You may have noticed a lot of pest control companies and pest control trucks running around that say they offer lawn spray but there is a vast difference between lawn spray and lawn care services.
Let’s take a look at the difference
Lawn spray is usually a spray insecticide application made to a lawn to control insects that may or may not cause damage to a lawn but it is mostly used to control general household pests like ants, fleas, ticks and flying insects that bread in your lawn like Mosquitos, no-see-ums, midgies, sand flies, and others. Lawn sprays can also help prevent the spread of pests to other parts of your property, reducing the likelihood of infestations inside your home. Regular treatments can ensure that lawns remain healthy, vibrant, and free from unwanted insects throughout the year. Additionally, by addressing pest problems early, you can protect not only the aesthetics of your lawns but also the safety of your outdoor spaces for children and pets.
Lawn care is a complete lawn care program that is targeted at controlling the insects that cause damage to the lawn such as grubs, chinch bugs and mole crickets utilizing systemic insecticide like Dominion 2L that will provide continuous control from 1 to 2 months, these insect will not invade your home but will wreck your lawn if not controlled or prevented, most insecticides used for the control of general household pests will not control these types of lawn pests.
lawn care is a specialty
In most states pest control companies are required to have two certifications one for general household pests and one for lawn and ornamental pests which require additional training, certifications, and insurances and specialized dedicated equipment to apply all the products required to perform lawn care services.
The technicians must now be able to identify not only insects that cause damage to lawns, trees, shrubs, plants, and palms but also weeds, fungus on the leaf, crown, trunk and roots and how to properly treat it with the correct insecticide, fungicide or herbicide also identify and treat nutritional deficiencies.
Lawn care includes the control of weeds which require the use of pre-emergent herbicides and post-emergent herbicides. What is the difference? A pre-emergent herbicide like Barricade controls weeds by preventing the germination of the seeds or the rooting of the weeds to the soil, a post-emergent herbicide such as Blindside kills the weed after it has emerged and whether it’s a broad leaf, sedge or grassy weed.
Lawn diseases control is another important aspect of professional lawn care services and quite often misdiagnosed for insect damage or nutritional deficiencies. In any treatment program a correct diagnosis is half the cure.
Even when you identify it’s not an insect causing the problem identifying the fungus correctly can present a series of challenges, why was it caused? Was it environmental stress, improper irrigation or soil borne illnesses or caused by a nutritional deficiency. Why is this important you may ask?
Correcting the cause of the fungus to avoid using a fungicide which are additional chemicals applied on the property unnecessarily which is the most environmentally responsible thing we can do. Fungicides can be quite expensive as much as 2 to 5 times more than insecticide especially the modern systemic fungicides like Heritage , also if its caused by weather you can predict when the bacterial pathogen will become active and therefore monitor it and prevent it before it becomes active.
We have several properties that are prone to fungus due to environmental stress and weather, we can almost predict when we are going to get a call from the home owner letting us know that the symptoms are evident and we can quickly respond before it becomes an outbreak. We train our customers how to detect problems and contact us so We can take immediate action.
You may say to yourself isn’t that what we pay you for yes and no, most fungus are always present once they are introduced to a lawn and most either latent or active but they are always there, what causes an outbreak may depend on many variables such as cold weather, rain, improper mowing and stress can trigger an outbreak and if you perform a service every two to three month there is no way you can know what is happening on that property until your customer informs you, it’s not like on a golf course where the superintendent inspect the course on a daily basis and is able to respond immediately, we train the customer to be the superintendent for their property since they are there every day and know what is happening, if it doesn’t look right chances are it’s not.
Let’s finish this off discussing nutritional deficiencies or fertilizers, you might be saying what is so difficult about fertilizing a lawn, nothing really if you’re a home owner but if you’re a pest control company or lawn care company in states like Florida you have to be certified and licensed to apply a fertilizer to a property other than your own.
Which is an additional cost of training certification and licenses, yes you have to pay for a license to apply fertilizer in the state of Florida, and not to mention the amount of weight and space fertilizers take up in a truck. This is why we switched to professional liquid fertilizer formulations; In addition some counties are imposing fertilizer blackout dates in the summer where you cannot fertilize.
Soon states will require soil testing and leaf tissue testing prior to being able to fertilize to be able to only apply what is lacking in the soil, agronomy will play a huge role in the future of lawn care.
This presents a huge problem for pest control companies which most are small or individually owned business to specialize in lawn and ornamental care and why most pest control business only offer lawn spray and not lawn care.
We have been performing lawn care services since we started almost 10 years ago, if we can provide you with any assistance in maintaining your lawn in the best condition it would be our pleasure to serve you. We are certified and licensed for both general household pests and lawn and ornamental pest control as well as BMP certified and licensed to fertilize in the state of Florida.
