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How To Properly Dig a Planting Hole

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How To Properly Dig a Hole for Planting

It’s an understatement to say that one of the most important aspects of a landscape plant’s long-term health is the strategy with which it is initially installed. The manner in which the initial planting hole is dug is vital to this process, along with how that hole is filled in once the plant is in the ground.

The soil in the Phoenix area is highly alkaline and made mostly of clay, making the dimensions of the initial planting hole particularly important. For most plants, especially desert-adapted shrubs, trees, and cacti, it’s important that the planting hole is NO DEEPER than the initial container they came in. In fact, accounting for soil settling and crumbling in the pot, the hole could even be a bit shallower than the container the plant came in.

In these clay soils, width is extremely important to assisting the circulation and root growth of the plant. Typically, it is recommended that the hole be at least TWICE AS WIDE as the diameter of the container the plant came in. Most roots in desert-adapted plants grow much more horizontally than vertically, as that’s where the most water and air will be.

Once the hole is dug, it’s time to install the plant. Once it’s out of its container, it’s often a good idea to gently unravel any roots that are tightly bound. If the roots toward the bottom of the pot are so tightly wrapped up that they could make a basket, you can often pull the matted mess off the bottom. Be warned though, doing this may increase the plant’s initial shock damage. In the long run, it should be better for the plant’s longevity.

 

While many people like to add fresh compost or other soil to a planting hole, this is actually usually unnecessary, and can even worsen the plant’s chances of survival in the long term. It’s best to fill in the hole with the same soil that was dug out. This increases the likelihood that the plant will adapt to its surroundings quickly. When the hole is filled in, DON’T STOMP IT FLAT! It’s best to water the hole in so the air pockets in the soil are allowed to remain and gradually set naturally while the plant begins to grow new roots. Stomping down the soil can choke the plant’s roots of water and air and give it a disadvantage from the start. If you’re worried about erosion early on, it’s better to use rocks or gravel.

 

You should be able to clearly see the Root Flare of any plant that is freshly planted. The root flare is the plant’s transition from stalk to root. If all you see is a stalk or trunk going straight into the ground with no visible root flare, the plant is too deep in the ground. Sometimes, a plant may even be buried too deep in its container at a nursery, so be sure to clear out any soil that covers the root flare, even if it’s soil from the original container.

If you followed all these steps correctly, your plant should be off to a good start for its life in your yard!

At ELS Maintenance & Construction, we install plants using the best practices for each species in Arizona landscaping. If you know of a community or commercial center that needs new landscapers, email [email protected] and we can get started!

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Invasive Plants Should Be Removed Before They Bloom

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Since the population boom in the Phoenix area in the past several decades numerous invasive weeds have been introduced to the environment which cause severe damage to the ecosystem and make wildfires more potent and frequent. The worst offenders include Buffel Grass, Brome, and, most recently, the notorious Globe Chamomile (“Stinknet”). Removing or killing these noxious weeds whenever possible is beneficial, but, for several reasons, it is much better to remove them while they are young.

First of all, it’s important to remember that blooming means reproduction. Allowing the pollen of invasive species to spread not only makes local allergies worse, but also causes these weeds to produce seeds that are prepared to sprout the following spring. It’s vital to remove invasive weeds while they are young, so that, at least in your area, there will be less of them to worry about next year. If you remove them too late, there’s also a good chance that you are spreading the unwanted seeds while pulling the mature plant material.

Secondly, invasive weeds that are allowed to grow to maturity will proceed to die and dry up. This dry plant material is fuel for fires. In fact, the species listed earlier are likely nearly entirely responsible for the increase in the size of wildfires in the Southwest in the past several years. If you can keep your property clear of invasive species, you lessen the likelihood that your home will be damaged in the case of a wildfire. It’s much easier to remove these weeds while the plants are alive and young and the weather is cool.

Additionally, it’s important to remember that invasive plants steal resources from native plants. If you allow invasive weeds to grow unimpeded, they will steal root space, water, and nutrients from the soil and weaken native plants leading into the summer. This especially applies to cacti, which rely almost entirely on shallow-depth capillary roots for their water. Invasive plants steal that water individually in small volumes, but collectively enough to put an established cactus into a state of drought.

