The USU Extension Office took time from their busy schedule to come into Castle Country Radio to share some important information on lawn care, fruit trees and flowering bushes.

Many individuals may not realize but you can overwater your lawn if you aren’t too careful which can cause many problems. “You can drought stress a lawn fairly easy but you can almost do just as much damage by over-irrigating – you get root diseases; all sorts of crazy things start happening,” said Agriculture Assistant Professor, Steve Price. When the temperatures heat up is when individuals will want to increase their watering of their lawns. Its best to water in cooler temperatures like early mornings or late evenings.

As far as mowing the lawns it best to keep your lawn a bit longer to help protect it from sun damage and from losing nutrients.  “For most of our Kentucky Blue Grass lawns, we like to see about 2½ to 3 inches. A lot of people really like that really slick shorn look to grass like a golf course but truth is grass is not happy being cut like that,” said Price. If your lawn is kept at a manageable length it can decrease the number of weeds that grow and can keep pests away.

Fruit trees such as apples and pears are thriving in our area. “For most of us in Castle Country, our apples and pears are probably, we’re getting to the tail end of that, they’re probably about ready to be done and peaches should be done pretty soon too,” said Price. When those have to be harvested, they are dictated by the variety and the weather.

Maintenance on flowering bushes such a lilac bushes and forsythias is important at this time. “If you’re doing a spring pruning like we really like to do with most of our shrubs, you tend to remove that one-year old wood which is giving you the most beautiful flowers. So really after those flowers are starting to die back a little, you’re starting to see that bloom drop, that’s when you really want to be pruning out that old, dead wood,” stated Price. Now is a good time to thin out those bushes as the blooms are dropping off.