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New home owner needs help with yard and landcaping.
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Posted by dozerboy East Texas (My Page) on Sun, Aug 17, 08 at 20:21
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RE: New home owner needs help with yard and landcaping.
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Hi dozerboy, let me see if I can help a little. First things first, don't panic, and don't start fertilizing and all just yet. My advice would be to find your local county agent office, or your local university agricultural extension service, which generally have a branch dealing with helping homeowners with their landscape concerns and veggie/fruit growing. If you read a Scott's lawn book, or even talk to a local garden center, in my opinion, they will try to sell you a product or a system, not necessarily out of a malicious intent, but feeling the customer wants a quick fix. I'm not sure exactly where you are and what zone, and your climatic conditions, becoz Texas is a BIG state, but in lots of the south, the grass is winding down now and should not be fertilized. Sometimes it is a good idea to "winterize" your lawn to get it ready for the cold season, and I beleive it helps the roots, but not a fertilizer for top growth. Your county agent will know this and the exact time for you to do this. And when to fertilize next season, and probably several times in the growing part of the season. Actually your lawn doesn't look real bad to me. You sort of have to decide if you are going to do a program of lawn care with these winterizers, fertilizers, and herbicides for weed control, or go organic (which is what I recommend). Visit the other forums like lawn/turf and organic lawn. Don't be in a hurry. As to the oak trees, they are very young and look good to me. The white stuff is probably lichen and is probably not a problem, the little balls are probably galls and probably ok too, the tumbleweed stuff looks like spanish moss to me, not a problem at all, and usually desirable and attractive on oaks in the south, but you could have mistletoe which is not a good thing, a definite parasite. I would again recommend you share the pics with a county agent type person familiar with your area of Texas. You may want to remove the tree rings and just use some mulch, and realize that most lawns will not grow well in shade, as the trees mature. You will most likely need to grow a ground cover or other shade plant under there in years to come, again not something to worry about right now. May I suggest visiting the Renegade Gardener website (just do a search) and he has some funny and helpful landscape tips. Ok, the shrubs look like ligustrum (the large ones), maybe some little hollies or boxwood and liriope (the grassy one). I would just remove the yellowing leaves. I would water when there hasn't been a good rain in a week, I would deep water at the roots. I would watch the drainage, does it drain well or stay wet. I would go organic, adding compost, and keeping it mulched. I am not an horticulturist, botanist, or expert by any means, just a gardener x 26 years. Hope some of this is helpful to you.
Laurie in north Mississippi, formerly New Orleans |
RE: New home owner needs help with yard and landcaping.
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| Thanks for the tips my big concern was the tree after 1/4 of my yard just died during a hot spell thanks to the grub damage. I know it took 5 year of neglect from the previous owner to get the yard in the shape it is now, so I expect it will take some time to get it back in to shape. |
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