A final note: Study the appearances of invasive weeds before you pull them, or contact a landscaping professional to do the work for you. It would be very unfortunate to accidentally remove a native plant! 

At ELS Maintenance & Construction, we do whatever we can to minimize the growth and spread of invasive and noxious weeds! If you know of a community or commercial center that needs new landscapers, email [email protected] and we can get started!

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Preventing Wind Damage in Desert Trees

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The summers in Arizona are characterized by the storms brought on by the monsoons. Whether or not those storms bring rain, they will certainly bring strong winds. Those winds often yield great amounts of broken branches or even entire uprooted trees. While there’s no way to completely prevent wind damage and nobody’s perfect, here are some of the best practices to minimize it.

  1. Structural Pruning. When pruning trees, especially young trees that are establishing their main trunks and arterial branches, a long-term look at the healthiest structure for the tree is necessary. Branches that cross over one another prime candidates for pruning, as they will rub against one another and grow until one or both break from the prolonged friction damage. If two branches or trunks are co-dominant (equally large and splitting off from the same point), whichever one ends up carrying the most weight will be the one most likely to break off during a particularly severe storm with the wind positioned just right. Single-trunk trees are generally better at surviving the wind than multi-trunk ones, but even multi-trunk trees can be structurally pruned to live as long as possible.
  2. Air Flow Pruning. While structural pruning is about the long-term structure of tree branches and the overall canopy, pruning for airflow is a short-term solution for trees that grow thick canopies very quickly, such as Mesquites and Palo Verdes. Essentially the goal here is to lessen the overall friction in the air by allowing more space for wind to flow between branches. Typically, this involves cutting smaller branches (though with the long-term structural implications in mind) to reduce the thickness of canopy foliage in trees that are deemed vulnerable to strong gusts.
  3. Proper Irrigation. When young trees are planted, they typically have their irrigation drips relatively close to the trunk to make sure that they can properly establish themselves after the shock of planting. However, the drip should not be left near the trunk for long. Beginning about 6 months after the young trees’ first growth cycles, the drips should be incrementally moved further away from the base of the tree, usually proportionally to the diameter of the trees’ canopies. If drips are not pulled away, the root systems will remain small, despite the growth in canopy size, and they won’t be able to support the weight for very long. This causes LOTS of trees to fall over every summer. You can tell if this was the cause of a tree’s collapse if there are barely any roots connecting to the trunk. Often, improper care at their original nurseries can cause root girdling early on and doom trees right from the start, as well, so it’s important to check the quality of the root flare even for trees in pots at nurseries before you buy. While trees that were girdled in their original containers have little chance of surviving multiple decades, healthy young trees can be given the best chance of long-term survival if the drips are carefully and gradually moved further from the trunk as the canopy expands.

At ELS Maintenance & Construction, we have our own Wholesale Nursery where we grow quality stock with healthy roots, and our Arbor Division ensures that trees in your community have the best shot at surviving the summer winds for years to come. If you know of a community or commercial center that needs new landscapers, email [email protected] and we can get started!

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Irrigation Lines Break More Often When Seasons Change, But Why?

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A common issue in Arizona landscapes, and landscapes around the world, is for irrigation leaks to sprout from seemingly nowhere. Not many people notice the strong correlation between the frequency of spontaneous irrigation leakage and the weather.

Most small-scale residential and streetscape landscape irrigation lines are either made of poly-tubing or PVC pipe. Poly-tubing is much weaker than PVC pipe, especially when under the Arizona sun for years. This is where you’ll most often find your leaks.

Poly-tubing is composed of polyethylene, a malleable plastic that works great for flexible irrigation installation. For places other than the Southwest, this may be perfect. Unfortunately, the high average UV index in Arizona speeds up the weakening and decomposition of polyethylene. Even though most poly-tubing is installed a few inches underground, the heat and some of the UV radiation still makes it through to the pipes. After experiencing the heat and UV radiation for years on end can lead to such significant weakening that a weaker spot can rupture after a temperature shift.

