December 2020 has been full of surprises providing great opportunities for reflection.
Early this month our contracts came out showing how our company will be changing as we move into next year. Then, the weather went from a late, nice green fall to heavy, wet snow. Yes, our shrubs and trees paid a price.
Now, if we are going to have winters again, there is maintenance we need to do to get ready, which we always did, until we got complacent. In the middle of these wonderful gifts from Mother Nature, most of us finished 2020 with another blessing: ticks. Yes, there is a treatment, but not by us. Read on to find out what it is and where to find it.
Preparing for a Real Winter
Weather really is just weather, another part of lives over which we have no control. We have become complacent with our nice weather over the last 10 years.
Following are examples of what we should be doing from our old check list. They come to you with a word of warning: It’s probably too late this winter for any of these at this point.
On tall shrubs, like arborvitae, we used twine to circle the shrub, spiraling up and then down so the heavy snow could not pull the separate branches out and break them. We were then prepared when the snows came, and we knocked it off before the whole shrub collapsed under the weight. We used twine because it would rot and fall to the ground before the next year was over, if we had not removed it before then that is.- For the last three mowings of the year, we reduced the cutting height, starting at 3 ½ inches, then 3 inches, then 2 ½ inches. Why? One problem we had the first 30 years of business was snow mold. We regularly mowed this way and still installed fungicides to protect the grass. There is a lot of information on the Web about snow mold. Hopefully, we will not learn the hard way about it again in the spring.
- We were really anal with our leaf blow outs under the shrubs and trees. Those leaves, covered with snow, create a terrific incubator for bugs and funguses. Snow feels cold to us, but it is an insulator for little critters. They grow in these warm, wet, nutritious conditions almost as well as they do in summer turf.
Ticks and How to Fight Them
I want to use the rest of this newsletter to address another 2020 blessing: ticks.
I asked Mike Spiroff, owner of Tri State Exterminating, about ticks because one of my special clients, Jamie Guttman, was having major problems with them on her new puppy. She also had the misfortune of getting bitten. Following is part of my interview with Mike.
Mike, I have clients with real tick problems this year, and my knowledge dates back to the 90s when we had our hardware store. Other than treating the dog, is there an answer?
Absolutely. We have had excellent results treating properties for ticks so they are controlled before they get on your dog, and then on you. Of course, as in maintaining any pest problem, it's not 100%. A deer can walk through your lawn within an hour, scratch on your favorite shrub, and shake off a couple.
Your client is finding 4 to 6 on her puppy every day. Reasonable success would be reducing that number so her puppy picks up just one every day or so. Seasonally treating her property will also generally lesson the population of fleas.
For most of our pest treatments we can start any time a crisis comes up, no matter the time of year. In this case, though, the snow covering on the ground makes this a not-great time to address ticks. Let’s look forward to spring instead and get serious about addressing the problem as early as we can.
Generally, we treat the whole property with an initial application, and then do so again at the end of the year. We can keep costs in line by doing only the perimeters monthly in between. You have to keep in mind, as with most pest treatments control, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
In December and January what is important is that your clients contact us at our office at Tri State. That way we can be ready to make that first application when winter is over.
I want to thank Mike for giving me his time to help us with this problem. I also talked to him about moles. That interview will appear during the winter when there isn’t much lawn news to talk about.
I also want to thank so many of you for the wonderful thoughts and messages Diane and I have been blessed with. Morgantown has provided us nothing but grace in our time here. I’ll end the year with a hearty thank you! We couldn’t have been us without you!
See you soon in your lawn,
Jay Benson
