Insect Control | Plant Disease Control

Out of the thousands of disease organisms around, some are bound to be on your property.

There are thousands of silent and unseen life forms lurking in your garden. The first hint of their presence might be a mysterious yellowing of your lawn, red or brown spots appearing on plant leaves or tumorous growths on the stems and trunk of a favorite shrub. There are over 50,000 different types of plant disease looking for a place to call home, and it’s almost certain that your lawn and landscape plants are hosts to some them.

The life cycles of all disease organisms are influenced by conditions in the environment. Temperature and moisture are probably the most important factors affecting plant disease. Although it’s not true of all diseases, many become most active when there’s plenty of rain, irrigation, or heavy dews and when temperatures are relatively mild.

Identification and control

Many diseases make regular appearances at certain times of year or during particular combinations of temperature and rainfall. Our experience with disease allows us to quickly identify most of the more common varieties. Sometimes, though, a simple visual inspection isn’t enough to give us positive identification. With so many disease possibilities, it’s difficult to be familiar with them all.

The key to controlling any disease is to interrupt its life cycle in some way. This could mean changing the growing environment or using plants which are resistant to the disease. Keeping your landscape well fed and properly watered helps discourage disease infections, but even the healthiest and best cared for properties can be badly marred by disease if left untreated. The most practical control when disease activity becomes serious is often to place a protective chemical over the surface of the plant.

Treatment programs can be either preventive or curative. Scheduled preventive programs are desired because they require less material while keeping your landscape healthier. If you have any questions or concerns about diseases and their control please don’t hesitate to give us a call.

Pests

Have you noticed any yellowing or brown spots in your yard? Does extra water not do the trick? You could have one of the most common insects wreaking havoc in your turf. The chinch bug is a small insects that feeds on the sap of grass plants. The hairy chinch bug is the most common type found in Delaware and Maryland. They live in the thatch area of turf grass and feed on the lower leaf sheath and crown area of the plants. Signs of chinch bugs are patches of gradually yellowing or dead grass, especially near radiant heat sources such as sidewalks and roads. Treatments include insecticides to eliminate the pest.

Lawn Disease

Of all the pests that damage lawns, fungal diseases are one of the most difficult to tame. There are hundreds of diseases that can infect your turf. Some are relatively harmless; others can destroy an entire lawn in a very short time.

Disease travels by foot, water and air. Fungus spores spread on the wheels of lawn mowers, on the shoes of children, on the droplets of rain that bounce from plant to plant during rain or watering, or by wind, blown like microscopic seeds across your lawn. Every lawn has disease organisms. The trick is not letting them get the upper hand.

Prevention, the best cure to reduce disease, keeps the lawn healthy and growing with proper feeding, mowing, watering and thatch control measures. Some grass types are much less susceptible to fungus attack. Consider planting disease-resistant varieties when you seed.

With treatment, control is the goal. Disease treatments do not usually eliminate the disease from the lawn. Instead, they suppress activity for a period of a few days to several weeks. The goal is to keep the disease in check long enough for the grass to recover or the weather conditions to change. Often, several treatments are needed.

Grubs

Crabgrass

To win the war against crabgrass, combine professional care with good follow up practices. Thousands of seeds produced by last year’s crab grass plants were blown and carried virtually everywhere. The trick is to keep the seeds from germinating. For that, action has to be taken early in the season, before the weather gets too warm. Once seeds have germinated, aggressive crabgrass plants can take over.

Brown Spots

Points to remember:

It is important to keep an eye on your turf and plants to catch disease activity before serious damage occurs.
There are diseases that attack virtually every type of plant.
Non-parasitic diseases do not spread from plant to plant while parasitic diseases do.
Diseases spread by water droplets splashing, foot traffic and even on the breeze.
Although there are many fungicides for many diseases they often require repeated treatments to obtain good control

Unmaintained irrigation causing lawn brown patches

Our treatment programs can be both preventive and curative. Let us help you! Don’t let mosquitoes ruin your special day. Contact D.M. Taylor Inc. to schedule a consultation and get started with your treatments today!

Insect & Disease Control

Out of the thousands of disease organisms around, some are bound to be on your property.

Points to remember:

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