Customized Weed Control & Fertilizing Service for Your Lawn: How It Works

Through our personalized fertilization and weed control programs, we work with you to meet your goals for your lawn and landscape. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Site Visit

Our client-centered process begins with a visit to your home. We come out to your site to measure and inspect your lawn. While there, we are able to identify any weed pressures or problem areas that are present and discuss the history of the lawn with you and any other concerns you may have. We talk to you about your goals and let you know the treatment recommendations available to you based on those goals, as well as the condition of your turf.

Step 2: Creating Your Custom Program

Based on your soil test results and our analysis at the site visit, we create a fertilization and weed control program customized to fit your needs and goals. Six visits are recommended per year.

The cost of our programs are based on several factors:

  • Your goals for your turf areas
  • The size of the lawn to be managed
  • What pests are present, such as certain weeds or grubs
  • If needed, cultural items such as core aeration, overseeding, and lime applications

On a quarter acre lot (10,000 sq. ft.) this program will run around $60 per visit, or $360 per season.

Step 3: Treating Your Site Throughout the Year

Using our environmentally sustainable products, we treat your site throughout the year according to your customized plan. Each visit through the year is designed to address a particular lawn issue. During the early spring, we focus on preventing crabgrass and in the later spring, we focus on preventing broadleaf weeds. In the fall we fertilize. Our programs are designed to apply 75% of the fertility needed during the fall. This helps to build turf roots, giving you a healthier lawn next season.

We will continue to work with your lawn and landscape to achieve your desired results, and if at any time you are not satisfied with our service, we will come back to your property and re-treat your lawn area at no cost to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Check out the answers to some FAQs we get from current and prospective clients.

Each visit through the year is designed to address a particular lawn issue. For example, our early and late spring visits are designed to control crabgrass. To control crabgrass, a pre-emergent product is utilized and applied to the turf area prior to crabgrass seed germination, hence the early and late spring applications. Virginia Cooperative Extension publishes a turfgrass maintenance calendar and it can be accessed here. Our pre-emergent program, our broadleaf weed control program, and our fertilization programs all follow Virginia Cooperative Extension recommendations.

Absolutely. Regardless of where you live or what is next door, weeds always find a way to spread their seeds and come up in your lawn and landscape. Our programs are designed to prevent and treat weeds that arise in your lawn. Our fertilizing service also helps to improve turf density, because a thick lawn is your best defense against weeds.

Pre-emergent herbicides are products that prevent the germinating weeds from establishing in the lawn. They control annual grassy weeds (think crab grass) by inhibiting cell division in the young root system. The failure of the root system to develop results in the death of the young seedling weed shortly after germination. These products are applied in the spring and last over the course of the summer, preventing weed seed germination of a large number of weeds.

In general, the best time to seed a lawn is in the late summer to early fall time frame. For more detailed information, please see our article, Why Fall Seeding, which explains in detail why we recommend fall as the time for seeding.

All of our fertilizer products are granular products and are designed to be activated by the rain. Almost all of our liquid weed control products are rain fast in about 90 minutes. However, if a heavy rains falls after one of our visits and there is any question about our weed control working, we will re-treat at no cost to you.

If you are not satisfied with our service at any time, we will come back to your property and retreat your lawn area at no cost to you. We will continue to work with your lawn and landscape to provide you with the results that you desire.

Most labels state that once the lawn area is dry, it is fine to walk on. Typically, we recommend that you stay off your lawn for three hours to be safe. After this three hour window, over 95% of the weed control product has moved into the plant tissue, and will not be an issue.

We recommend not mowing for 24 hours before or after a weed control application. Most weeds are taller than your grass, and by mowing, there is less weed foliage for us to treat. Mowing right after a weed control treatment can reduce the amount of product that is moved to the roots of the weeds. However, granular application is not a problem before or after mowing.

There is a direct relationship between the height of the grass and the size of the root system. Mowing higher allows more roots to develop, and they can grow deeper into the soil profile for water and nutrients. Taller lawns are more drought-resistant and have fewer weeds. If your lawn is a turf type tall fescue, the mowing height should be from 3 inches to 4 inches, utilizing the higher settings in the summer.

Grass clippings contain significant amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, the nutrients in fertilizer. We always advise clients to leave clipping on the lawn to recycle nutrients. However, if you find that clippings remain on the lawn from the previous mowing, you may need to bag. This can happen in the spring and fall when grass growth is at its peak, and the clippings do not have time to break down between mowing.

Our slow release fertilizers have two slow release portions. First, a portion of the fertilizer has an organic base. This part of the fertilizer breaks down slowly over time with microbes and weather allowing its release. The second part of our slow release component is microscopic coated capsules of fertilizer that break down and release their important fertilizer and trace elements over a long period of time. This ensures that your lawn’s root system gets those nutrients in measured doses that won’t over-stimulate the plants into a sudden growing spurt requiring more mowing.