Why I Oughta...

Every November, since 2020, we've had a dormant deep-root fertilizer application on all of our trees and shrubs from the team at Davey.  They arrived in mid-November (just like past years) and had enough hose (they had to come back 3x because the hose wasn't long enough) to apply ArborGreenPro to everything in the front and backyard.   Here's 2022 post showing the application .  Does this stuff do anything?  I'm not sure.  But, I'm choosing to believe it does.  But, I'm just *a little* skeptical .   These photos were taken on November 10th - as you can tell based on the foliage and colors. 

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a couple of photos that showed the process of how the arborists at Davey Tree Services are treating our Northern Red Oak trees with a solution to inoculate them against something called the Two-lined Chestnut borer with a deep-soil-injected solution around the footprint of the canopy of the two Oak trees in our backyard.  That's the first application of the season that has been - for the past two seasons - come before the application of a liquid soil-probe-application fertilizer treatment for all our trees and shrubs.   Starting in 2020, we've worked with Davey to apply something called Arbor Green Pro to every tree and shrub in our yard.   Here's the post showing the 2020 treatment in late October . Here's the post showing the 2021 treatment in mid-November . The crew arrived and set up the long hose line from their tanker truck at the curb all the way to the back of the yard.   You can see in the photos that they a...

Like I've done in year's past, I decided to use Jobe's tree spike fertilizer in and around some of our trees in the yard.  These were (surprisingly) hard to find this year - and I ended up buying them online at Home Depot . What struck me was the pretty BIG difference in the quantity of the package that Jobe's has brought to market.   Take a look at the photo in this post showing that they had boxes of 15 spikes last year (2020).  The, flip back here and look at the pile of spikes I bought this season below.  The boxes had just 9 spikes in each box.  I bought four packs of 9 - 36 total spikes for deciduous trees.  And one box of 15 evergreen spikes (below): I used the evergreen spikes around the new Falsecypress tree , the Weeping White Spruce and the hedge of Hicks Yews - where I wasn't able to put down spikes for every shrub.   Same thing on the decidious spikes - even with 36 spikes, I ended up short of feeding all of my planted trees ar...

Putting this post in the [garden diary] so I remember what I did in terms of feeding some of my existing shrubs and flowers in the beds.  First, I fed my Disneyland Roses for the first time this year - using this product from Jobe's below - called Knockout Rose food.  Mine aren't knock-out roses, but this is the only organic Rose food that the Home Depot was carrying when I was there.  I also fed all of my hydrangeas with Hollytone (no photo), but I used the entire bag.  I spread Hollytone around all seven of the Oakleaf Hydrangeas , the one teardown hydrangea and the two early ones ( Tuff Stuff and Everlasting Revolution ) in the backyard.  In the front yard, I hit the pair of Limelights , the four Vanilla Strawberry across the front porch and the one, lone Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea on the other side of the driveway.  Since this stuff is for acid-loving plants, I also put some in/around the pair of Rhododendrons by our back stoop. I also planted some ...

The second step in our process with the arborist from Davey is feeding the trees.  We started with applying growth regulator to the two most vulnerable trees (Norway Maple in Front and Red Oak in back) in late September .   Recently the guys came back out for step two:  applying fertilizer. In Davey's case, it is called Arbor Green Pro - a one year application that they fed to both large Oaks in back and the Maple up front.  Here's the Davey team applying the fert - around the area of the tree canopy.  It was raining, but he still went ahead with injecting it right into the ground.  What is Arbor Green Pro?  From their site :   The description says that it can last 'up to 2 years'.  But, what the guy told me was: every year. We have one more application to just the Oaks before Winter that I'll post about when it occurs.