Annual Plant Health Care and Lawn Care contracts provide a dynamic and comprehensive schedule of treatments aimed at keeping your trees, shrubs and lawn healthy. It is much easier to keep a tree healthy than to try to treat a sick tree.
We often hear from customers with declining plants who have canceled their program in the past and wanting to re-instate it. Unfortunately, sometimes it is too late as the spray or injection was preventative, and after the insects infest the tree, there are no effective controls.
Metabolic rates of trees are very slow, and their vascular system is not circulatory like ours. So, getting “medicine’ to right places internally is difficult. Many diseases and insects plug up vessels inside the tree. When tree vessels are plugged, chemical controls cannot get to the pathogen. These insects and diseases are then “protected,” and they will cause internal damage to the tree which cannot be prevented. Controls are only effective if applied to the bark or systemically to prevent these organisms from entering the tree.
Are Your Trees Stressed?
Healthy trees are less likely to be attacked by insects. Stressed trees emit an ultrasonic sound, partly of cells collapsing, that insects can hear. Insects target trees making these sounds. The insects know these trees are stressed and will be easier to attack. Diseases cannot hear the stress in trees, but when they land on stressed trees, it is easier for them to break thru the protective layers as they are compromised when stressed.
Trees can store vast amounts of starch, which they convert to sugars for “food.” When starch reserves get low, trees begin to exhibit signs of stress. Usually, when a homeowner notices stress, it is often advanced stress. At this stage, it is often very difficult for the tree to recover. The reason is that when trees are stressed, they begin to make budget cuts. These budget cuts are often to parts of the tree critical for basic life functions, like leaves and roots. If this process continues, insects and diseases take advantage and can result in a “Death Spiral.” Reversing this process is extremely difficult. This is the reason The Natural Way recommends annual programs to keep your plants as healthy as possible with our nutrient program and preventive sprays and injections.
Lawns are similar, yet smaller in scale. With lawns and trees, it is all about root biomass. Keeping the plants healthy, means healthy roots. And when plants are stressed, they have reduced root biomass. Reduced biomass (fewer roots) leads to moisture stress, heat stress, poor nutrient/water uptake, reduced insect/disease resistance and other problems.
Preventative Treatment
Keeping your plants healthy is the best approach. Preventative treatment is much cheaper than curative treatments. Post infestation treatments are much less successful than preventative treatments which can be in high 90 percentile range. Removing and replacing a tree can be very expensive. Sometimes a tree is saved, but the damage to the tree is so great that the tree is no longer aesthetically pleasing and has to be removed. Removing a tree can drastically alter a landscape by removing shade, screening, wind protection, wildlife benefits, or aesthetics.
No one on our staff receives a commission for selling work. There is no conflict of interest for us to recommend services that will financially benefit an employee. We recommend only services you need. In fact, we sometimes talk our clients out of a treatment if are not needed, sometimes the treatment was recommended by another company.
Give us call at The Natural Way, and our professional arborists will evaluate your landscape and determine which treatments will be beneficial for your plants.