Lawn Care Tips - Tulsa Irrigation System Maintenance

Irrigation systems are excellent for helping keep your lawn healthy and looking great all summer long by providing your lawn the right amount of watering. Lawns that are healthy tend to be less susceptible to disease, insects, weeds, and drought. Healthy lawns help to lessen soil erosion and surface water runoff. Thus, your Tulsa irrigation system plays a key role in maintaining a healthy, vibrant lawn, as well as helping with water conservation and reducing the time needed to maintain your lawn.

But, just as your lawn needs regular maintenance, your irrigation system also needs maintenance in order to function correctly. What can you do to make sure your irrigation system is working properly?


Your automatic irrigation system will need a thorough check-up and maintenance overlook both the start and end of the season. It’s often best to have a professional Tulsa irrigation company perform the spring start-up maintenance and then also winterize your irrigation system in the fall.
But throughout the season, regular inspection of your irrigation system will ensure it’s still functioning properly and help to prevent more expensive sprinkler repairs.

So, every month or so, it’s important to inspect your irrigation system for any broken components or leaks.

Make sure sprinkler heads and nozzles are not broken and are aligned correctly, watering the specific area of the lawn. Brown spots or constant damp spots in your lawn are both indications that your sprinkler system may have a damaged component or that the sprinkler heads are facing the wrong direction. You may need to adjust the sprinkler heads a little to ensure they are watering the lawn and not the sidewalk or home. Also check to see that the sprinkler’s spray is not blocked by plants or other things.

Replace any broken or damaged sprinkler heads. These components can often be damaged accidentally by lawn equipment, become clogged, or just wear out over time.

Inspect your entire irrigation system for any leaks and for the right amount of water pressure. When checking your automatic irrigation system for leaks or improper water pressure, it’s good to run the system one zone at a time so that you can easily pinpoint any problem spots. Low pressure can often indicate a line break.

Proper winterization of your Tulsa irrigation system is vital to ensure pipes do not break during the cold winter weather and that everything will work correctly again come springtime.

The Tulsa automatic irrigation system specialists at Oklahoma Landscape are skilled at designing, installing, checking, and maintaining your whole sprinkler system. We can handle all of the maintenance and regular system audits as well as winterization of your irrigation system to make sure it’s always working at the optimum level of performance. We service all brands of irrigation systems and sprinklers and can effectively diagnose problems so that you conserve water and your lawn continues to be, lush, vibrant and healthy.

Tulsa Lawn Care - All Stage Weed Control

Every gardener knows just how fast weeds can take over a lawn, stealing water, nutrients, and sunlight from the surrounding grass. So it makes good sense to have an effective Tulsa weed control treatment in place for every stage and season of a weed’s life. With just a few weed control applications throughout the year, your lawn can be healthy and look beautiful and effervescent.

In the early spring, you’ll want to start by controlling broadleaf weeds like dandelions and ragweed as well as annual grassy weeds like crabgrass (all of which will grow rapidly in Oklahoma) by using a pre-emergent weed control herbicide. Use one that is toxic to both types of weeds, broadleaf and grassy weeds. Apply this using a broadcast spreader after you have mowed the lawn a couple times at the beginning of the season. Apply the herbicide also along sidewalks where crabgrass often tends to grow more. This weed control treatment will help to abate these weeds before they even develop and overtake your lawn.

Later in the season, you might still see a few dandelions or crabgrass weeds that don’t want to go. Most of these can quickly be dealt with using a spot-treatment post-emergent weed control herbicide. Concentrated herbicides that you mix with water yourself are commonly a better value. These can be used with a handheld sprayer to spot-treat any weeds or crabgrass. You can find a spot-treatment herbicide that kills both broadleaf weeds and grassy weeds, but you may have to use different weed control spot-treatments for broadleaf and grassy weeds as well. Follow the directions on the package for prepping and when to apply the weed control treatment, usually when temperatures are below 85 degrees F. for a few days.

Interestingly, one of the best ways to keep weeds away doesn’t involve weed control herbicides. Keeping your lawn well-maintained with proper lawn fertilization, irrigation, and mowing will help to crowd out pesky weeds and stop them from overtaking the lawn. Healthy lawns can better defend against weeds so having a good lawn care and maintenance schedule is really key to preventing weeds.

If weeds have already overtaken your lawn late in the season, you may need to spray the entire weedy area with a post-emergent weed control herbicide using a sprayer attached to a hose, getting the weeds wet. You may need to apply a different herbicide for broadleaf and grassy weeds. Again a concentrated post-emergent herbicide that you mix yourself will be a better value. Apply the herbicide on calm days so that the herbicide is not inadvertently carried to other plants and flowers that it could also harm.

If you would rather not have the hassle of applying weed control treatments, the Tulsa weed control experts at Oklahoma Landscape can take care of all your lawn care needs. We offer a custom 6-step Tulsa weed control and fertilization program for your lawn that will keep it lush, vibrant, and weed-free all year. Call us today for more details!

Getting Kids to Help with Lawn Care

It's easy to see yard work as a bit laborious, but children can often get excited about helping out with lawn care. Having them help with the yard work is a good activity to do as a family, and helps kids get more exercise, gets them away from electronics, and can help teach them responsibility. So how can you get your children involved with your residential lawn care?

Idealhomegarden.com listed ways to help encourage kids to join you in caring for the lawn. Getting children involved with yard work at an early age (even if they can’t do much) could help them to want to do it as they grow up. Young children especially, as the article said, always want to help their parents, so simply spending time with you while you do yard work can help you draw closer as a family. And as the children grow older, yard work will be associated with good times as family.

