How To Create A More Eco-friendly Lawn

A healthy lawn is essential for everyone and property owners can encourage this by making environmentally conscious decisions on their lawn and landscape care.

Listed are Six Ways You Can Make Your Lawn eco-friendly:

• Mulch your grass clippings: Instead of bagging the clippings, mulch them. Doing so allows the clippings to decompose back into the earth, thus providing nutrients which in turn will eliminate the need to add chemicals. It can also help the environment because the production of fertilizers creates pollutants in the atmosphere. Also, fertilizers can often end up in natural waters which can pollute lakes and streams, killing any wildlife that exists there.

• Use electric trimmer’s, blower’s, hedge trimmer’s, edger’s, etc., instead of their small 2 cycle powered predecessors. Did you know that in less than one hour, a 2-cycle engine can create the same amount of pollutants as 11 vehicles. Imagine several of these running at the same time! While we’re not saying you should drop the 2 cycle tools and do the work manually (unless you want to). You should invest in electric lawn and garden tools which will do the same job without all the damaging pollutants a gas-powered one will produce.

• Grow grass suitable to your climate: Do you know where Kentucky bluegrass grows best? Kentucky. Well, and the Midwest. But in warmer states of the country, this type of grass will require extra care and water to give it a chance to survive. So, it’s advisable to do some research into what grass your lawn has. Then to see what it requires before purchasing and applying chemicals that claim to make any grass grow greener and stronger.

• Use yard waste and kitchen compost: Keeping a compost bin in your garden is not only a place where you can throw out your kitchen scraps but a way to add these to a pile of compost. Make sure you turn the compost every few days and in no-time you’ll have high-quality fertilizer. And the best part, it won’t cost you penny.

• Invite insects and worms: Aerating your lawn at least once per year can become a bit of a drag. A natural way of getting the soil the oxygen it needs is to give a colony of worms a new home. Once spreading them throughout the lawn and watering thoroughly, they will work their way into the soil. Ants also do an excellent job of this as well as feeding on harmful insects and distributing seeds too. Yes, the ants can be a nuisance, so you’ll want to keep them under control.

• Water more but less: This means that you should water your lawn more heavily but less frequently. This is because sprinklers are a great way of evenly distributing water consistently; it can have much of its water evaporated before t even touches the lawn. This leads to a high wastage of the natural resource. An easy way around this is to have your sprinkler set to come on after midnight. It is at this time the air is at its coolest. This allows the soil to absorb as much moisture as possible because it is not being evaporated at a fast pace.

While there is much more to creating a complete eco-friendly lawn and landscape, these tips should get you pointed in the right direction.

Being eco-friendly begins with returning mother nature’s resources to the soil. You can start here with the Advantages of Mulching Your Leaves in the Fall.

A Brief Intro to Pet Friendly Lawn Care

Lawn Care Safe for the Environment and Your Pets

When pursuing a lush green, vibrant, and weed free lawn, it is normal to be concerned about the safety and health of your pets and loved ones being exposed to sometimes harmful chemicals. We get it, pets are part of the family too and your choice of a professional lawn care provider is a very important decision. We are pet owners as well and are always on the search for new pet friendly products to integrate into our eco-friendly lawn care programs and services. The good news for all of us pet owners is we no-longer need to sacrifice a beautiful lawn to keep our pets and loved ones safe.

At ecoScapes, we have many Organic options available for controlling broad leaf weeds and most of the fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides that we apply are not hazardous to pets or humans. There is however, no reasonable Organic solution for pre-emergent other than the very costly and messy corn gluten. We use a reduced chemical hybrid pre-emergent, so it gets the job done with less chemicals, less mess, and less money. These hybrid products are 100% safe after the product has been watered in and had time to dry.

How Long Should We Stay Off the Lawn?

We recommend that children and pets wait until these hybrid pre-emergent applications have been watered in and had time to dry before excessive contact. Don’t worry, it is perfectly safe for your puppies to go potty. We just recommend they don’t spend much time in the lawn before watering. If you can water in the application right away, then everyone is safe to enjoy the yard again after only a few hours. Our lawn care technicians always provide written application specifics and any special instructions if they apply following every application applied. They will notate the date and time of the treatment as well so if you’re not home you will know exactly when they were there.

Some statistics show that 65% of pet poisonings from lawn fertilizers could have been avoided if the owner had followed the instructions for both application and storage. Hiring a professional eco-friendly lawn care service in Omaha and following the directions given will eliminate these risks.

