Azaleas… Taking Care of a Natural Beauty

If you have driven around the Charlotte area, you've probably noticed the profuse pink and red flowering shrubs that seem to be everywhere. Azaleas are beautiful. Their wonderful color announces that spring is in full bloom and summer is just around the corner. Some people are confused as to when and how these shrubs should be pruned. When looking online, you can find conflicting information regarding pruning of these area landscape staples.

It is generally best to prune azaleas directly after they bloom but before the new buds have formed. Since azaleas are blooming now in our region of the country, it's best to wait until the blooms start to fade or fall off. Then it is safe to prune your azaleas back. Since next year's flowers usually start appearing around mid-summer (beginning of July in our area), waiting to prune these shrubs in July is not a good idea. You'll cut away the buds that your shrub needs to flower in the coming season and you may not get flowers next spring.

Why should you prune? Established, healthy azaleas really need very little pruning or maintenance.

• You may need to prune your shrub if it is damaged or diseased. Cutting off dead or injured wood can prevent diseases.
  
• To keep an overly enthusiastic plant under control (scaling it back). Perhaps it has grown too large for its space or is crowding your house. As always, it's best to think long term when planting. If you consider the size of the shrub at maturity and plant in the appropriate location, leaving room for it to grow, then you may not need to prune the azalea.
  
• If your azalea has gotten leggy with bare stalks on bottom and leafy tops, it may be necessary to prune or trim it to encourage branching.
  
• You may want to create a shaped hedge from your azaleas. (Although the natural shape of the azalea plant is very attractive, sometimes it is preferable to have a hedge.)
  

To prune your azaleas, you'll need a pair of hand clippers or loppers. As with all tools, you'll want to make sure they are sharp. Dull blades tear the plant instead of making clean cuts. Imagine cutting through paper with dull scissors. That is never the best situation for a precise cut. As a landscaper we may deal with a multitude of azaleas on a property. Hedge trimmers help us to make the most efficient use of our time on site to trim en masse.

When trimming, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. If your goal is to scale back an exuberant bush, cut overly long branches back into the shrub at the main stalk. (Don't leave a stub). This will keep the symmetry of the bush but thin it out. It won't take long for it to flush out again. If your goal in pruning is to encourage growth on the lower limbs, trim the new growth during the growing season to encourage branching (mid-summer). These cuts do not have to reach to the main stalk. The azaleas will grow new branches right below wherever you cut it. If your shrub is so overgrown that you need to do a drastic cut, azaleas will usually tolerate this well, also. If you need to cut it back to a foot in height, be sure to use a slow release type of fertilizer after pruning give it the nutrients it needs to regenerate. If you peruse the fertilizer aisle at most nursery or home improvement store you'll see that there are special fertilizers especially for flowering shrubs like azaleas or rhododendrons. This will encourage growth. You also need to be patient with the shrub that's left behind. In most cases, the following spring you'll have a smaller shrub with lots of new growth. As a general rule, though it is best never to cut down more than 1/3 of the plant in a season.

No matter how you do it, azaleas are hardy and will thrive with a little attention. We fertilize our azaleas soon after we prune to give them an extra dose of nutrients to sustain them through the summer months.

With 100's of varieties of azaleas available, the possibilities are endless. They bring spring beauty to our lawns and lives. Place the correct variety in the right spot and they are worry free, beautiful additions to your landscape. Once established, they provide great value with very little care. Thanks,

The AA Tex Lawn Team

 

Day in the life of a landscaper

It's a beautiful spring morning, sometime between 5:30 and 5:45 am. The managers and the area leaders are arriving just ahead of the crews who will report at 6:00am. Gates, doors and key access are all unlocked. Employees are arriving and heading to the classroom/scheduling area in the warehouse for the morning meeting. In the meeting, discussion centers around safety, customer feedback is shared, exceptional performance is recognized, the Tex Lawn way is reinforced, and questions are answered. Fifteen minutes later …….

GENTLEMAN START YOUR ENGINES

Yes it is kind of like that. Once the meeting ends at 6:15, there is a mass exodus from the building to the fleet of trucks. Almost simultaneously the engines roar to life. Lawn maintenance trucks, landscape crew trucks, turf care trucks, irrigation trucks, crew leader trucks, all ready to head to the gate. It really resembles pit road at the beginning of a NASCAR race, and the trucks are numbered. There is only one sponsor decal though… AA Tex Lawn.

