Avoiding Common Summer Landscaping Headaches

July 15, 2021

While spring and fall clean up get the attention as the “high-maintenance” periods of landscaping, there is plenty to address in the summer as well. By summertime, you just want to relax and enjoy your property without putting in the hours of work to avoid landscaping headaches. Once these issues start, they take even more time to remedy, so it’s important to hire the right landscape contractor to tackle them quickly.

Dealing with Issues in Soil

If you notice that your backyard slopes are washing down during summer rainstorms, you need to address it before it gets worse. A dry creek bed, which is simply a gully filled with rocks to direct the water, can work well to control erosion. Having a landscape contractor help you determine the best way to build the dry creek bed is a smart solution.

Some issues with soil, such as areas that are swampy during the rain and crumbly when it’s dry, are due to the makeup of the soil. If your soil has a high clay content, you may need to consult with a drainage consultant for the best ways to work with your soil. French drains, dry creek beds, and even rain gardens can help remedy soggy backyards.

Keep Plants and Bushes Looking Their Best

If you want to keep your plants blooming, you need to make sure you are keeping up with pinching off the dead blooms. If you remove the dead blooms, the plants will focus their energy on making new blooms.

To keep your shrubs and bushes thriving, remember that they need water just as much as your vegetables, flower beds, and grass. When the weather has been dry for a bit, water your shrubs and bushes slow and deep. A soaker hose or irrigation system is optimal to keep shrubs and bushes from drying out during long hot days.

Keeping Up with Weeds and Nuisance Plants

Weeding is no one’s favorite chore. Many homeowners are good about cleaning up their gardens during the spring, but by the summer months, most are fed up with their attempts to keep up with weeds. Unfortunately, weeding is one of those tasks that you simply can’t avoid. If you allow weeds to grow, they’ll form a seed head. Seed heads can contain well over 100 seeds designed to scatter, and that will only multiply your weeding chore. Although weeding is a frustrating, never ending task, you can keep the job manageable by ensuring that you never skip your weeding for long enough to allow weeds to get out of control.

Mushrooms can be just as troublesome as weeds after periods of rain. Mushrooms may not be the prettiest, but they are beneficial to your soil. Ideally, it’s best to make peace with the mushrooms and simply pull them after the rain. However, some homeowners are not enthusiastic about this solution as they worry about children and pets who may want to sample them. If that’s a concern, you can correct the drainage problems and decaying plants that encourage mushrooms to grow. Grind stumps, aerate, dethatch, replace old mulch, and speak to a landscape contractor about a drainage solution for wet areas on your property.

Understand How to Fertilize

If you don’t fertilize enough, your plants won’t grow well. But it’s essential that you know just the right amount of fertilizer. When it comes to fertilizing plants, more isn’t better than less. If you add too much fertilizer, you will actually find fewer blooms on your flowers and fewer vegetables in your garden. When you over-fertilize, plants will begin to create stems and branches, not blooms and vegetables. Too much fertilizer can also burn out shrubs, trees and perennials.

Avoiding these summer headaches can be more work and require more expertise than most homeowners have to work with. In this case, a landscaping service is the perfect solution. A regular landscaping service will understand how to work with your property throughout the entire growing season and can keep your landscaping looking beautiful all year long. Contact Twin Oaks Landscape for more information about our residential landscape services.