In This Issue
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Dear  ,

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT  
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Jim Campanella

2016 marks our 20th year in business. It seems like just yesterday I bought a pickup truck, a spreader, a telephone and rented a small office in Hudson, NH. I thought I had a pretty good idea and plan to start my own lawn care business after spending the previous 15 years in the industry. At the end of year 1 I had a few hundred customers who gave me the confidence to continue on this journey. I am proud to say that 96 of my original customers are still Lawn Dawg customers today! Thank you so much for your support and sticking with me for all these years!

Lawn Dawg now services over 25,000 customers in 10 branch locations with almost 150 employees. Despite this incredible growth, we have maintained our quality service and results by always sticking to our core values. Those core values are spelled out clearly in our mission statement and Customer Service Commitment. Every Lawn Dawg employee is committed to executing all aspects of these core values. Whether we have 100 customers or 1,000,000 customers, we will do everything within our power to make you feel like our only customer.

Thank you for allowing Lawn Dawg to care for your property. It is an honor and privilege we take very seriously. Here's to the next 20 years!

Sincerely,

Jim Campanella
President
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Caring for your Lawn in the Spring
By Bob Mann, Corporate Agronomist

It's the first of April and, right on schedule, the forsythia has bloomed with a showy mass of yellow flowers. Many people associate the flowering of the forsythia with the application of preemergent crabgrass control. This really isn't the case and I'll tell you why.

Plants have a very predictable schedule that they follow as the season progresses from spring into fall. At certain points in time, certain events occur that, if we know how to measure the progress of the seasons, we can fine-tune our tasks in the landscape in order to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts.

The way that horticulturists measure the progress of the season is called Growing Degree Days (GDD), a simple mathematical formula that counts accumulated warmth as we go from one day to the next. Forsythia will begin to bloom between 1 and 27 GDD and continue flowering right up to about 100 GDD. Crabgrass, on the other hand, won't even begin to germinate until 42 GDD with maximum germination occurring between 150 and 225 GDD. Or put another way, crabgrass germinates when the soil temperature at a depth of 1 inch averages between 57 and 64 degrees with maximum germination occurring at 73 degrees and beyond.

Translating all of that into English, crabgrass seeds can reliably be expected to germinate two to three weeks after the forsythia blooms drop. That is over a month from right now.

The bottom line is this - you do not need to rush the application of crabgrass control. In planning for the care of your lawn, we have taken all of these factors into consideration and selected the best products available to minimize the development of crabgrass in your lawn.

Another common issue that we deal with at this early point in the spring is moss. If your goal is to have a thick, green carpet of weed-free turfgrass, moss is obviously not on your list of things you want to see.

Moss is an opportunistic plant that will readily fill in areas where our turfgrasses are at a competitive disadvantage. While the presence of moss is most often correlated with acidic soils, other site issues will lead to infestations such as insufficient air circulation, excessive shade, overwatering, poor soil drainage and soil compaction.

Trees have a huge influence upon what grows in our lawns as turfgrasses grow optimally in full sun. Anything less than all day full sun puts the turf at a disadvantage, the amount of disadvantage increasing right along with the amount of shade. In my observation, the growth of trees in a landscape goes almost completely unnoticed over the course of years as does its effects. What may have been a very satisfactory lawn years ago may now be severely thinned and full of moss for no other reason than a close-by tree has grown thirty or forty feet in the past two decades. Trees and their undergrowth also severely inhibit the circulation of air at the lawn surface. This phenomenon is most evident on golf courses where putting greens are surrounded by trees requiring either their thinning or pruning.

Moss is also curious in that it has an optimum temperature for growth that is significantly lower than that of turfgrass. Mosses love the average temperatures during the last part of March, while our turfgrasses are just beginning to break dormancy. As temperatures warm, the grasses will once again begin to fill in where the mosses are right now and in a few weeks the moss, while still there, will be much less noticeable.

Moss is very difficult to control, let alone kill. There are products on the shelves at garden center that will burn down the foliage of moss, most notably ferrous sulfate. While applying these kinds of products will give the impression that it has been controlled, not addressing the underlying reason the moss is there will only lead to future disappointment. Addressing the underlying causes that allow the moss to proliferate is the only real solution to this problem.
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Snow Blower Give-A-Way

As a thank you to our customers, over the winter months, we gave away 6 snow blowers which began in December. The random drawing took place bi-weekly with 6 winners total!
 
Congratulations to our last three winners:
 
 
 Mrs. Fagerson
Serviced out of our Portland ME branch
 


Mr. Reilly 
Serviced out of our Rocky Hill CT Branch



Ms. Stacy Hamm
Serviced out of our Fishkill NY Branch

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El Nino Weather
By Mark Kelbacher, Central Regional Manager

With the strong El Nino weather of 2016 on the decline finally, what can we expect?

We just experienced a mild winter with seasonal temps above average. Different than last year, we are able to start our first applications in March (NY is the exception). Whenever I am out and about I seem to get the same question, "is it too early to fertilize my lawn?" The answer is no. Too many times we associate the first application with the month of April. The month of the year does not dictate when it is appropriate to apply fertilizer with crabgrass control, but the ground temperature and air temperature do. For example, in CT we saw dandelions as early as mid-March this year. So they can expect to see crabgrass and other annual weeds germinate a few weeks earlier, as well as all of our service areas. We also received numerous calls that ticks were active earlier this year than in past years. With the mild winter we had, we may expect an explosion in population of ticks this year.

We are still expecting much warmer temps forecasted for April through May, you may need to turn those sprinklers on earlier than expected. So get the sprinklers tested and sharpen those mower blades. We have already begun our first application of fertilizer and crabgrass control (April 1st in NY). We are also controlling broadleaf weeds now as well. Our tick control service has started in all of our branches across Lawn Dawg service area. So rest assure we are ahead of the curve in providing you and your lawn superior service.
 

*Picture courtesy of the Weather Channel
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When should I dethatch?
By Jim Campanella, President

Spring is here and many people ask the experts at Lawn Dawg when is the best time to dethatch their lawn. The first thing to determine is whether or not your lawn needs to be dethatched. A certain amount of thatch is very beneficial to your lawn. It provides protection to the crowns of the grass plant, helps control the movement of fertilizer, and shades the soil surface which helps reduce weed growth. Too much thatch can prevent nutrients and water from reaching the soil and it can provide a home for damaging insects. Keep in mind that dethatching, although beneficial when needed, does cause damage to the lawn. It also exposes the soil to direct sunlight which significantly increases the risk of weed and crabgrass growth. For these reasons, dethatching should only be done in the fall and only when the thatch layer in your lawn exceeds �" thick. The best way to clean up your lawn in the spring is to remove winter debris and lightly rake.
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