If you provide tree services, in addition to your lawn care service, it’s time to market your fall tree fertilizing.

You may have some pushback from your customers because any lawn fertilizer you use also feeds the property’s trees. But you can still sell your clients on the benefits of fall tree fertilization to maintain plant health care and longevity.

How to Fertilize Large Trees

While your customers may have some young trees on their grounds, you can educate your clients about fertilizing large trees.

Why? 

Because older trees are more susceptible to disease, dieback, and insect invasions. Plus, hot summers deplete the ground of moisture and available nutrients, leaving these majestic trees nutrient- and water-deprived. 

However, you can demonstrate a tree’s need for root fertilizer injections with a soil test. You collect soil samples around each tree’s root zone and then send them to a lab to get them tested.

The soil test will tell you what nutrients are missing and the pH of the soil. You can treat your customers’ trees with ROOTS Fertilizer for Trees and balance the pH with lime or sulfur. 

You want the soil’s pH to be balanced to uptake the fertilizer into the tree’s root zone and to the rest of the tree.

When you fertilize trees in the fall, you’ll be injecting a mix of water and nutrition through a long tube that’s inserted into the tree’s root zone.

Did you know that you can use half as much water when you do soil injections? Since water is the carrier that mixes with the fertilizer, its job is to move the tree fertilizer to the woody plant’s root zone.

However, you still use the same amount of fertilizer, even though you’re cutting back on H₂O. Yet, you don’t want to cut the water back too far because you could burn the tree’s roots and have a paste that won’t make it through the injector.

At LebanonTurf, we advise only cutting the water in half. And don’t use this formulation when putting down herbicides and pesticides. Instead, read the manufacturer’s instructions when using these products.

Here are five points to remember about using less water when injecting tree fertilizer:

1. Reduce the amount of water you’re using, but still use the same amount of fertilizer.
   
   
2. Reduce the injection volume per hole by the same amount.
   
   
3. Don’t reduce the water too low when using soluble tree fertilizers because it can lead to root burn.
   
   
4. Remember to halve the water amount and not go any further to avoid causing delivery problems.
   
   
5. Always check with your herbicide and pesticide manufacturer before reducing the water in those formulations.

Read more: Fall Fertilizer—No Skipping or Skimping!

Why You Need to Fertilize Trees in the Fall

Like winterizing a lawn, fall fertilizer contains high levels of potassium and phosphorous that hardens off leaf tissues before the first frost.

Tree fertilizers have some nitrogen in them, but it’s a low dose or slow-release N that won’t encourage leaf and twig development at the top of the tree before winter.

Slow-release or low doses of N help the tree to leaf up again in the spring.

Learn more: Fall Overseeding and Aeration Services for Cool Season Lawns—Increase Seeding Success with PennMulch® Seed Accelerator

How to Market Your Tree Fertilization Services

Use your blog and social media to educate your clients about the benefits of fall tree fertilization. Assure your commercial and residential clients that you’ll first assess the tree for any stress or disease and that you’ll test the soil before using any tree fertilizer.

Also, include information about plant health care (PHC) if you provide these services. While many homeowners and property managers may poo-poo tree fertilization, remind them that drought stress, insects, and disease will shorten a tree’s life span—and will cost them money to remove it and buy a new tree.

However, when you put down fertilizer specified for trees, you’re increasing the odds that trees will survive whatever Mother Nature throws their way.

If You Provide Tree Services, You Want to Use LebanonTurf’s ROOTS Tree Fertilizer

If you want humic acid, minerals, and beneficial rhizosphere bacteria in the tree fertilizer you use on customers’ properties, then you need LebanonTurf’s ROOTS Tree Fertilizer, 11-22-22.

ROOTS Fertilizer for Trees has the following six benefits:

1. It’s a water-dispersible fertilizer with NPK, 11-22-22.
   
   
2. Explicitly made for trees.
   
   
3. It’s an all-mineral fertilizer with nutrients ready for uptake. Put down lime or sulfur before injecting the roots to get the soil pH to the right level for uptake.
   
   
4. It contains a combination of .1% Fe (iron) and .05% Mn (manganese) to address micronutrient deficiencies.
   
   
5. It contains beneficial rhizosphere bacteria, sea plant extracts, and humic acids to improve soil and plant health.
   
   
6. Cut the water in half, but still use the same strength of fertilizer.

If you’re ready to up your tree fertilizer game, invest in LebanonTurf’s ROOTS Fertilizer for Trees 11-22-22. Find your local distributor at LebanonTurf’s website to buy this tree fertilizer.

