Hello,

This has been a very fast winter. It won’t be long until we are back out doing our treatments.  

As we head into February, though, let’s talk about tree and shrub fertilization and why it’s a valuable service early in the season before things wake up. Let’s also discuss a couple types of pruning that need to be done over the winter: cutting back your ornamental grasses and up-limbing your deciduous trees.

Good Nutrition = Thriving Landscapes

It’s time to write a Wisdom piece about tree and shrub fertilization—there are many ways to view this practice. I’ll start here by discussing the ones you’ve put in your landscape over the last 3 years, as well as inherited plants you know are suffering.

Plants live at a slower pace than we do, and they have many different life spans. Most survive regardless of space, soil conditions, and food available, but they don’t always thrive. If you intend for your new plantings to grow strong and provide a service to you in your lifetime, we can help.

We use an organic stew full of all the magic bugs your plants need to become healthy. We apply this stew in such a way that it’s available when the plant wakes up in the spring. We have witnessed wonderful changes to new plants in response, and, while stew won’t cure a tree dying from insect damage or disease, excellent nutrition often improves it.  

Sometimes you inherit trees and shrubs in locations where they can’t survive given the space, like a street tree in a berm planting with limited soil. We must make the best of what we are given, however. In these cases, adding nutrition can make the difference between life and death.

Please contact me now so we can price this for you. The window will only last a week or so in March, and we will only sell what can be done in that period. If you miss the spring season, fall will provide another couple-week window.

Time for Pruning

Pruning is one of my favorite subjects, so bear with me.  Most of the discipline will be covered next month, but let’s talk about the ornamental grasses in your landscape now.   

These grasses come in varying sizes. Most are between a couple feet and 10 feet high and are attractive standing in the snow as a winter feature.   

Do we have to do anything?  Not really. If we leave the grass alone, more will grow this summer, and most of what’s there now will become lawn clutter. Don’t like lawn clutter? Me neither. I would rather remove it before it becomes a moving target. Anytime between December and when it becomes lawn litter is a good time. Some of these grasses are tough. A hedge shear or hand pruner should work, but use whatever tool you have on hand that makes the job easy for you.   

Some people say burn the grass down. Then again, people do odd and irrational things every day of their lives. If this isn’t already you, why add a bad habit? Any value from burning is negated by the danger to your home and neighborhood. Don’t be the person you read about in the paper. Just saying. Every year, we see it done.

Up, Up, and Out of Our Way

Now, up-limbing trees. Any of you who know me know I have been bald for more years than I care to remember. Limbs too low on your trees for me to walk under without bleeding are a constant reminder. Up-limbing, in my simple terms, is cutting those limbs off at the trunk. It takes care of the problem.   

You could be shorter than I am, or taller than I am, so pick your height. There is no right and wrong decision. (Remember, limbs weighed down by leaves and/or fruit sag even lower.)

When is too late? Spring is a moving target due to soil temperatures and nighttime hours, but generally you are safe in Morgantown until about the 2nd week of February. You know it’s too late when the maples flow tons of resin on everything and make a mess.

Flattening the Curve

We discussed three topics—fertilizing trees and shrubs, pruning ornamental grasses, and up-limbing deciduous trees—and, as you know, my role has changed. You can talk to me about all three. I will bid and do the fertilization. I will refer the pruning and up-limbing to one of the fine companies I have been mentoring, or an existing peer business.   

Please continue to use me as an adviser and to help you find maintenance help until this vacuum is filled and I am unneeded in those areas. The businesses I have been mentoring will be good, but there is a steep learning curve—the same one I went through 50 years ago. My goal for them is to make the curve easier, but there will be successes and failures outside my control. My goal for my legacy clients is to protect them through this process and simplify the transfer.

As always, I want to thank you for investing the time to read this. It’s humbling when people say such nice things about this effort (scary actually), but it’s part of my job to help all of you understand why things are happening. It isn’t rocket science for sure, but you are busy and you have trusted me to make this understandable.

See you next month,
Jay Benson