The change from extreme heat to near freezing temperatures and vice versa each year often happens in major increments upon the arrival of progressive cold or warm fronts. As temperatures decrease, plastics, gasses, and water contract and shrink in size. Then, when temperatures warm in the spring into the summer, they grow. The size and pressure differences are subtle, but when the irrigation line is stuck underground and can only expand into a medium of dirt, this motion can become grating to the polyethylene material over time. Eventually, cracks will appear.

So why do so many communities and municipalities in the desert use poly tubing? It’s easy to install due to being flexible and portable, and it’s cheap. With the rapid development of communities around the Phoenix area in the past 30 years, it makes sense that the quickest and easiest materials would be used to support faster turnover rate. In the long run, poly-tubing is no longer the cheapest option, because it starts requiring more and more maintenance due to leaking and decomposition.

To solve this, ELS has been replacing poly-tubing infrastructures with stronger, long-lasting PVC pipe in contracted irrigation system “revamps.” Though PVC is more difficult to install and thus more costly at first, the lack of the need for maintenance ends up creating net savings for communities.

If your community is in need of an irrigation revamp to replace poly-tubing with PVC infrastructure, reach out to us at [email protected].

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Spotting Invasive Weeds in Arizona Yards

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As we transition from winter rains and frosts to springtime blooms, it’s important to know what we’re looking at when we see flowers in our yards and on the sides of streets. Sometimes, a pretty flower is actually an invasive species – a plant not native to our ecosystem that competes with (and sometimes defeats) native plants. Invasive flowers and grasses in particular interrupt the lifestyle of iconic Sonoran Desert animals as well; starving desert tortoises and keeping quail from walking on the ground, among other dangers. They can also drastically increase the risk and severity of wildfires. Overall, it’s vital to keep invasive species off your property whenever possible.

The plant biodiversity of any given place changes constantly in the long term. A species is only “invasive” when it was brought from one area to another by human activity and it disrupts the equilibrium of the previously existing ecosystem.

There are a few invasive trees that cause problems by lowering biodiversity and preventing the growth of native species.

The Salt Cedar (Tamarix ramosissima) is a tall shrub or medium tree that grows mostly in washes and other wet areas, which spreads rapidly to block water flow and increase fire risk.

The Weeping Acacia (Acacia salicina) is generally considered “benign,” but can quickly reseed and overwhelm any area near a water source. They typically don’t spread very far, and are often still used as trees in landscaping. This is probably the least harmful tree on the list.

The Lead Tree (Leucaena leucocephala) may look like a mesquite or acacia, but is actually one of the worst invasive trees in Arizona.

The invasive bushes and flowers of Arizona are arguably much more harmful, as they spread into the wilderness and are not restricted to washes and wet areas.

One of the worst offenders in the past few decades is the Fountain Grass (Pennisetum setaceum). Its purple variant is fine to plant, but its natural form outcompetes native species throughout the desert.

 

Globe Chamomile (Oncosiphon piluliferum) is the most recent invader to Arizona. It looks like a cute wildflower blooming in little gold spheres. However, it’s certainly the most harmful plant on this list and needs to be removed on sight.

It may look pretty while it blooms, but it actively harms the wildlife of the Sonoran Desert by being inedible and clogging the ground with flammable brush that can catch fire easily during the summer. Pick it before it blooms to prevent its spread. As an identification tip, its young leaves look a bit like carrot leaves.

Several other grasses and flowers are also invasive: Brome Grass, Buffelgrass, Camelthorn, and various Thistles (including the famous “tumbleweed”) are among the most problematic for the ecosystem.

For some lists of invasive plants that should be removed on sight, check out the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management’s Invasive Species list at https://dffm.az.gov/forestry-community-forestry/forest-health/invasive-plants or the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s Invasive Species Program at https://extension.arizona.edu/pima-invasive-species-program for more information. Removing invasive species will improve the health of your property’s landscaping and slow the spread of these species while scientists develop strategies to mitigate their impact on the ecosystem.

