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Why You Should Get Rid Of That Stump This Year

Landscaping a home increases its aesthetic appeal and real estate value by a staggering 15%, according to a study by Virginia Tech. The value increases by 20% if the property has privacy trees. One common service offered by landscaping service is stump removal. If you have a stump on your property, here is why you should get rid of it this year.

1. Reduces Property Value

Tree stumps significantly reduce the value of a property. If you are planning to sell your property now or down the road, removing a stump will increase its aesthetic and property value. You will also be more likely to attract many buyers.

2. Attracts Pests

Stumps, especially decaying ones, usually attract pests like carpenter ants, carpenter bees, long-horned beetles, and other wood-boring insects. If left unchecked, these insects can invade other areas of your home and cause significant damage to your trees and other plants in your yard. To prevent this from occurring, be sure to call stump removers to get rid of stumps in your home.

3. Safety Hazard

Your home should be your haven. Having stumps in your property prevents your home from being safe because they are safety hazards. Your family can easily trip over stumps and get injured. You can also accidentally hit a stump with your car and damage it. Outsiders can sue you if they get injured by stumps in your property. Removing a stump in your home is the best thing to do to prevent these situations.

4. Stumps Can Grow Again

Stumps are not necessarily dead. A stump can develop new sprouts, leading to the growth of many small trees on it. The small trees growing on the stump can also take up nutrients and deny your wanted plants of nutrients. Removing a stump on your property will prevent new growth.

5. Stumps Take Up Space

If you have a small yard, stumps can take up more space and leave you with little room for outdoor activities. Removing a stump from your property will free up space. You can use the space to build an outdoor dining area or turn it into a garden.

If you were on the line about removing stumps in your property, these reasons should make the decision easy. Call us today to remove stumps from your property.

Do You Need to Get Your Trees Ready For Winter?

Before winter sets in, there are several things you can do to protect your trees against chilly weather. A tree service company can also be handy to make things easy. Here are some things you can do.

Clearing the Property

The first thing to do when preparing your trees for winter is to clean up by removing dead ones. Start by getting rid of fallen or dead trees, including branches. You might need the help of a tree service company to take care of huge trees or boulders.

Pruning

Pruning becomes easy after removing large dead trees or branches through a tree service professional. Trimmed trees stay strong and can cope with cold conditions. You can also protect your home against damage resulting from falling branches.

Watering

You could tell yourself that your trees don’t need watering due to ice and snow in winter. However, dry spells are common in the cold season. As a result, the melting of ice or snow may not be enough for the trees. The best thing is to water the trees before the onset of freezing temperatures.

Mulching

To retain water and control winter temperatures, mulch your trees. However, ensure some space between the tree’s trunk and the mulch to prevent fungal growth.

Wrapping

Wrapping your trees in preparation for winter is also vital. During winter, temperatures tend to fluctuate. It causes sunscald, which is an injury to trees. Rising temperatures activate trunk cells, but they die when temperatures fall. Because of this, the bark gets damaged, including the trunk.

You can use light-colored fabric or commercial wraps to cover your trees during the fall. New trees also need wrapping for as long as two years. When their bark is so thick that they can protect the tree, wrapping might be unnecessary except in winter.

Fertilizing

Trees can lose lots of essential nutrients because of falling temperatures. However, you can apply fertilizer to your trees in the fall months to boost nutrients. It can also promote their health by reducing the risks of decay, disease, and damage due to insects.

Need help with preparation for winter and even with landscaping projects? A tree service company can make things easy for you, as it can take between one and four weeks to complete landscaping projects. Contact us today to learn more!

4 Reasons to Maintain Your Lawn

Having a beautiful lawn is every homeowner’s dream. Your lawn has to be properly maintained to improve the look of your property, and this maintenance includes watering, mowing, and stump removal. Routine maintenance will improve your environment and increase the value of your property. Here are four reasons to maintain your lawn.

1. Improve Air Quality

A well-maintained lawn is significant in improving air quality through photosynthesis. Lawns are three times more productive at producing oxygen than trees. A healthy lawn is also significant in improving soil health, which further results in better oxygen production by other plants and trees in your compound.

2. Prevent Soil Erosion

A home without a well-maintained lawn is more likely to experience soil erosion. Routine irrigation and maintenance of your lawn will prevent your topsoil from being blown away by wind or washed away by floods. Mowing reduces the workload on the root system of a grass plant. Conduct proper irrigation and mowing to enhance the strength of your lawn’s root system in order to prevent soil erosion in your yard.

3. Soak Up and Filter Excess Water

A well-kept lawn is critical in soaking up excess water, especially in urban areas. Lack of space for water to seep through can cause floods, so conduct proper mowing and stump removal to make your lawn absorbent. An absorbent lawn around your house will soak up excess water and save you from floods during heavy rainfalls.

