Real-world lawn, landscape, and yard advice from the East Texas crew that actually works the dirt. No fluff, no filler.
Cutting the lawn short to skip a mow is the fastest way to cook it in an East Texas July. Short grass grows short roots and invites crabgrass. Here are the right July deck heights for bermuda vs. St. Augustine.
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Every spring somebody fills a bed with petunias and by the Fourth of July it's a pile of crispy sticks. It isn't a green-thumb problem, it's a plant-choice problem. These five hold their color through the worst of the heat.
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Two East Texas lawns can go brown the same week for opposite reasons, and the fix for one kills the other. Fungus draws circles, heat draws coastlines. Here's the five-minute field test before you reach for the hose.
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The same June cut that pushes one shrub into a second round of flowers erases next year's blooms on the one beside it. Here's the line between crepe myrtles, hollies, hydrangeas, and azaleas, plus the one tree to leave alone.
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Fabric under mulch sounds like a permanent weed fix. Two or three years later it's the worst weed bed on the block, and a nightmare to pull out. Here's what actually happens, and the one place fabric does belong.
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The sprinklers run every day and the lawn still looks rough by July. It's usually the timing, the schedule, or a broken head nobody's watched run. Here's the 20-minute audit that finds it.
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The mounds show up overnight every May for a reason. Most people fight them the one way that doesn't shrink the colony. Here's the two-product system that actually works in East Texas.
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Two grasses cover most of the lawns out here, and they want opposite things. Pick the wrong one for your yard and no fertilizer fixes it. Here's how we decide on every property.
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Every calculator online tells you 3 inches. We do 1 to 1.5. Here's the math, the reason, and what 3 inches actually does to your flower beds in East Texas.
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Most people fertilize too early or too late. The May window is short, and almost everybody blows right through it. Here's the window we actually use, and the mistake I see on most properties.
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By mid-July, half the lawns in Longview look like burnt toast. Most of what people do to fix it makes it worse. Here are the four mistakes I see on almost every property, and what to change before this summer cooks your lawn again.
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