At ELS Maintenance & Construction, we do what we can to prevent the germination and spread of invasive species at our communities and commercial properties with herbicides, manual pulling, and pre-emergent weed killer. If you know of a community or commercial center that needs new landscapers, contact [email protected] and we can get started!

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Frost Damage on Arizona Grass – What Can Be Done?

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Although the Phoenix area isn’t associated with the words “cold” or “frost,” in January, February, and even early March, frost damage to plants is still a concern here. You can cover your shrubs and vines overnight, and your trees go dormant if they can’t handle the cold… But what do you do about grass?

Typically, one of several varieties of bermudagrass is used for summer turf, and it fades away to be replaced by Winter Rye for the cool season. You would think that a grass intended for use as winter turf would be immune to frost damage. Well, according to the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, frost damage can certainly happen to Winter Rye grass. This damage is more common at higher elevations in places like Tucson, but it happens here too.

So, what can you do to prevent this damage? The biggest thing U of A’s Cooperative Extensions suggests is to NEVER step on grass while it’s frozen. Grass blades are small and thin, and if you step on it while it’s frozen, it will suffer huge damage. By noon, the Rye you stepped on will have large, wilted spots in the shape of your footsteps.

You can strengthen your Rye by fertilizing with high-nitrogen fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate or potassium nitrate once in December and once in January. Grass uses up nitrogen quickly, and Arizona soil notably contains barely any nitrogen. Additionally, supplementing with iron can help the integrity of plant cells when it gets cold.

Keep in mind, cold snaps like these don’t happen very often in the Valley. In a typical winter, there are two or three severe cold snaps per year, typically toward the latter half of the season. Keep up to date with weather forecasts and be prepared to stay on the pavement on frosty mornings.

At ELS Maintenance & Construction, we pay close attention to turf conditions to make sure your grass is looking good and going through its natural seasonal cycles as intended. If you know of a community or commercial center that needs new landscapers, contact [email protected] and we can get started!

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Which Arizona Shrubs Need Winter Rejuvenation Pruning?

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Winter is a very interesting time in the field of Arizona landscaping, much different from most other places in the world. Most trees and shrubs native to the Sonoran Desert are drought deciduous, meaning they strategically grow and lose leaves depending on precipitation and humidity. Only the riparian trees (Mesquites, Cottonwoods, Sycamores, Desert Willows, etc.) lose their leaves in the classic autumn fashion of the rest of the United States. It’s the non-native trees and shrubs that behave that way… or at least they’re supposed to in their natural habitats. There are several species of plants that need to be cut back manually to keep them from getting hollow and ugly over time. This is just one of several reasons landscapers engage in “Rejuvenation Pruning.”

Rejuvenation Pruning is the act of chopping a shrub back nearly to the ground, leaving only its main trunks, once every year or so. Simple trimming works to keep plants looking neat in the short term, but over time this leaves them hollow shells of their former selves, with thin and weak foliage barely covering an empty, leafless interior. Not only does this start looking ugly after several months, but it leaves plants more vulnerable to pests, diseases, and sun damage. For these reasons, rejuvenation is vital to keeping a healthy landscape, even if the stumps of the cut back shrubs look ugly for a few weeks. This is, in fact, the best practice for the Arizona landscaping industry.

Evergreen shrubs need rejuvenation to fix the hollow look, typically once per year or every other year. Some notable examples of evergreen bushes in need of regular rejuvenation include Sage, Deergrass, Ruellia, and Lantana. Drought-deciduous shrubs will eventually need rejuvenation as well, though since they grow slowly, they often only need rejuvenation every few years. Some drought-deciduous examples include Creosote, Bursage, Fairy Duster, Chuparosa, and Eremophylla species. Seasonally deciduous shrubs are usually rejuvenated annually in the late fall once their leaves begin to fall off. Some notable deciduous shrubs include Mexican Bird of Paradise, Vitex, Rose, and several others.

