Excerpt from an article posted on Jacksonville.com

The following is an excerpt from an article I found on Jacksonville.com.  I felt that it was well written and applied to Trutco's Lawn Care Services:

Maintaining a working relationship with a pest control company is not like paying someone to mow your lawn. If you hire someone to mow your lawn, all you need to do it to have your lawn waiting for them.

But hiring a company to handle the chemical part of your lawn care is more like a partnership you enter into, simply because having a healthy lawn requires that many factors work well together. The pest control company applies fertilizers, weed control, disease control and insecticides as needed. Timing is critical for the applications and for many homeowners that schedule is too rigid for them to do the work themselves and maintain their day jobs.

The pest control company, depending on the details of the agreement, commits to apply fertilizers on the proper schedule, weed control as needed and as temperatures allow and insecticides or fungicides as needed.

Homeowners commit to mowing their lawns to keep the blades at the correct length, and water the lawn as needed. This includes watering in chemicals when the pest control company leaves a note after it applies a chemical saying water must be applied to complete the chemicals’ installation.

Weed control becomes more challenging every year. Some especially troublesome weeds may take a few years to be eliminated from a lawn in the best of situations. For some weeds, there are no chemical controls. When temperatures rise in the summer, most chemicals can no longer be used without burning the lawn.

Once fungal diseases are present, fungicides DO NOT kill them. Sadly, the best we can do is to keep them in check and try to control their preferred conditions (when the lawn is wet and it is dark) so that the fungus is held in check.

Pest control operators have to be licensed and should always be carrying their ID cards that show they are licensed. Ask to see an ID if you think the company is not doing the job.

If I were unhappy with my pest control company, I would call and talk to them about it. If it were a weed problem, I might need for them to make a house call and talk about the individual problem areas. Start there. Talk to people with healthy lawns. I think you will find they water and mow according to recommendations. This is a working relationship and both sides have to work together.

Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/home-and-garden/2014-08-15/story/garden-qa-those-blotches-are-actually-mealy-bugs#ixzz3BEoRLvA8