Sources:

TreesAreGood.org, Mature Tree Care, pdf.

Are you marketing your aeration, dethatching, and overseeding services for cool season lawns? 

You should be—September through mid-October marks the season for rejuvenating yards after a hot and dry summer.

You may also be seeding new lawns or renovating them if they’re primarily weeds with little turf.

If you’re providing the above services, then impress your customers with PennMulch® Seed Accelerator by LebanonTurf.

The Best Time to Overseed a Lawn in the Northeast & Northern Part of the U.S.

As you know, September through mid-October is the time to aerate and overseed northern U.S. lawns as well as temperate states that have tall fescue growing in their yards.

Cool season lawns that contain Kentucky bluegrass, fescues, and ryegrass suffer when the temperatures reach past 85ºF and will stay that way until temperatures drop to 80ºF and below. Add in the lack of water, and your client’s lawns start turning brown.

Plus, backyards get a lot of foot traffic from parties, kids playing, and lawn mowers going back and forth.

By September, your customer’s lawns look worn out. So, if you want to upsell your core aeration and overseeding services, it’s good to start now.

You can convince your customers that aeration and overseeding is worth it because

• When you aerate a customer’s lawn, the aerator pulls small plugs of soil so the earth can breathe out carbon dioxide and take in nutrients and oxygen

• Core aeration removes excess thatch that leads to turf diseases

• Core aeration prepares the soil for seed

• Core aeration opens up the soil to help seedling roots develop deep root systems before the winter

• Overseeding covers any bare spots and thin areas, so weeds don’t dominate

• Cool season turf thrives in the colder fall temperatures

• Fall lawn services, including core aeration and overseeding, prepares new grass to develop aboveground before winter sets in.

You can set up your aeration and overseeding services as a la carte services or design a lawn maintenance program that includes these jobs.

Learn more: The Basics of Understanding Mycorrhizae

Mulching after Overseeding

You may typically use hay or straw to cover the area where you planted grass seed. However, would you use a product that works better and cuts costs for you in place of hay and straw?

Then, you need LebanonTurf’s seed accelerator called PennMulch® Seed Accelerator.

Remember, you or your clients must water the newly seeded lawn daily to start the seed accelerator and aid in seed germination.

What Is PennMulch® Seed Accelerator?

PennMulch® Seed Accelerator is a pelleted seed establishment mulch that contains recycled newsprint, starter fertilizer, and Moisture Cell Technology. It’s adaptable to any soil type and establishes a thicker, healthier lawn in one convenient application.

You can use it on residential and commercial properties.

Here are 11 benefits of PennMulch® Seed Accelerator:

1. It’s 100% weed-free.
2. You’ll notice faster, more successful turf seeding.
3. The product costs less overall because it contains fertilizer and mulch.
4. Moisture Cell Technology acts as a tackifier that hydro-bonds for faster germination.
5. You’ll notice fewer dry spots.
6. The paper mulch works as a starter fertilizer.
7. You use your current equipment—no need to buy new spreaders.
8. You don’t need to rake in the seed accelerator.
9. You’ll notice fewer weeds when you use the product.
10. You’ll save money, time, and labor with this product because your customers won’t need to call you back to the site. You get the job done right the first time.
11. You’ll free up your schedule to take on more clients.

Read more: Do You Want to Resuscitate a Stressed Lawn That Looks Dead?

PennMulch® Seed Accelerator Near You

You can find your local PennMulch® Seed Accelerator distributor near you when you plug in your zip code at LebanonTurf.

September is around the corner, and now is the time to market your core aeration and overseeding services.

The title may sound dramatic. But to your lawn care customers, their yards look dead during a drought. Depending on where you live, area municipalities may have enacted water restrictions, making it harder for cool season grasses to look green and lush. So, what do you do when you have angry customers calling you, wondering why their lawns are looking dry and dead?

May and June are the months to add commercial grub control to your clients’ turfgrass—whether that’s a residential property or an HOA, POA, retail center, or office park.
As you know, grubs are now at the top of the soil’s surface, gorging themselves on turf roots while killing the aboveground grass at the same time.
Since curb appeal is the number one priority with homeowners, property managers, and HOA boards, you need a commercial grub control that will feed the soil at the same time.

As the turf begins to wake up this spring, turf managers should begin preparations for controlling all the annual broadleaf weeds that have established over the winter months.