Whether the shrub is seasonally deciduous, drought deciduous, or evergreen, the smartest times to rejuvenate are during the late fall and early spring. Big cutbacks like this can be harmful in the extreme heat of the summer or the near-freezing temperatures of the winter. For deciduous shrubs, they won’t have leaves on them by then anyway.

The most important thing to remember is not to worry when you see your landscapers chop down your favorite shrubs. This is the best strategy to keep plants healthy in the long run, even if it means they may look ugly for a few weeks before new foliage emerges. If the shrub is seasonally deciduous, it wasn’t going to be growing until springtime anyway. ELS Maintenance makes sure all shrubs are on a proper pruning and rejuvenation schedule for their species, location, and age, keeping things looking healthy and vivacious. If you know of a community or commercial property looking for a new landscaping company, email us at [email protected] and we’ll get started!

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Best Annual Flowers for the Fall in Phoenix

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As the average daily temperature finally dips into the low 90’s and below, the conditions are just right to start your fall planting. Your choices may depend on the aesthetics of your neighborhood, sun exposure, animal exposure, and hardiness in the winter.

Sun Exposure

            Let’s face it: it’s probably still going to be “hot” until the beginning of November. At the same time, the amount of sun and the angle through which it moves in the sky will decline, yielding less overall light. Before you plant, it’s important to know whether your gardens and/or pots will have decent sun exposure by the time of the winter solstice or not.

Petunias, marigolds, dianthus, snapdragons, and many others need as much sunlight as they can get leading to and beyond the winter solstice, especially if you want them to survive into the springtime. Pansies, violas, alyssums, and lobelias are a few examples of fall annual flowers that can handle more shady conditions. Keep in mind, though, that a spot with zero sunlight isn’t going to be good for any plant.

Animal Exposure

            After sun exposure, vulnerability to animals is the most important thing you’ll need to pay attention to when selecting plants. Are there more javelinas in your neighborhood than squirrels? More quails than doves? Some plants are favorite snacks of each of these creatures and many others. Some plants are typically left alone by most, if not all of them.

Marigolds, salvias, euphorbias, lavenders, pansies, violas, and alyssum are just a few common ornamental plants that are ignored by javelinas, bunnies, squirrels, and birds (most of the time). If animals are a prevalent destroyer of gardens in your area, avoid planting petunias, begonias, ornamental cabbage, morning glory bush, and generally any food plants.

Winter Hardiness

Finally, it’s important to think about whether you want your flowers to survive through the winter. Most flowers can be preserved through frosty nights by covering them with permeable sheets (no plastic), but some are certainly more vulnerable than others.

Pansies, violas, snapdragons, geraniums, gazanias, and dianthus are a few choices for frost hardy flowers. Any remaining vincas, potato vines, and other summer flowers will likely lose most of their leaves in the winter but will usually survive and flourish in the spring if you’re willing to keep them during their off season. Particularly vulnerable flowers include small salvias, purple hearts, euphorbias, most food plants, and many others. Be sure to ask about cold hardiness when you’re purchasing flowers.

ELS Maintenance orders fall flowers for communities as early as possible from the best growers in Arizona to ensure that entrances, monuments, and other pottings in common areas look beautiful fast! If you know of a community or commercial property looking for a new landscaping company, email us at [email protected] and we’ll get started!

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Dethatching Defined – Improving Arizona Turf in the Late Summer

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Dethatching Defined

It’s August, and your summer Bermudagrass should have grown in nicely by now. If it is still looking thin and patchy with areas of brown in between, your turf may be suffering the effects of too much thatch accumulation. Another good indication of thatch buildup is that the grass has a bouncy feel when you walk on it. In Arizona, overseeded turf is prone to thatch because the grass plants die back twice a year, and that dead material accumulates as thatch. Add dethatching to your summer turf care routine.

The purpose of dethatching is to remove that layer of built-up organic matter to restore some breathing room to the soil surface. The organic matter can consist of decomposing grass plants, tree droppings and insects or animal waste, but mostly uncollected grass clippings and living and dead Bermudagrass stolons and rhizomes.

