Horticultural Oils and How They Help Your Landscape

At The Organic Turf Company we offer a wide variety of products and services to help you keep your lawn & landscape healthy and beautiful. One of these is our tree and shrub program. I get asked a lot what this program consists of, so today I am going to tell you about the first application we do in the early spring.

Every spring, we spray all the ornamental plants with a 100% organic horticultural oil.  These are generally a mineral oil or one of a variety of vegetable based oils that are sprayed on your plants to combat certain types of insects. On your plants there are many types of insects, both good and bad.  We understand this and make sure we are doing what we can to take care of the most difficult ones while generally leaving the good insects alone.

This is where the horticultural oils come in, by smothering insects or eggs that have overwintered on your plants. These are insects that feed off your plants and can cause your plants tremendous stress and damage as their numbers grow. The insects targeted by the horticultural oils either suffocate or starve. While this may seem a bit drastic, these insects populations can grow very rapidly (some aphid species can actually give birth to live young and have several generations in a single season) and can transmit diseases from plant to plant. The excess oil evaporates and dissipates quickly so there is no toxic residue left on your plants and they are safe for both your human and furry children.

This is one of the organic products we use to help the ornamental trees and shrubs stay healthy and beautiful for years to come. Here at The Organic Turf company we want to “Nurture a Difference” in both your lawn and our industry, and we think using these types of effective and safe products in environmentally conscious ways will help set us apart from the rest. If you are already part of our family, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you aren’t, we would love to tell you more about what makes us a great choice for not only your lawn, but your trees and shrubs too.