The green beneath your feet and how to keep your lawn healthy and a joy to experience.
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Peter from Maplecrest Homes had mentioned to me that he had found gypsy moth caterpillars that had hatched. So this weekend, I was at the Royal Botanical Gardens . 
At the Lilac Gardens, there are oak trees all around
the parking circle. I know that there were gypsy moth caterpillars there last spring. Sure enough, you could see the little devils just starting to crawl around on the egg sacs. At this stage, they haven't started to do any damage yet.
This year could be another bad year for gypsy moth caterpillars. Certain areas were devastated by the defoliation caused by these hungry, voaracious leaf chewing insects.
Certainly, defoliation can be very stressful on the plants and successive defoliations can possibly lead to the demise of a tree.
For the major trees that are 4 inches in diameter or more, we recommend the use of Acecaps. With Acecaps, the capsules will place a systemic insecticide into the sap stream of the tree. Once the sap has the insecticide in it, the leaf of the trees containing that sap is now unhealthy for the caterpillars.
The advantage of Acecaps is that they can be applied without affecting anything else. There is no need to worry about cars, people who may be in the vicinity. The Acecaps also will last the entire season and its effect is not washed away by rain.
For smaller trees and shrubs, we have an organic insecticide that will knock out the caterpillars. It also greatly reduces damage by acting as an anti-feedant.
If you have any questions about gypsy moth caterpillars see our Library - Gypsy Moth Caterpillars or do a search of our website for more blog entries.
This time of year we get to see a whole range of lawns. Some are good, some are in poor shape, and some are in between. Hence "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly." The pictures, however, may not be in that order!
Regular feeding of the lawn is an important part of having a great lawn. The dappled shade on the good lawn brings out the nice green tones of the turf.
In a lawn where insects have been a problem, the good lawn species are destroyed, the coarse thick, undesirable quack grasses have a chance to spread more, and the weeds jump into the bare spots. This means that this lawn will require some work to get it back into shape.
