How to keep your shrubs healthy and beautiful

Shrubs are attractive, versatile assets to any lawn. They can be used decoration or privacy enhancement. Shrubs need a lot of attention and care if they are to be healthy. With these tips your shrubs can be healthy and beautiful year-round.

Choose Appropriate Sizes

Stuffing areas with too many shrubs can create quite a few problems. When adding shrubs make sure you figure out which style of shrubs you want and how much space they need. Keep in mind the reason you want the shrubs. Choose the shrubs that fit best with their purpose.

Feed and Fertilize

When working with great soil your shrubs may not need supplemental feeding. Some areas have soil that lacks important nutrients, meaning fertilizers is needed for the best growth. Compost is a great fertilizer that will not harm your plants and is completely natural.

Water and Moisture Maintenance

Like other plants used in landscaping, your shrubs need specific watering to thrive. During the first years of a plants growth make sure to water deeply. To make sure that the plant gets the right amount of moisture leave a small puddle at the roots. Once the root systems are established, the plants should be able to get enough water on their own unless the weather is particularly dry.

Trim and Prune

Keeping your hedges neatly trimmed does more than enhance the look of your lawn. Regular pruning promotes plant health by removing dead or diseased branches and stimulating new growth. Flowering shrubs should also produce more blooms when properly tended. Pruning is best done when plants are dormant and haven't begun to put out new spring growth. Trim carefully using hand-held clippers. Remove branches that block paths or obscure the view from the driveway as well as any that look less than healthy.

Trimming and pruning's Tips

When to Prune

• Trim early-spring-flowering shrubs right after they bloom.
• Summer-flowering plants should be clipped in winter or early spring.
• For non-flowering plants, trim after new growth has completely formed.
• You can do light trimming throughout the year.

General Shrub Pruning

Remove growth you don't want, then thin out spots of thick outer cover. The inner limbs need air and sunlight so make sure to cut back new growths or stuff at the plant's base. Trimmers just top the shrub, encouraging new growth near the cut. Cutting farther back will encourage growth along the limb.

Take off any small branches sprouting off the larger ones. Both take nutrients away from the desirable portion of the plant. Remove any dead limbs near the base. If possible, avoid making the top of the shrub wider than the base - you want sunlight to reach the entire plant. Cut only about 1/3 of the shrub each year. The holes you're creating will fill in with new growth, making the plant fuller and stronger.

Hedge And Shrub Trimming Tips

• A hedge trimmer with extended reach and a pivoting cutting head simplifies trimming tall hedges and shrubs as well as hard-to-reach areas of the plant.
• When pruning mature, overgrown shrubs, remove the thickest branches first. Cut them back to the base of the shrub to promote new growth.
• Hand pruners are useful for smaller branches. Some can handle diameters up to an inch, but long-handled loppers give you leverage to cut branches 1 to 2 inches in diameter.
• Cut with the branch deep in the jaws of the pruner or lopper.

Shrub Spraying

One important step to keeping your hedges healthy is getting them sprayed or spraying them yourself. The spray will be either pesticides to keep invasive bugs away from your beauties. There are also fungicides that keep shrub killing diseases away from your plants. Several diseases of trees are treatable with sprays. Fungal diseases of evergreens include tip blight and needlecast diseases. Scab on crabapple trees is also treatable. Most of the leaf fungi (anthracnose, leaf spots and leaf blotches) require no treatment at all. At Integrity Lawn & Ornamental we specialize in this section. We have specially designed sprays to keep local diseases and pest away from your hedges. If you prefer professional help contact us through our website or feel free to call us at (904) 721-0182

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• Ease- We take care of your lawn, so you don't have to.
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Feel free to browse our other blog topics and to browse this site for more ways we can be of assistance to you. Call Integrity Lawn & Ornamental today for a free consultation to help design the perfect personalized program for your lawn care. Or, you may simply fill out the quote request form to get started protecting your home/commercial property today.

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