Second Lawn Fertilizing Application

Guillerme will be accompanying me on the second round of lawn fertilization this time. I will be training him how to apply the fertilizer and also how to use the back pack sprayers to spray crabgrass, which has just started to grow and also to spray the broad leaf weeds in the lawn area.

This is a good trip around our properties because now I can see the fruits of all of our labor during the spring time. All of the grass seed should have come up in the lawns and the new bushes should be growing along with all of the flowers we planted. I will be making notes and reporting back all that I see to Rob.

This year for some reason we are seeing a lot of "Red Thread" in the lawns and this is an indication of a lack of Nitrogen and also too much moisture being present in the lawn. We have been experiencing a lot of rainy days and also a lot of the days there has been no sunshine to dry out the lawn. I am applying a fertilizer 25-0-5 , with 1% iron which should clear up the problem as far as the nitrogen is concerned but Mother Nature will have to supply the sun and warmth.

Plant, Weed and Trim in Wellesley

Today, Guillerme and Wagner came with me as we had a good size project to take care of in Needham. We had to meet Rob there, as he was going to show us, what had to be done. This is one of the first customers of the company and we take good care of her.

Rob had Guillerme and Wagner dig up 2 bushes which did not make it through the winter and plant 2 new Azalea's in their place. They then weeded the bed and planted ..........perry winkle through out the bed for a ground cover.

I was busy trimming the large "weeping cherry" tree by the front walk. This is a beautiful tree and is the center view point of the front yard. This is all hand trimmed in a mushroom shape. After that I went around and hand trimmed every bush in the front yard except for the Rhody's and Yews. Those will be trimmed again later in the season.

Due to the large amount of weeds this project took us all day to finish. Tomorrow Rich and 2 other guys will be finishing up the project with about 6 yards of red pine bark mulch.

Trimming Project in Holliston

I went with Guillerme to trim and weed a property in Holliston today. The property had just been cleaned up and mulched by another landscape company but the owners have us do the other work there.

It is about 4-8 weeks too early to be trimming but that is what this customer wanted to have done so we are making them happy. We wait until most of the new growth for the year has pushed out and also we wait for the bushes to stop their flowering for the year.

Guillerme is new to this process and I am teaching him how to do the trimming as he will be the one to do the "shearing" work when we are in that time of the season. I will be doing all of the hand clipping, which these days is most of the job along with the weeding of the beds.

Working "solo" on "odds and ends" projects today.

Today, I had to do some "solo" work because the other guys were needed on other projects. I went to quite a few properties, that needed to have their bushes and ornamental tree's sprayed with Malathion, because they were being "munched", on by tent caterpillar's. I also was spraying the Illex, Hollies and Boxwood's for the small white flies that appear this time of year. I will have to return to these properties in a couple of weeks and repeat this process.

I also fertilized a few lawns due to the fact that these people had forgotten to ask for it to be done at the beginning of the year. Next week I will be applying the second application of fertilizer to all of our properties.

"Fluff Up", the Property of the President of Olin College

We were off to "Fluff up" the property owned by Olin college and used by the President and his family. They were not home when we arrived around 7:30 AM. This property has to always look it's best because of the people visiting the property to see the President and his wife. His Wife is really into gardening and always has plants or bushes she wants planted.

Rich, Guillerme and I started right in, on the weeding, which at this time of year can get out of control. As the guy's did the weeding around the flowers and bushes by hand, I would trim back any long "flyer's" that had grown on the bushes. We hand weed around, the flowers and bushes and when we get to the larger mulched area's, we use the weed whacker. After it is raked up we spray "Round Up" in the large area's, but nothing is sprayed any where close to the flowers or bushes. We have a special attachment we use on the backpack sprayers that is shaped like a funnel to prevent the "Round Up" from drifting over onto bushes or flowers.

We were just about finished around 4PM when the President and his wife arrived home from a weekend vacation. They were happy to see us and really liked what we had done to the property. And that is all that counts as far as I am concerned. We finished up the weeding and then sprayed the lawn for broad leaf weeds with "Speed Zone", which we have found to be very effective on clover and most broad leaf weeds in the lawn.