Easy Tips For Keeping Your Home Landscape Maintenance On Schedule
For all of you do-it-yourselfers, out hats are off to you. Keeping up with all of the tasks involved in home landscape maintenance is a big undertaking. But, if that is what you are committed to, we offer the following tips to help make it easier.
Keep It Simple
Elaborate landscapes can be stunning but what good are they if you do not have the time to maintain them. Less elaborate landscapes can also be quite beautiful, and far less demanding from a landscape maintenance standpoint. There is no reason one cannot have all the features of a grand landscape; form, texture, interest and color, without the headaches. Using the right plant in the right place is the first place to start. Using plants that mature as close as possible to the desired size, choosing the correct plants for the light exposure, and making sure that soil moisture (too much or too little) is adequate for the chosen plants are all things to consider when making selections. Getting these cultural factors right are the first step to reducing time spent on home landscape maintenance.
Stay Ahead Of The Weeds
Weeds are the one plant you can always count on to thrive in your garden. What is the best way to keep them from taking over? Stay on top of pulling them. It is far easy and less disruptive to pull weeds when they are small and have not yet developed a solid root system. The older the weed, the more established the root system and the harder it is to fully remove them. Many weeds will re-grow from snapped off roots left in the ground. Devote a little time each week to walking around your gardens and removing small weeds that have grown since the last visit.
Hand Prune vs. Shearing
Believe it or not, hand pruning shrubs can often be faster than pruning with shears. This is because when you hand prune, you may only be triggering one node (the place on a branch where new leaves and shoots can grow from) versus triggering many nodes when shear pruning. The more nodes that are triggered, the more growth likely to occur after pruning.
The other reason hand pruning takes less time is that there is less clean up work to do afterwards. Leaving dead debris on plants or on the ground provides a starting point for insects and fungal diseases from which to attack your plants. Hand pruning only results in minimal debris which can easily be tossed onto a tarp or into a waiting 
wheelbarrow. Shear pruning produces much debris which must be raked out of the plant and off the ground under the plan. Much more work.
Inspect Often
Taking a close look at your plants often can head off damage and work later. Examining for insects pests and fungal diseases, and catching them early, means less work later. Catching problems early and treating them results in less replacement work down the road.
Use Ground Covers
It takes a lot of work to mulch a garden bed every year and keep it weed free throughout the season. One solution to this is to plant ground cover plants where possible. Ground covers naturally spread to cover wide areas, meaning less space that needs to be mulched each year. Ground covers also grow into a thick mass of plants, squeezing out space weeds could grow in. Some favorite ground cover plants include Pachysandra, Periwinkle, Blue Rug Juniper and Liriope.
If you ever find that home landscape maintenance is just too much work and you only want to enjoy your landscape, give Allentuck Landscaping Company a call. We have several home landscape maintenance programs to choose from.
Allentuck Landscaping Co. is Your Residential Landscape Company
Phone: 301-515-1900 Email: info@allentucklandscaping.com
At Allentuck Landscaping Company, our mission is to create beautiful environments for people to enjoy. We see landscaping as a way to improve people’s lives.
The Allentuck Landscaping Company team has been a leading landscape company in Montgomery County, Maryland for over 28 years with our turnkey approach to landscape design, installation, construction and maintenance. Most companies try to serve many types of customers at the same time; homeowners, shopping centers, office buildings and the list goes on. At Allentuck Landscaping Co., we focus on one customer, you, the homeowner. We have a singular focus on bringing you the best landscape practices, the best customer service, and the best value for your home.
Services Provide – Master Landscape Plans, Complete Maintenance Programs, Plantings, Patios, Walkways, Retaining Walls, Water Features, Outdoor Lighting, Outdoor Kitchens, Trellises & Pergolas, Irrigation Systems, Drainage Solutions, Grading & Sodding. Fire Pits & Fire Places, Spring Clean Ups, Decks, Fences, Mosquito & Tick Control, Deer Control.
Areas Served – Chevy Chase, Bethesda, Potomac, Rockville, North Potomac, Darnestown, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Damascus, Boyds, Clarksburg, Ijamsville, Urbana, Frederick in Maryland and Washington DC.