An eco-friendly Lawn Care Approach

At EcoScapes, we take an eco-friendly approach to effective pest, insect, and weed control. This eliminates harmful effects on pets, humans, wildlife and the environment. Our focus is to thicken and green your lawn by building it from the soil up. We start with a soil sample which will tell us exactly what it needs. We are then able to deliver the correct nutrients and elements which will naturally reduce weeds and disease. Starting with soil health and getting it in balance means less products are needed to maintain a healthy, weed free lawn. Our “Green” professionals are licensed by the State of Nebraska and individually trained in best practices. Being licensed by the state ensures you that they have studied and been tested on the application of products safely and in recommended amounts, but this test is geared towards the application of chemical based products. Therefore, each of our technicians complete our in-house training on eco-friendly best practices as well as learn the core principles of Organic lawn care.

Who Can I Contact to Learn More?

If you would like to learn more about EcoScapes or would simply like to learn more about the options available, you can reach us at (402) 671-0453.

5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Lawn Care Service in Omaha

Considering Hiring a Lawn Care Company? Read this First!

All lawn care services are the same, right? I can’t even begin to tell you how many times we get asked that question. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course, the services offered are similar, but the people, quality, professionalism, and how they go about performing their services are what really makes the difference. So, what should you consider when you’re trying to choose the right lawn care company? Keep reading…

Local Business or Franchise

Believe it or not but many of the lawn care companies in Omaha are actually franchised businesses operating nation-wide. While this may not always be a bad thing, such franchised based companies are sometimes focused more on marketing rather than providing the best service. I can tell you for certain that one such franchise even has a customer retention rate of 40% built into their marketing budget. In other words, they can remain profitable by retaining only 4 out of every 10 customers they sign up. Amazing what large marketing budgets can do isn’t it? You’re not usually going to run into these issues with a reputable local small business. Local businesses have much smaller marketing budgets, so they need to focus on providing excellent service and results to keep their existing customers happy. I wish I could say that all local lawn care companies thought this way, but unfortunately in this industry, there will always be those companies that provide a bad customer service experience, are non-professional, or do not provide satisfactory results. Which leads us into the second thing you should consider…

Reputation

Gone are the days where all you had to verify the reputation of a business was word of mouth referrals from friends, neighbors, or family, and the Better Business Bureau “BBB”. A companies’ social proof is everything in today’s review driven society. Online reviews are everywhere including Google, Facebook, and Yelp which are the more popular social review sites. This is a great way to sort through and eliminate the sub-par lawn care services. It doesn’t take long to look up a company online and view its reputation. Can’t find the company online? Well, maybe there’s a reason for that. Does the company have bad reviews? Definitely something you should consider. I wouldn’t say that referrals from your friends and family aren’t important though as they are up next in our list of things to consider.

Referrals

Ask your neighbors, your friends, and your family. Well, ask the one’s with nice eco-friendly lawns at least. We are proud to say that most of our business comes from referrals because we the take the time to assure our lawns are healthy, green, and safe. Ask around and chances are you’ll hear ecoScapes name brought up. Why? Because we are Omaha’s top-rated eco-friendly lawn and landscape company.

Quality

Quality lawn care isn’t always easy to spot. Sure, someone’s lawn may look nice, but do you have any idea how many chemicals are being used to artificially get the grass that green? When we think of quality lawn care, we consider more than just how green the grass is. We consider the condition of the soil, how safe the lawn is for those that play in it, and of course how lush green and weed free it is. We recondition your turf for long lasting results rather than deplete its natural resources with harsh chemicals. There are other more subtle things to look for as well such as, does the lawn look freshly edged? Are there rut marks in the turf? Are there grass clippings on any of the hard surfaces? Was there debris chopped up in the lawn while mowing? These are just a few of the things to keep an eye out for.

Professionalism

Admit it, sometimes when you think of Omaha lawn care companies, the first thing that comes to mind is a junky old pickup pulling up with some mowers in back and 2 guys jumping out with no shirts, both with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. Who wants this pulling up in front of their home and working on their lawn? Unfortunately, this is a real issue in our industry and all we can do is do our part in changing that. When you choose EcoScapes you are choosing professionalism. From our branded vehicles and trailers and no smoking policy, to our trained, certified and uniformed “Green” professionals, we do our best to assure we are not an embarrassment to the neighborhood when we pull up.

Bonus #6 to Consider

Be sure that the lawn care company you choose is insured before hiring them. If a non-insured lawn service provider gets hurt on your property, there’s a good chance you will be liable. Or if they damage your property, guess who has to pick up the tab since they don’t have insurance to cover it.

If applying any kind of fertilizer, pesticide, fungicide, or weed control, you will also want to make sure they are licensed by the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. This ensures they have studied and passed an exam in order to apply such products. Keep in mind though, being licensed does not mean your lawn care provider is doing their part in protecting you, your loved ones, and the environment.

If you are interested in working with a lawn care company in Omaha that meets all of these criteria, contact EcoScapes today at (402) 671-0453.

Maybe your interested in handling your own lawn care? If so, you”ll want to read Why and When to Power Rake Your Lawn.