I LOVE A PARADE

Okay at 6:20 in the morning, there are no crowd-lined streets, no smell of popcorn, no clowns, and no bands. But the AA Tex Lawn parade has begun. Along Matthews Indian Trail Road, there is a parade of white trucks with orange and yellow logos, one behind the other. The parade begins to thin out as trucks make their way as far north as Mooresville and as far south as Lake Wylie.

YOU HAVE ARRIVED

As the trucks reach their first stops, a choreographed dance, of sort, begins. First, truck location is crucial. The truck needs to be in an area that is as non-intrusive as possible, a safe area, and a convenient area from which crew members can work. There is already a plan of attack worked out for each property including: what type mowers goes to what area of the property, where does the weed eater, the stick edger, etc start, which direction do we work, who finishes first and starts weed spray, who begins blowing, who's picking up debris, etc. It is all thought through and planned before we step on a property. The plan helps us to move through efficiently and end together. This also is crucial to quality. If we are skipping around the property and running over each other, something will get missed, or done wrong. And of course, with the economy the way it is, productivity is more important than ever. The same issues hold true for crews, such as landscape installers. While they do not necessarily do the same task every day, they have a plan before hitting the property, usually developed with the person who sold the job.

SECOND VERSE SAME AS THE FIRST

While we have a myriad of different properties of different types and sizes, the same preparedness holds true for all. Some of our properties may require one or more crews to be on site all day, while some crews may do 5 or more in a day. The size of the property doesn't matter. Each property has a sort of dance that applies to that property. We may have 6 employees on property, or 2. The dance still applies.

LET'S EAT IN TODAY

Lunch time is 11:30, and we eat in. Our crews bring their lunch and eat at the property they are on at that time. There are a few reasons for this. Number one is safety. Have you ever seen a convenience store parking lot at lunch time? What better place to have an accident. Number 2 is productivity. Leaving the property would require loading the equipment, getting off the property, driving in lunch time traffic, and wading through the convenience store congestion, and doing all that in reverse. It is just better to stay put, relax and enjoy your lunch.

THINKING AHEAD

The route is done; it's time to go back to the shop. Are we done? Not yet. As the trucks arrive at the shop, the crew leader has one more duty for the day, get ready for tomorrow. Check the inventory on the truck. Do you need edger blades, weed eater string, trash bags? Do you need to go to the premixed roundup tank to fill your sprayers? Looking at the schedule for tomorrow do you have the right equipment on your truck? Is there a problem with any of the equipment on your truck that needs to go to the mechanic which means you need a loaner piece? Once all that is resolved, the next stop is the gas pump. The truck is fueled if needed; all the equipment is fueled, including gas cans filled with mix gas for the blowers' weed eaters etc. The truck is now ready to go for the following day.

AM I DONE?

Not quite. It's now time to go over what we did today with an area manager or the operations manager. We talk about the time sheet. We go over any notes made at the property. We verify that everything extra was completed. once that is done we hand off paperwork for tomorrow including the schedule, the property notes (every crew has a set of property notes for each property they maintain that contains special instructions, locations of items that need special attention, and customer request), and any task above the normal that need to be completed(customer requests, etc). After clarifications are made to the operations manager, the day is complete. See you tomorrow to start all over again.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE?

While the above is a simplified version of a day, there are a lot of other things going on at our offices. The production manager is working in his shop doing preventative maintenance, repairs etc. He is making sure all our equipment is in good working order and most importantly… safe. The operations manager and the area managers are on the job sites working with the crews, inspecting quality, planning for tomorrow, and working with client services to insure the customer needs are being met. The client services person is working with customers on issues, making suggestions for improvement, and communicating with the different parties to make sure the customer needs and request are being handled. Our point person in the office is handling the communications, checking the time sheets, making sure proper information is entered in our tracking systems, assisting with proposals, and making sure we are coordinated. Our office manager is overseeing all the above and working on the accounting aspect, contracts, reporting, and assisting the owners. Our project manager is making sure the information is getting out to the customer, (like this blog), handling website and IT issues, and creating print publications. Our owners are overseeing it all, sharing their vision, setting direction, and most importantly… leading. Don't forget our lawn turf techs who is providing turf care, the irrigation techs, and landscaping tech, all handling their respective duties.

Like any other profession, there is a lot going on in the day of a landscaper. There is a lot of support for our operations, which is all geared toward our most important job, serving our clients to make your experience with AA Tex Lawn a great one!