| Lawn and shrubs |
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You may walk outside your home or business and notice on your plants that there is a black coating on the leaves. This is called sooty mold. You may suspect this is some form of fungus, but it is not. This shows that there is some type of pest infestation on your plants, which needs to be addressed. Another issue that the owner of the home or business may come across is a discoloring of the plant leaves. This could be the onset of a disease through lack of proper fertilization. Ixoras will be one of your first shrubs to show this stress. As many of you may know, lately there has been a problem that has voraciously attacked hibiscus bushes. This problem is a pink mealybug. Premier Pest Management is on top of this issue and has a systemic insecticide which will cure this situation. Every three months, Premier Pest Management recommends lawns, shrubs, and palms to be fertilized with a premium blend of slow-release fertilizers, which are better for the environment. In the cooler months, lawns will be fertilized with a 20-2-10 blend. In the warmer months, this will be switched to a lower nitrogen blend of 9-2-24. Both of these blends have a high iron content to ensure your lawn will stay lush and green along with other minor nutrients in them. Throughout the year for shrubs, premium fertlizers will be applied to help ensure flowering shrubs bloom properly and non-flowering shrubs stay healthy. This prevents discoloration as mentioned above. For palms, we will apply a 12-2-14 blend of fertlizers that has a higher manganese and magnesium content, which palms need for healthy growth. You may have noticed from looking at some of your palms that they may have a frizzled appearance on them. This is called frizzle top and can be addressed by adding a supplement treatment of manganese and magnesium to the palm as needed. If lawn or shrubs are not looking desirably healthy, then Premier Pest Management will be more than happy to take soil samples and send them to a lab for analysis. This will tell us what additional measures need to be taken to correct the problem. There will be a small nominal fee to cover the cost of the lab work. You may have walked out into your lawn and noticed a black looking area, this is called slime mold. It is usually found in soil, lawns, and the forest floor, commonly on logs. There is no need to worry about this, as it presents no threat to your lawn. Big-eyed bugs are small insects (approximately 1/6 inch long). They are generally regarded as beneficial because they prey upon numerous kinds of insect and mite pests of turf, ornamental and agricultural crops. Please do not confuse these with chinch bugs. |
