Is your commercial property ready for winter?
It’s not exactly a gentle season.
Toppling tree branches, exploding irrigation pipes, lawns gasping for air, treacherous frozen puddles.
It’s cruel out there.
Jack Davis, client relations manager for Greenscape, Inc., shares his best tips for protecting your commercial property from all winter dishes out.
Prune Those Branches
“You want to get all the dead branches and limbs pruned out before ice starts accumulating on them,” Davis says.
Ice is heavier than you think. One gallon of water weighs 8.3 lbs., he says. (File that away for next time you watch Jeopardy.)
That’s plenty heavy to cause dangerous limbs to crash down onto cars, buildings and people, creating a big liability risk.
Trained crews will prune branches at just the right spot, Davis says, but if nature does the job, they can crack and split in the worst places.
“You can lose the whole tree,” he says.
Get after those branches sooner rather than later, he says — before the first winter storm hits.
Blow Out Irrigation
“If your irrigation system isn’t properly drained, pipes can freeze and burst,” Davis says. “That can do a lot of damage.
“All the pipes are underground, so when a line breaks, there’s no real way to know about it until spring,” he says.
Then, you really know about it.
“Water can be running nonstop,” he says. “Whole areas of your property can wash out, or get real soupy. Turf can die, plants can die.”
Trust us. It’s a huge, expensive mess.
The number one priority is to get every bit of water out of the pipes, valves and sprinkler heads.
This isn’t a task you can easily do yourself. Irrigation specialists have the right equipment and skills to remove all the water from your irrigation system. Even if you’ve drained the water out of your irrigation system, some water remains and can freeze, expand, and crack the pipes.
A pro should also inspect your entire irrigation system one last time before winter. If it needs minor repairs, they can tackle the job promptly, so your system is ready once spring arrives.
Clear All The Leaves
Greenscape crews are working like crazy to clear all the leaves from customers’ turf.
Why the big rush?
“If leaves cover your lawn for the winter, that turf will die,” Davis says. Wet, moldy leaves can cause fungus to set in, he says.
And a thick carpet of soggy leaves blocks sunlight your grass needs to maintain a healthy root system.
Here in the Triangle area, most grass is cool season fescue.
So if you lose it over the winter, you can’t just re-seed in the spring or summer, Davis says. You’ll have to wait until fall to reseed. Or pay for expensive sod if you don’t want to wait.
Cut Back The Pretty Roses
“If you don’t cut roses back now, they’ll get real woody,” Davis says. “They won’t flush back out nice and green in the spring with leaves and petals.”
Keep Storm Drains Clear
Here’s another reason to keep your commercial property clear of old leaves and debris — the soggy mess can clog your storm drains, causing puddles to form.
Those puddles will quickly turn to slick ice once the temperature dips, creating a liability hazard.
Protect Your Property With Greenscape
That’s a bit of a checklist.
Rest easy and leave it all to us.
We’ve been meeting the full-service landscaping needs of commercial customers in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary areas for more than 35 years.
We offer landscape management and lawn care, design and build services, irrigation, landscape lighting and more.
Call us at 919-552-7742 or fill out our online form to request a free consultation and learn how we can protect your landscape now and transform it later.
We’ll get your property tucked in for winter.