Also, lawns are important in filtering toxic chemicals and water that could trickle into the groundwater and poison it. Many people and other living things rely on groundwater, hence the need to maintain your lawn to protect it from toxins.

4. Reduce Noise Pollution

Apart from soaking excess water and filtering out toxins, a well-kept lawn is also significant in reducing noise pollution. A soft lawn absorbs sound better than a hard landscape that amplifies sound.

Lawn care is an effective yet critical process for improving the appearance of your home. You’ll enjoy all the benefits explained here by simply taking care of your lawn. Contact Santa Rita Landscaping, a professional lawn maintenance expert, to conduct routine watering, mowing, and stump removal so you don’t have to!

5 Facts About Custom Homes You Should Know

New home construction from scratch is every homeowner’s dream. A custom home allows you to structure it according to your needs, specifications, and preferences. However, there is a lot about custom homes that many homeowners don’t know. The following are five facts about custom homes you should know.

1. A Custom Home is More Expensive

Custom homes cost more than standard homes. Standard homes are cheaper because they are designed to have all the basic things people might need in a house. However, custom homes are more costly because you can make your own specifications about the design and appearance.

2. A Custom Home is Worth It

Even though building a custom home can be somewhat costly, it is worth it. New home construction will allow you to fix all the peculiar features you want in your dream home. You can tailor the home the way you like.

3. A Custom Home is Suitable for People with Special Needs

Custom homes are more suitable for families and those with special needs than standard homes. If you have a family, you will build a custom home with more space and rooms to accommodate all of them. If you’re living with a relative who has special needs or an older person, you can customize your home to make it easy to navigate. No matter the situation, a custom home will sort you out.

4. A Custom Home is Quality-Oriented

Many people want homes with nearly all imaginable features like a pavilion, swimming pool, or basketball court. A custom home is more about quality than quantity. On average, a custom-built home measures between 3,000 and 3,500 square feet for about 25% of all homes. The home is built for functionality, ease, and comfort. Amenities in your custom home will be based on your needs, priority, and lifestyle.

5. A Custom Home is Built in the Location of Your Choice

You will want to build the home in one of the best neighborhoods. Select a location that effectively matches your lifestyle and meets your needs and that of your family.

Custom homes allow you to get all the features you need in your home to ensure the home meets your family’s needs. If you want a custom home, hire a professional builder to get the best results.

What You Can Do to Get Your Lawn Ready For Fall

As temperatures drop in late summer, you must step up your lawn maintenance to ensure you still have a healthy lawn in the fall. There are several things you can do now to get your lawn ready for fall. Read on to learn some tips as well as how an arborist can help you.

Test Your Soil

Testing your soil before fall takes the guesswork out of how you should be managing the pH and nutrition of your soil. By making the necessary improvements before fall, you will have extra time to prepare before it’s super cold. To find out more about the perfect pH for your lawn, you can contact an arborist. If the arborist decides to visit and check out your grounds, you can also take the time to ask them a bit about your trees.

If you find out the pH is not in its normal range, you can use fast-acting lime. This will restore balance to your soil and encourage a healthier, greener lawn through fall. You should also consider fertilizing your soil. Ideally, you should do this about six weeks before your first expected frost. A high-nitrogen fertilizer will help to ensure that your lawn has vigorous roots and increased energy reserves to survive the increasingly low temperatures.

Remove Excess Thatch

There’s a thick layer of organic matter that collects between the soil and your lawn that usually benefits your lawn when it’s thinner. However, when this layer starts getting too thick, it can hinder the movement of water and nutrients. Apart from that, it also encourages disease. To dethatch, you can use a handheld rake or a dethatcher. These tools will cut into the layer of thatch and pick it up for removal. This will help to restore a proper interface between your lawn and the soil.

Fill in Bald Spots

The average homeowner spends five to 8.5 days yearly caring for and maintaining their lawn. Depending on location, people usually set aside four hours per week to care for their lawn. Those who live in cooler climates spend about 150 hours a year, while those in warmer climates about 208 hours a year.

You can dedicate some of that lawn maintenance time to fixing any bare spots on your lawn as you prepare for fall. For the best results, you can get an all-in-one lawn repair mixture that you can find in most garden shops. To do this, you will need to loosen up the soil on the patch with a rack and then pour the lawn repair mixture over the lawn bald spot. If this doesn’t work, you can consult an arborist to see if there is anything wrong with your lawn.

Lawn maintenance and preparation for fall are not that difficult. The most important thing is to ensure you don’t fall behind on your maintenance tasks. Also, never forget to water your lawn every other day towards fall.