Are you worried about the heat taking its toll on your trees, lawn, and shrubs? Let us help you take all the necessary steps to ensure a healthy yard.
When extreme heat and or drought sets in, make sure your bushes, ornamental trees, shade trees and evergreens get a deep soaking. Through extended periods of drought, they should be soaked weekly. Large shade trees require a tremendous amount of water to keep a large leaf canopy alive, so they will be drawing every bit of water from the soil in a very large surrounding area. This will very quickly deplete the soil of water normally shared by surrounding plants and turf. To deep soak trees and shrubs, place a hose near the base of the trunk and run at a slow trickle for several hours. A gushing hose will put more water in the soil very quickly, but it will usually run off or spread rather than soak deep to reach where the major tree roots are.
Large evergreens are very susceptible to stress during drought and extreme heat. Although their needles do not require quite as much water as leafy deciduous canopies, they typically have very shallow roots. Since the top few inches of soil will dry out very quickly, most of their roots have no access to water. The evergreen will eventually start dropping needles to survive. Many evergreens will be unable to regenerate needles even after drought recovery and you will be left with some bare limbs that will need to be removed. If the evergreen is young enough you may be able to allow tip growth to “cover” the bare limbs, but a mature evergreen never seems to generate enough new growth to cover the bare limbs. Evergreens can be soaked in a wide surrounding area with a stationary or fixed sprinkler (not oscillating or pulsating) that sends out a small fan or fountain of water. These will soak a wider area than a trickling hose for the shallower evergreen roots. Move the sprinkler around the evergreen to soak the entire root area, allowing it to run up to an hour in each position.
Richland can have some pretty high temperatures during the summer. Let Top Tree LLC show you how to keep your trees healthy during the hot summer months.