FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Don’t see yours? Ask us.

Sod requires heavy watering. The goal is water frequently and heavily enough to ensure water reaches the roots of the new sod. Generally, you need to water your newly sodded lawn approx. 20 minutes per day, ideally in the morning or early afternoon, until your sod has firmly taken root. During hotter periods of the summer more water may be required please refer to our sod care sheet for additional information on how to care for your sod.

Successful rooting can be checked by lifting the sod and seeing if it has rooted (attached) to the ground.

Newly seeded lawns require consistent watering. It is extremely important that the area stays moist until germination.

To achieve consistent moisture, you may need to water your newly seeded area with light pressure (to ensure seeds don’t wash away) morning and night – and up to three times per day if mid-day temperatures are high and/or in direct sunlight.

Generally speaking, it will take your lawn the same amount of time to recover and get in great condition as it took to get in its current condition.

That means that one application (and sometimes even one full year of service) may not turn your lawn into a golf course, BUT each application serves a purpose and provides healing treatment to your soil and grass.

It may be normal to see some weeds pop up in your yard throughout the seasons, especially depending on the package you receive.

We offer four, five, and six application packages; the more frequently our applicator visits your lawn, the more they would spot-treat pesky weeds (and thus, the less frequently they visit, the less they would spot-treat).

Generally speaking, some weeds are more difficult to prevent or maintain. Please let us know if you have any concerns, or send a photo of the weeds you’re seeing to our office by text or e-mail so we can quickly assess and solve.

It is best to wait 24 hours or until the lawn is dry.

If landscape fabric is installed, its sole purpose is to separate the landscape material from the earth to prevent the landscape material from sinking into the ground.

Landscape fabric can help prevent weeds but will not 100% keep them out.

Additionally, we may work together to create a “low-maintenance” landscape for you, but no landscape is zero maintenance. That means you may choose to pull or spray weeds as you see them pop up, or sign up for our Bed Maintenance Program (designed especially to maintain landscape beds throughout the seasons).

Cutting off more than ⅓ of the grass blade can harm the grass and promote weed growth throughout the lawn.

We do our very best to provide quality mowing services that you can be proud of, while actively working to maintain a happy and healthy lawn.

Core aeration loosens the soil to help with the flow of air, water and fertilizers.

It helps control thatch build up, stimulates root development, and creates a more healthy, lush lawn.

We recommend it once a year for every lawn.

Applying too much seed can actually cause the grass seedlings to compete with themselves and grow weaker.

The correct application on a new seeding will result in a thin, even spread of seed that is lightly raked into the soil. We will apply the seed at the correct rate specified by the supplier.

Seeding correctly can be very hard to see but will give the best results.

When it comes to wood mulch it is truly your preference, landscape fabric can help prevent weeds but will not 100% keep them out. Nowadays there are lots of effective products to keep weeds out of your landscape beds. When we install new mulch to freshen up a landscape bed or on a new install we spread a granular such as Preen which will stop seeds from germinating in your landscape beds. If you chose to install “rock mulch” you need to have a landscape matting underneath to separate the rock from the soil below.

A French drain is a system designed to collect water from surface water and also beneath the surface in a capillary action. Our French drains are designed to where they never need maintenance. We use non-woven fabric that allow 90-120 gallons of water a minute to pass through 1 square foot of fabric. Our drain tile is virgin material with no containments. Most corrugated black 4- and 6-inch pipe is not virgin and has been made by using recycled plastics. They also have containments that make it weaker and doesn’t allow it to last as long.

A yard drain is a drainage basin connected to drainpipe and removes only the surface water. Typically, a yard drain has a grate on top of a containment area connected to the drain tile.

If improperly installed, a drain tile system can freeze. But by using corrugated pipe and sloping the pipe at the correct percentage, the water will never be moving slow enough to freeze until it exits the pipe if sloped right. Also, this pipe is under ground, there is no wind to freeze it faster.

Water from your down spouts can be dirty. Bugs, Leaves, dirt and sticks can all get into your gutters and then travel down into your down spouts. We don’t want that contamination getting inside our French Drain. This will cause your French Drain to clog and fail. That is why we always run a separate non-perforated pipe all the way to the day-light or water containment area (storm sewers, driveways, drainage ditches etc.)

4-inch drain tile can handle up to 240 gallons a minute by just gravity feed. Most down spouts from average size roofs will never see more then 30-40 gallons a minute in even the worst storms.

In poor soil conditions, water drains very slow. Prime Landscapes calculates how big of a drainage system your property needs using the 100-year 24-hour precipitation data from the National Weather Service. This means that in 100 years, this is the max rain fall received in 1- time interval of 24 hours. This should only happen once every 100 years. We calculate your square foot and convert it into gallons to design the right system for your yard. Going off of this