we can handle whatever it is you may need in your outdoor spaces here in St. Louis city and county, Jefferson County, St. Charles and St. Peter’s, and the metro Eastern Illinois.
We install plants and shrubs, build decks, make patios and walkways, install low voltage outdoor lighting, and so much more. Give us a call and let us know your needs, and odds are we can help!
Call (636) 225-3848 or send me an email at: tc@envlandscaping.com to learn more. Hope to hear from you sometime soon ~
Tory Catanzaro, Environmental Landscaping
