Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
Sunday Sip - David J Frank Landscaping
[MUSIC PLAYING] Good morning. This is a Sunday Symptom News Radio WTMJ. I'm Eric Bealsett. I'm joined by Randy Hill with David J. Frank Landscape Contracting. Randy, hello. Hello, Eric. Thanks for having me today. Randy is the director of sales at David J. Frank Landscape Contracting. Wanted to get you in to ask about winterizing the yard. We're into the fall now. It's October. The season is here. You can kind of feel it in the air. And I always look out of my yard and I'm like, man, maybe it'll be OK. Maybe I shouldn't winterize knowing that obviously there are things that you should be doing. Of course, winter is coming. It's inevitable. When we think about winter, I'm sorry, fall landscape activities, we think about how we can protect and strengthen our landscape. Get it ready for winter. Get a prep for spring. So there's the obvious stuff that we have to do. We have to rake the leaves. We've got to do the fall cleanup. We want to get all that debris and leaf material off of our plant beds off of our turf panels. Above and beyond that, this was a pretty tough year for our landscapes. If you think back to the spring and early summer we had, there was a ton of rain. A lot of saturated soils, right? And then we transitioned from that right into near drought conditions. So we went from that wet moist condition to right away, boom, hot and dry. And that took a toll on our landscape. So there are certainly some things you want to do to help strengthen your turf panels and your plant material. When you talk about turf panels, it's always great to aerate your lawns. Loosen up that compacted soil a little bit. That's going to get the nutrients and water down deeper. The deeper your roots are on your lawn, the stronger it's going to be. It's going to be more drought resistant in the future, more prone to being weed free. So that's one thing you want to do. Overseating's also important. And then there's still time in the season for probably too late lawn fertilizations. If you can get one done right about now, you can time another one just before the ground freezes. Those are great to do because they don't encourage the top growth. We're not going to be cutting our grass longer. It's going to encourage that root growth. And it's going to hold those nutrients in over the winter. Then when it comes to plant material, like I said, plant material had it rough this year because of the weather that we got. It's always great to do some dormant fertilizations. You don't want to do that now because if you fertilize now, you're going to be promoting growth this time of year. You want to wait until it's two, three weeks before the ground freezes. Get some good nutrients into your trees and your shrubs. It's going to help them survive the winter, going to help them really have more energy in spring. And you'll notice that in the spring, if you don't do something like that, right? 100%. Yes, 100%. You won't see them leaf out as full. You'll see it. They went through a lot of stress this year. And they're going to continue that stress unless we feed them. Feed them so they're ready for next spring. Why do I need to get those leaves out of the beds? Why does that matter? Just more debris that can get in the way. It's going to inhibit next year's growth in turf panels, especially. You've got a lot of our lawns are a mix of fescue rye grasses and bluegrass. Some of them are going to reseed themselves, right? You've got a thick cover of leaves and debris in there. It's going to inhibit that from growing. Randy Hill joins us from David J. Frank Landscape Contracting. DavidJFrank.com is the website. They've been around 65 years, a little bit more in the company here in a second. But first, you promised me some fun things that we can do with our lawn here in the autumn. What does that mean? What is fun things? Of course, yeah. There's a lot of utilitarian things that we have to do in fall when it comes to fun stuff. I mean, there's still time to get projects done this year. You know, it's a 70 degree day in October right now. Historically, I started this 25, 30 years ago. Like we finished landscape in around November 1st. We've had landscapeable weather all the way through Christmas the last couple of years. We've had crews out last year doing hardscape projects January, February. So there is still time to get your projects done. So if you've been dreaming of an outdoor space, of some enhanced plantings, there's still time to get that done. Also too, when you talk about fun fall, like the landscape's getting brown, it's getting gray, things are going dormant. It's always fun to bring a splash of color this time of year. And you can achieve that through some autumn displays, right? You see the corn stocks, the variety of pumpkins, the gourds, the moms, the masters. Like brings in all the color, right? It's kind of cool to see that too. Plus you can take your kids out, they can pick some pumpkins, they can help out with that display. Or David J. Frank can help you with it. DavidJFrank.com is the website. You mentioned some landscaping. So like really, we could put something in the ground even now in October? Oh, 100%. Yeah, when you look at deciduous material, great time to plant it is when it's going into its dormancy, right? Then it's already in the ground, it's ready to go next spring. It's already gone through its first winter in a dormant state. So you have a lot better survivability with that. Also with the weather we're having, we're still seeding lawns right now, which is uncommon. But it looks like the next 30, 45 days are gonna remain pretty temperate. So there's opportunity for that as well. And being outside, man, like everyone I know in my neighborhood, even if it's fall, doesn't matter. They're outside, they're in the lawn, they're doing things. People in Wisconsin, they love their outdoor spaces. They love their lawns. Something else people in Wisconsin love are these nice, beautiful falls that we have, right? So I'm encouraging everyone out there. Enjoy one last boat ride, get to a brewery game, get to a Badger game, get to a Packer game, take a hike out in the woods. Let David J. Frank take care of your landscape needs. DavidJFrank.com is the website. This is a Sunday sip on News Radio WTMJ, speaking with director of sales Randy Hill. Okay, so David J. Frank, been around 65 years. Why David J. Frank for my lawn? Sure, well, we check all the boxes when it comes to professionalism, expertise, the customer experience that we deliver. We've got over three dozen certified graduate horticulturalists, registered landscape architects. And we take the approach. We're a very people first company. So that starts with our own team. We take care of them. We train and we want to enhance their lives, knowing that it's going to make their lives better and it's going to make our customers experience even better as well. We're a company, our mindset is we work with our clients, not for our clients, right? So it's a very side-by-side approach. So not only do we have the expertise, the knowledge, the horsepower, we take care of our clients. We like our clients to feel like we care about them and we achieve that by actually caring about our clients and everything that we do. So it's a company mindset that is from the top all the way down and it's really fun. We've got, I looked at like a lot of what we do is referral work, it's repeat business work. The amount of clients that we have that say they would refer us to a friend or family member has been above 90% since I've been here and that's over 10 years. Many years it's in the upper 90s. So that kind of speaks for itself. And we're looking to grow a little bit. You know, we're looking to achieve some new clients. There's a lot of sites that we drive around town that we see and we aspire to take care of those landscapes. - And you can tell, boy, they need some work over there, right? - Oh, it's beautiful and we like to make it even more beautiful, right? - I like that better. - Both ways. - DavidJFrank.com is the website. DavidJFrank Landscape Contracting, Director of Sales, Randy Hill. Randy, thank you so much. - Of course, thank you Eric, have a great day. - That website again, DavidJFrank.com. This is a Sunday sip on News Radio, WTMJ.