With the arrival of spring on the horizon and temperatures rising, we’re preparing your common area landscape for the growing season.

Our Special Projects team is in the middle of installing a new doggy bag station at Hawk Park.

We continue with seasonal pruning, an important practice for the sustainability of your plants. During seasonal pruning, we trim your plants back to about half their size. This will help them stay at a manageable size when they grow back. This also allows us to forego major pruning during their flowering season so you can enjoy them at the height of their seasonal color. The pruning work we completed earlier in the fall is already paying off as we’re starting to see some spring blooms along your main roadway! We are currently pruning along Ray Road and will move into your parks next.

We are also in the midst of installing several new trees throughout your community including Mesquites, Palo Verdes, Chinese elms and red Pistaches, so keep an eye out for these new additions.

Your winter Ryegrass is still looking strong. We’re mowing and detailing it weekly and adding fertilizer as needed. Because of the recent rains, we have kept your irrigation mostly off for the winter, but are starting to run it more as the temperatures start to climb. Toward the end of this month, we will be completing a process called aeration on your turf. This involves perforating the soil to allow air, water and nutrients to penetrate its bottom layers, which helps strengthen the turf.

Turf transition is coming

As the warmer temperatures return, your common area turf that was overseeded this past fall will begin transitioning from Ryegrass to Bermuda grass. This switch from winter grass to summer grass typically begins at the beginning of April and lasts through the end of May. Until then, DLC Resources crews will continue to fertilize the winter grass as needed to keep it strong and vibrant.

Next month, look for more information on what to expect and what kind of methods we use to aid in the transition.

Post-emergent for spring weeds

A warmer winter means the time for weed control is now! There are two categories of herbicides for weed control: pre-emergent and post-emergent. Pre-emergent herbicides are designed to prevent seeds from germinating in the soil while post-emergent herbicides kill weeds that have germinated and are visible in the landscape.

Spring and summer are the best times to use a post-emergent herbicide like Roundup concentrate. Be careful not to spray weed killer on plants or turf as the herbicide is absorbed by the leaves and travels through the plant. These products cannot differentiate between plants and weeds. Additionally, this type of herbicide does not instantly kill the plant. If you spray the weed and then remove it, any remaining roots may not have had time to absorb the weed control spray.

Spring planting

Whether you want to add new plants to your yard or you’re replacing sick, dying, or unhealthy plants, now is the time to do so. For our desert landscape, plant replacement is most successful in the early spring because temperatures and humidity allow the new plants to establish themselves in their new environment before the harsher summer weather arrives.

Ideally, new plants should be installed when nighttime temperatures are higher than 55 degrees for a prolonged period of time and daytime temperatures are lower than 90 degrees. This is especially important for certain tree species like acacia salicina and desert willow because they establish new roots very slowly.

To learn how to choose your new plants and steps to install them, go to the DLC Learning Center and enter “planting” into our handy search bar at the top right of the page.

Time for frost recovery

Remember, now that the threat of a frost is gone, you can begin to trim away any frost damage your shrubs or trees have experienced. For more information, head over to the DLC Learning Center.