But, wait a minute. Shouldn’t organic matter be beneficial to the soil and turfgrass plants? Yes, indeed. As organic matter decomposes, carbon, nitrogen and other important elements are released that are necessary for plant growth. Organic matter at the soil surface also forms a barrier against weed germination and serves to minimize water evaporation and protect grass against frost damage. So why would we need to remove the thatch?

A layer of thatch is beneficial to a penetrable thickness of about one-half inch. More than that, and the thatch becomes an impermeable barrier to delivering air, water and nutrients to the soil layer and then down to the grass roots beneath. A thatch layer that is too thick can also harbor pests and detrimental fungi. Thatch can accumulate quickly if you overwater, overfertilize or have heavy clay soil.

Thatch buildup causes thin, patchy grass with areas of brown in between. To be sure that thinness is due to thatch, use your fingers or a screwdriver to dig down between the grass blades until you touch the hard soil surface to roughly measure the depth of the thatch layer. Just an inch or so of thatch is going to have a damaging effect on your grass.

You can dethatch your lawn any time of year that the average nighttime temperature is above 60 degrees. This can be as soon as March or April in Arizona. To dethatch your lawn, you can always do it the old-fashioned way, using a sturdy steel rake. Or, you can rent a verticutter/power rake machine. Either way, be sure to clean up all of the debris that gets raked up so it doesn’t settle back in between the grass blades when you next water. Then apply the appropriate rate of fertilizer (see our blog post) to help the grass fill in the newly exposed bare spots.

Even if you dethatch your lawn, take steps to prevent it from happening too quickly again. Recalculate the correct rates of water and fertilizer you should be applying. There are online tools that can help you with both, like AMWUA’s Landscape Watering by the Numbers. Overall, no single action you take is enough to keep your grass healthy. It’s the combination of cutting, watering, fertilizing, aerating, dethatching and weeding that keeps grass looking great and growing well.

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The Benefits of Turf Aeration for Arizona Grass

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Aeration is a process vital to the success of turf spaces, and in the Phoenix area, it’s practically a regular requirement to keep grass looking happy and healthy. You may see aeration listed on your landscaping schedule, but what is it, and when is the best time to do it for your home’s lawn?

Why Aerate Turf?

A grass turf needs water to penetrate deep, through the thick mesh of living and dead material known as the “thatch,” in order to get to the roots. Over time, the thatch becomes thick and tightly woven, to the point where very little water makes it to the roots. This also prevents nutrients from getting to the roots. Grass without water or nutrients results in sad, dry grass that will look ugly for most of the year. Aeration is the most common solution to this inevitable problem.

The Aeration Process

            In order to properly aerate a turf space, you’ll need an aerating tool or machine and a recently watered patch of grass. The turf is easier to penetrate when the grass has been thoroughly moistened. The aerator comes in a few forms. There are aerators that you can install on a lawn mower for larger grass spaces, or you can buy a push aerator for smaller grass spaces.

You also have a choice between spike aerators and plug aerators. We usually recommend the plug aerator, as it pulls chunks of soil up and out of the ground and allows for more water to pass the thatch. The spike aerator also works, though not as effectively. It pokes small holes into the turf at regular intervals. Whichever aerator you use, you need to make sure you pass the aerator over as much of the turf area as possible multiple times until there are sufficient openings for water and nutrients.

When To Aerate

The best time to aerate turf depends on the climate and ecosystem of the region. For the Phoenix area, the Maricopa County Cooperative Extension recommends aerating turf once a month from June through August. It’s the hottest time of the year, and during June the driest time of year, a time during which grass needs to be able to absorb as much water and nutrients as possible. Aerating during this time also prevents water waste and saves you money.

ELS Maintenance makes sure all turf spaces are properly aerated as needed, and you may see us poking holes or pulling soil plugs from golf courses, parks, entrances, and anywhere else with grass. For more information about turf care practices, the Maricopa County Cooperative Extension has many great sources. If you know of a community or commercial property looking for a new landscaping company, email us at [email protected] and we’ll get started!

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