30 October 15, 2008

>Over the past week, I have talked to many people about a problem that they are having with their arborvitaes. The shrubs are turning yellow on the inside of the branches. After the needles yellow, they drop onto the ground.  In most cases, this is a normal part of the fall season. All of your needled evergreens tend to drop needles all season long. In the fall, they tend to drop many more needles. It is natures way of thinning out the branches so that there is less needles to deal with dry winds and less needles to get covered with heavy snows. If you take a look in your yard, you will notice that the white pine trees are dropping many needles too. Hopefully, this is not Mother Natures’ way of telling us we are in for a snowy winter.

If you seeded your lawn this fall, you will probably need to apply a crabgrass preventer in the spring. Keep in mind that any lawn that is seeded in the fall, needs to have  a spring seeding crabgrass control used rather than the normal Step 1 crabgrass control. If you have seeded in the fall and you use a Step 1 in the spring, you will damage the grass.

We have seen an increase in the number of cases of grubs destroying lawns. You probably should apply either an organic grub control or a contact insecticide to control grubs in your lawn.

As those leaves fall off the trees, you should get them raked up as soon as possible. Leaves left on the lawn for long periods of time can cause grass to die out. Besides, it is better to spend a little time each weekend removing leaves rather than devoting a entire weekend to lugging leaves.
If you have a corner of your yard that you can pile up those leaves, you can turn them into a nice compost by spring if you use a compost activator. What you want to do is create a 6 inch deep pile of leaves. Sprinkle some lime in the pile and then some of the compost activator. Add another 6 inch layer and then add more lime and compost activator.  Making 6 inch layer allows the compost activator to speed up the decomposition of the leaves. By spring, you should have some nice compost to add to your gardens.

Once you get your annual and perennial flower beds cleaned up, you should take some time to plant a few of the spring flowering bulbs. Nothing says spring like having some crocus and daffodils blooming in your gardens.

Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll talk to you again next week.