Lawn Care, Fertilization & Weed Control

Six rounds, and what each one is for

You get the season’s dates in March, a text the day before we come, and a note after each visit saying what went down and what we noticed. Nothing about the schedule should be a surprise.

• Round 1, early spring — crabgrass pre-emergent down before soil temperatures reach germination, with a light balanced feed to bring the turf out of dormancy.
• Round 2, late spring — the main broadleaf round. Dandelion, clover, plantain and creeping charlie, with slow-release nitrogen behind it.
• Round 3, early summer — a summer-safe feed at a rate that will not burn, plus a second pass on anything the spring round did not take.
• Round 4, midsummer — preventive grub and surface-feeding insect control, timed before the damage shows rather than after you are looking at dead patches.
• Round 5, early fall — the round that matters most in Connecticut. Recovery feeding and the heaviest broadleaf work of the year.
• Round 6, late fall — a winterizer that feeds the roots through dormancy and buys you a faster green-up in April.

Weed control is not an add-on

Broadleaf control goes down on every round that calls for it and it is priced into the program. You will not get a call in June explaining that the dandelions need a separate treatment at ninety dollars a visit.

And if weeds come through between rounds, ring us. We come back out and re-treat, as many times as the season takes. It is covered by what you already paid, so there is no second invoice and no argument about it.

The two rounds most often missed

Two of the six do most of the work, and they are the two a route-driven company is most likely to slide past. The early-spring pre-emergent has a window of maybe ten days in this part of the valley — down late and you spend the summer fighting crabgrass instead of having prevented it.

The early-fall round is the single best feeding opportunity of the year in Connecticut, and it lands right when a lot of companies are winding the season down and pulling crews. Publishing the dates in March is how you can hold us to both of them.

When fertilizer is not the answer

Most thin lawns in this town are not underfed. They are compacted, shaded, mown too short, or planted with the wrong grass for the site, and none of that is fixed by another application. Where compaction is the problem, the answer is core aeration and overseeding in late August.

Where more than about half the stand is weeds, it is usually a renovation. We will tell you that at the estimate rather than sell you another season that was never going to work.