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You will be absolutely thrilled with our service and our well-trained team. If you are not happy with our work, we will do whatever it takes to make it right. Nothing is more important than your complete and total satisfaction.
Healthy Lawns – Conserving Water
It’s a well documented fact that Texans love Texas. Our state is diverse, beautiful, and an all-around healthy place to live. To keep our state this way, we all need to do our part! A major part of conserving the natural beauty of Texas, is implementing water conservation as a part of our daily lives.
When it comes to conservation, one of the first places to consider making adjustments to is usage in your everyday landscape care. It has been estimated that 30 to 50% of the total water usage in each household goes to our lawns and gardens. Learning to conserve in this area will help you to save water, money, and goes a long way to help your local environment.
Many homeowners don’t realize how much water is being lost when lawns are watered improperly. If you water your lawn too quickly, water can be lost as runoff, which not only causes you to lose money, it may also pollute streams and lakes by carrying sediment, residual pesticides, or fertilizers with it. If water is applied too late in the day, or to soil that does not absorb it quickly enough, water can also be lost to evaporation.
To prevent this loss, it’s important to use an effective sprinkler system for irrigation. Sprinkler heads should be adjusted so they are not overspraying onto driveways or walkways. Heads should also be adjusted so they spray large drops instead of fine mists.
Many homeowners don’t realize watering the lawn too much can cause more harm than good. Using too much water on your lawn can leach vital nutrients from plant roots and cause fungus and root rot. Keeping to a schedule that provides deep but infrequent watering will help to strengthen your lawn’s root system and increase drought tolerance in our hot Texas summers.
The ideal time to water your lawn is the early morning. This timing provides maximum infiltration, decreased evaporation, and reduces the amount of time that irrigation water sits on the leaf blade. These factors all lead to deeper roots, less heat stress, and less fungus occurrence.
Ornamental and fruit trees, as well as shrubs, vines, vegetables, or container plants, will benefit from drip irrigation. Drip irrigation is preferred because it slowly applies water to the soil through low pressure emitters, or bubblers directly to the root zone. Watering this way causes less runoff or evaporation, resulting in more water is staying in your garden.
Another great way to reduce water needs is to make sure your beds are adequately mulched. Using mulch will help your beds retain moisture, prevent erosion, and suppress weeds. A thick mulch layer can also protect your plants from temperature changes. By using a mulch, you could potentially reduce your need to water your beds by up to 60%!
One final way to conserve water is to install a rain harvesting system. Collecting rainwater to use in your landscape is a great way to save water. If 10% of the residential roof area in Texas was used to collect rainwater, we could conserve more than 30 billion gallons of water each year! That’s an impressive number, but there are clear benefits locally as well. By using rainwater you collect on your property, you are not only reducing runoff into the local lakes and streams, and you can greatly reduce your water bill, and provide untreated, pH neutral irrigation to your landscape!
If you’d like more information about our professional lawn care service, make sure to get your free estimate!
If you have any questions about how you can improve your existing irrigation system, or if you’d like to find out more information about installing an irrigation or rain harvesting system, please contact ECO Irrigation & Landscaping at 512-778-9919 or visit www.ecoirrigation.com.
Eliminate The Fire Ant Threat
Are you seeing these dangerous, invasive insects in your lawn? The Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA) has been spreading in Texas since the 1950’s. They have continued to spread into most of the state of Texas, New Mexico, northern Mexico and Oklahoma.
Are fire ants dangerous?
Mounds can be home to hundreds of thousands of ants, and, when disturbed, the ants swarm in an effort to ward off predators. The sting of a fire ant typically causes localized swelling and small pustules at the site of the sting. In some cases, however, the sting can lead to entire limbs becoming swollen, and, in very rare cases, life-threatening allergic reactions can occur.
Along with the possibility of harm to humans, fire ants can attack pets, smother ornamental plantings, and damage electrical equipment.
