Shopping List

Here we are, another spring in the Lowcountry is about to explode. Are you ready? Do you have a plan for the maintenance of your landscape? Did any plant or tree give you a hard time last year with a black, sticky, unsightly film covering your porch, sidewalk, or driveway? Did you have patches of dead areas in your turf this fall and winter? Did you do any soil testing? Were you happy with the way your lawn looked? Was your spouse?

Do you have weeds in your turf and beds? Moles? Has your landscape matured and it is time to make some changes? Are you going to grow any edibles?

Here is a shopping list of products that will help you get your landscape on the right track. As always, if you do not have the time or would rather spend your time doing other things, there are many landscape professionals in the area.

1. SeaHume - put it out wall to wall in your landscape now. SeaHume is a natural organic product and is completely non-toxic to humans, animals, and fish. This seaweed and humic acid product packs a big punch, and will increase root formation, increase vascular strength, chelates nutrients in the soil making them available to the plant, promotes green color, feeds microorganisms in the soil, is loaded with bio stimulants and carbon and reduces stress on turf, ornamentals, and edible plants.
2. Dominion Drench will give you season long control of those nasty aphids, white flies, scale and other insects that poop all over your porch, sidewalk, or driveway. By controlling the insect, the black sooty mold will not be a problem. The older variety of crepe myrtles are famous for getting aphids and turning whatever is under them black. Gardenias are known to get white flies and have this situation. Easily controlled with Dominion.
3. Neem Oil has replaced horticultural (Volck for the old school gardeners) oil for me. Neem oil controls everything horticultural oil does and it also controls several common fungi. Neem oil is organic and very safe and inexpensive. Neem oil is a great preventive and curative product for many insects and disease. Get it out now and be ahead of the game.
4. Preemergent herbicides for turf and beds. You 25 year followers of the Horticulture Hotline are no stranger to the benefits of killing weeds before they come up and ruin the look of your landscape. Put out your preemergent products now and worry less about small seeded summer annual weeds.
5. Preventive Fungicide – you know who you are. You get the same dead patches in your turf every spring and fall. Pick up a good systemic fungicide now (Cleary’s 3336, Disarm) and be ready for the fungus attack.
6. Soil Test – how can you fertilizer without knowing what you need? Soil test are becoming mandatory in parts of the USA before you are allowed to fertilize. Let’s be responsible before someone tells us we must. At Possum’s we can also provide you a program (for a fee) that will provide you with the nutrients the soil test recommends your soil needs.
7. Moles are difficult to control this time of year because their food source is deeper in the ground because of soil temperatures, making their food source harder to control with an insecticide. Repellex makes a repellent that is very effective this time of year according to our customers. Spread Repellex over your yard and chase the moles to your neighbors. If you are nice and want the product to be more effective for you, you will get your neighbor to treat at the same time increasing your mole free area.

Always read, understand and follow product label. The product label is a Federal Law.