Landscape

Do You Provide Fall Tree Fertilization Services?

If you provide tree services, in addition to your lawn care service, it’s time to market your fall tree fertilizing.

You may have some pushback from your customers because any lawn fertilizer you use also feeds the property’s trees. But you can still sell your clients on the benefits of fall tree fertilization to maintain plant health care and longevity.

How to Fertilize Large Trees

While your customers may have some young trees on their grounds, you can educate your clients about fertilizing large trees.

Why? 

Because older trees are more susceptible to disease, dieback, and insect invasions. Plus, hot summers deplete the ground of moisture and available nutrients, leaving these majestic trees nutrient- and water-deprived. 

However, you can demonstrate a tree’s need for root fertilizer injections with a soil test. You collect soil samples around each tree’s root zone and then send them to a lab to get them tested.

The soil test will tell you what nutrients are missing and the pH of the soil. You can treat your customers’ trees with ROOTS Fertilizer for Trees and balance the pH with lime or sulfur. 

You want the soil’s pH to be balanced to uptake the fertilizer into the tree’s root zone and to the rest of the tree.

When you fertilize trees in the fall, you’ll be injecting a mix of water and nutrition through a long tube that’s inserted into the tree’s root zone.

Did you know that you can use half as much water when you do soil injections? Since water is the carrier that mixes with the fertilizer, its job is to move the tree fertilizer to the woody plant’s root zone.

However, you still use the same amount of fertilizer, even though you’re cutting back on H₂O. Yet, you don’t want to cut the water back too far because you could burn the tree’s roots and have a paste that won’t make it through the injector.

At LebanonTurf, we advise only cutting the water in half. And don’t use this formulation when putting down herbicides and pesticides. Instead, read the manufacturer’s instructions when using these products.

Here are five points to remember about using less water when injecting tree fertilizer:

1. Reduce the amount of water you’re using, but still use the same amount of fertilizer.
   
   
2. Reduce the injection volume per hole by the same amount.
   
   
3. Don’t reduce the water too low when using soluble tree fertilizers because it can lead to root burn.
   
   
4. Remember to halve the water amount and not go any further to avoid causing delivery problems.
   
   
5. Always check with your herbicide and pesticide manufacturer before reducing the water in those formulations.

Read more: Fall Fertilizer—No Skipping or Skimping!

Why You Need to Fertilize Trees in the Fall

Like winterizing a lawn, fall fertilizer contains high levels of potassium and phosphorous that hardens off leaf tissues before the first frost.

Tree fertilizers have some nitrogen in them, but it’s a low dose or slow-release N that won’t encourage leaf and twig development at the top of the tree before winter.

Slow-release or low doses of N help the tree to leaf up again in the spring.

Learn more: Fall Overseeding and Aeration Services for Cool Season Lawns—Increase Seeding Success with PennMulch® Seed Accelerator

How to Market Your Tree Fertilization Services

Use your blog and social media to educate your clients about the benefits of fall tree fertilization. Assure your commercial and residential clients that you’ll first assess the tree for any stress or disease and that you’ll test the soil before using any tree fertilizer.

Also, include information about plant health care (PHC) if you provide these services. While many homeowners and property managers may poo-poo tree fertilization, remind them that drought stress, insects, and disease will shorten a tree’s life span—and will cost them money to remove it and buy a new tree.

However, when you put down fertilizer specified for trees, you’re increasing the odds that trees will survive whatever Mother Nature throws their way.

If You Provide Tree Services, You Want to Use LebanonTurf’s ROOTS Tree Fertilizer

If you want humic acid, minerals, and beneficial rhizosphere bacteria in the tree fertilizer you use on customers’ properties, then you need LebanonTurf’s ROOTS Tree Fertilizer, 11-22-22.

ROOTS Fertilizer for Trees has the following six benefits:

1. It’s a water-dispersible fertilizer with NPK, 11-22-22.
   
   
2. Explicitly made for trees.
   
   
3. It’s an all-mineral fertilizer with nutrients ready for uptake. Put down lime or sulfur before injecting the roots to get the soil pH to the right level for uptake.
   
   
4. It contains a combination of .1% Fe (iron) and .05% Mn (manganese) to address micronutrient deficiencies.
   
   
5. It contains beneficial rhizosphere bacteria, sea plant extracts, and humic acids to improve soil and plant health.
   
   
6. Cut the water in half, but still use the same strength of fertilizer.

If you’re ready to up your tree fertilizer game, invest in LebanonTurf’s ROOTS Fertilizer for Trees 11-22-22. Find your local distributor at LebanonTurf’s website to buy this tree fertilizer.

Sources:

TreesAreGood.org, Mature Tree Care, pdf.