How can I tell if there are fire ants in my yard?
Fire ants build their colonies in open areas that get a lot of sun. As the temperature rises, the ants move to cooler ground, causing their mounds to become flatter and less noticeable. After a rain, however, the ants work hard to move the saturated soil, and mounds become far more noticeable.
How can I control fire ants?
Eco Lawn Care employs the “Texas Two Step,” treating individual mounds and applying a broadcast bait for season long control. With baiting, the ants do the work for you, taking the bait back to the nest, sharing it with other ants as well as the queen. Even when applied by professionals, baiting for ants can take 4 to 8 weeks to be effective. The important thing to remember is that your yard is treated at the right time of year because baits will only work while the fire ants are most actively searching for food.
For help in controlling the ant population on your property, contact ECO Lawn Care at 512-778-9919 or request an estimate online.
Grubs Can Damage Your Lawn In A Number Of Ways
As the weather has been warming, your plants are not the only thing blooming. Beneath the surface of your lawn, there may be grubs awakening and moving up to feed on your lawn. You may notice patches of dead grass, areas of grass that can be easily removed with little force, and you may even be able to see the grubs near the surface if you pull the grass back.
The Life Cycle of a Grub
During the end of the summer, beetles dig and lay their eggs underground, near an abundant food source – the roots of your lawn. The larvae feed on lawn roots through late summer and fall, then dig deeper into the ground and become dormant during the winter months.
As the ground temperatures rise, dormant larvae awaken, come to the surface and begin feeding on your lawn roots. Accurate timing of treatment is essential for maximum efficacy, and Eco Lawn Care provides both preventative and curative applications to provide the maximum protection
Lawn Damage Grubs May Cause
In addition to the damage the grubs themselves create, they are also an attractive meal for other predators like armadillos, raccoons, and feral hogs. In order to get to this plentiful food source, predators will destroy sod, shrubbery, even rock edging to find the grubs. Wildlife damage to your lawn can be quite extensive, so it is best to treat your lawn early if you or your lawn professional see signs of grub damage.
For more information, or to schedule an appointment, please contact us, and we can assess your lawn for any problems, treat it, and save your lawn from harm.
Eco Lawn Care Launches Newly Redesigned Website to Better Serve Customers
Eco Lawn Care has been offering professional lawn care services at affordable prices to the community for a long time now, and if we have learned anything, it’s that offering our clients the best in customer service is as important as the lawn care services we offer. Eco Lawn Care believes that every customer deserves a professional experience to ensure our clients are extremely satisfied with our work. Now we are improving out site to make it easier than ever to find and request the services you may need.
Read moreEco Lawn Care Launches Newly Redesigned Website to Better Serve Customers
How to Care for Your Roses in Summer: Eco Lawn Care’s Recommendations
Summer is the time of the roses – these lush, fragrant and gorgeous flowers have the time of their life these months, charming you with their bright bold colors, their hypnotizing scents and their surreal beauty. But the scorching summer months in your area may also negatively impact your roses, together with pests and specific diseases, all leading to incommensurable damages. Today, our lawn care experts, together with their landscaping colleagues came up with a short guideline of summer roses’ care for you to take into consideration. Preserve your roses, keep them healthy and safe and enjoy a fragrant, colored and dreamy summer on your property!
Read moreHow to Care for Your Roses in Summer: Eco Lawn Care’s Recommendations
Eco Lawn Care Shares Some Interesting Lawn Care Trivia that Everyone Should Know
Lawn care is a pretty serious business. In fact, according to a HomeAdvisor report, homeowners spend approximately $380 – $1,115 per year on lawn care. If that sounds like a lot of money, that’s because 85 million households have private lawns and to keep these lawns lush, they use about 70 million pounds of fertilizer and 80 million pounds of pesticides each and every year.
Read moreEco Lawn Care Shares Some Interesting Lawn Care Trivia that Everyone Should Know
