We have come to the end of the 2016 growing season. It was another unique year, but aren’t all years unique? Each year has its own quirks and challenges, but like every year, we make our way through.
We had a warm start to the spring. However, spring always throws some roller coaster-like weather at us with a high temperature on April 9 of 34 degrees and one week later on April 16, we had a high temperature of 79 degrees. That is quite the difference.
Summer was quite typical. We had some warm and dry spells, but nothing that lasted extremely long or were that bad. However, we did see a few breakouts of Pythium Blight this summer, which is a turf disease that enjoys the very hot and very humid weather.
The tornado on August 20 was maybe the most notable thing over this past growing season. For some, all they saw was just some rain and thunder and lightning and wind. For others, they lost trees and their landscapes were greatly changed. Luckily there were no serious injuries.
Late summer was another bad year for grubs, the same as the year before. Many lawns that typically do not have grubs problems saw some grub activity this year. Luckily most of it was detected early, and it was managed without much damage.
Fall started out fairly wet with routine weather systems passing through. However, after a few weeks of that, a switch was flipped and we went over a week a few different times without seeing any rain. The rain in the early fall kept moisture in the ground which helped to keep the grass growing for so long.
We had very good year for fall color. The weather cooperated to provide a good showing of color. And the leaves stayed on the trees for a very long time which only helped when it came to the fall color show. The one bummer of it all with the leaves staying on for so long is that it caused some quick dumps of leaves. When the leaves finally did come off of the trees.
Even though much of the fall was very warm, we did see some snow just before Thanksgiving. This was just enough to help us to remember that winter is still to come.
As we wrap up the 2016 growing season, we would like to thank all of our customers for using our services this year. We hope to see you again for the 2017 growing season.