Even though young children can’t use lawn care equipment yet, giving children little chores that make them feel needed can go a long way to helping them enjoy lawn care when they get older. Children could possibly be put on weed control, helping to pull weeds in the garden, picking up sticks or any trash in the yard, or even planting or broadcasting seeds. As children get to be around school age, they may be able to help with raking and bagging leaves.

As children get older they can begin to help more with mowing the law and even trimming shrubs, under supervision. Teenagers who are eagerly waiting for their license may be especially excited to get behind the wheel of a riding lawnmower. This can give them some initial training and practice at driving and shifting gears.

Seeing your positive attitude about yard work as parents, as the article noted, can greatly affect how children think of yard work as they grow up. If you have several children, making lawn care into a simple game or contest can help them enjoy it more (and possibly get things done faster).
And while teaching children to get involved with yard work and manage chores is essential, they will also need some playtime, and of course, they need to stay well-hydrated.

“It’s important that any fun that goes on also includes Mom or Dad. You need to have some fun just as much as the children do, and the kids will love every minute of it,” the article noted.
So when you go outside to take care of your Tulsa residential lawn care chores, take your kids along too. The whole family can have an enjoyable time doing yard work together.

Advantages of Organic Tulsa Lawn Care

We hear about “going green,” often. The benefits of organic foods and using organic products are often highly regarded. We may visit the many local farmer’s markets on the weekends. We may love Tulsa’s organic grocery stores like Sprouts and Whole Foods. We realize that these green foods and products are often better for us. We know too, organic is also beneficial for the environment.

So, of course there’s also a growing trend toward organic lawn care and gardening. More and more commercial property owners and Tulsa residents are using natural lawn care products and methods in their landscapes. What are some of the perks of using organic lawn care?

Soil and Root Improvement. Organic fertilizers nurture natural microbial and fungi activity in the soil by giving microorganisms in the soil organic material to feed themselves on. Thus, they decompose the organic material. In this process, more nutrients are made readily available for the soil over time. Because these nutrients are released, the soil and roots of grass and plants are strengthened, an ecological balance takes place, soil retains more moisture, and the soil’s texture and composition are of better health. And because the nutrients are released into the soil more slowly with organic fertilizers, the chance of over fertilization or “burning” is greatly reduced.

However, organic fertilizers may cost more than inorganic ones, and it may take longer to see the results because the nutrients are broken down over time in the soil.

Lush, Green Grass. Because the root system has more vitality through organic fertilizers, the grass itself is green and lush. Organic fertilizers also aid in photosynthetic process by releasing carbon dioxide into the soil. This healthy root and soil system also helps grass be better able to ward off weeds, fungus, disease and even cope with drought.

Biodegradable and Safe. Organic lawn care products are non-toxic and biodegradable, meaning they are safe humans, pets, and other wildlife. They also do not harm the water or air supply. Thus, natural fertilizers reduce the amount of chemicals released into the environment.

While it may take longer to see the results of your organic Tulsa lawn care, overall organic lawn fertilization provides many benefits for both the lawn, the environment,  and your family.

Benefits of Tulsa Fertilization and Weed Control to Your Spring Lawn Care

With all the winter storms, the entire country is probably ready for spring.  With spring on its way, what lawn care tips can aid Tulsa lawns to be ready for the warmer weather? How significant are fertilization and weed control in a lawn care program? 

Making sure your lawn is clean is the first step in turf care. Remove any limbs or debris in the yard and lightly rake your lawn when the ground has dried out. This debris can stop your soil and lawn from obtaining the nutrients they need. 

You may need to test the condition or pH levels of your soil, particularly if you see various bare patches, to see what nutrients your soil is lacking. There are DIY kits available, or your local agricultural cooperative extension could have testing available. 

Soil can become compacted during wintertime and patches of dead grass, or thatch, may need to be removed. Core aeration can help loosen the soil and remove thatch. This thatch not only stops proper drainage, but also permits weeds and pests to more easily overrun the turf. Lawn aeration removes small patches of soil to better let water and nutrients to reach the roots. 

Overseeding your Tulsa lawn will help to fill-in any bare spots and improve your lawn overall. The new varieties of seed planted can have a higher resistance to disease than those varieties already in the lawn, making your lawn tougher and easier to maintain. 

And, of course, your lawn must be feed. As grass begins to grow, it’s imperative that it has the nutrients it needs to grow strong and vibrant enough to block weeds. Slow-release fertilizers and regular watering will help the soil and grass flourish. Timing of lawn fertilization is important to having healthy grass. Fertilizing too early or too late could harm the growing turf.

Oklahoma Landscape uses a 6-step fertilization and weed control program customized to your lawn to give it just the nutrients it needs at the right time. An effective pre-emergent and post-emergent weed control system is needed to thwart weeds from overtaking the lawn; however, weed control also must be applied at the right time. 

But healthy grass will ultimately do the best job in thwarting weeds by naturally blocking out sunlight and choking the weeds. That’s why a good lawn fertilization program will ensure the lawn stays healthy. 

Correct mowing is also essential to a healthy lawn. Although it may be easier, mowing your grass too short can harm the lawn in the long run by causing the soil to dry out faster, giving weeds more sunlight to grow, and putting more stress on the grass. 

Thus, you’ll need to mow at the uppermost level so that you only remove the top one-third of the grass blade. Taller blades will be stronger and better able to choke out weeds and hold in more moisture in the soil. A lush, thick lawn will actually need less maintenance and be more resistant to disease. Make sure your lawnmower is in good repair and the blades are sharp to allow for cleaner cuts and thus healthier grass. Each new lawn mowing season, you can alternate the direction you mow to prevent putting unnecessary stress on your lawn. 

So while spring hasn’t arrived yet, you can still begin planning for a healthy, vibrant lawn now. Oklahoma Landscape can alleviate the stress of lawn care with a custom fertilization and weed control schedule and lawn maintenance program for your Tulsa landscape.