Lawn Tips for a Perfect Lawn

Fertilizer

Why should I need it?

To keep your lawn green, growing, and looking its best, a consistent program of fertilization is essential. Regular fertilization will lead to a thicker, healthier lawn that reduces erosion, filters pollutants, provides natural cooling, and cleans the air. Plus, your lawn will be less likely to suffer from weed, insect, and disease problems when it’s fertilized on a regular basis. And perhaps best of all, your lawn will need less water when it gets the nutrients it needs throughout the year.

WHAT’S IN A FERTILIZER, ANYWAY?

Fertilizer contains three primary (and many secondary) nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Nitrogen promotes strong color and top growth, phosphorus stimulates root development, and potassium helps with disease resistance and water retention. For the best results, your lawn should be given these nutrients in evenly spaced treatments throughout the year.

HOW DO LAWNS USE FERTILIZER?

After fertilizer becomes mixed with the moisture in the soil, it’s absorbed by the plants through hair-like feeder roots. Once inside the plant, nutrients are distributed to the areas where they’re needed and can go to work building new roots, promoting fuller leaf growth, warding off diseases, and helping the grass hold water throughout the seasons.

Based on our local history, we know the best fertilizer for your particular needs, and we can apply it in the right amounts at the right times of the year to ensure beautiful, healthy growth. Call us today for more information on our fertilization programs.

Watering

Keeping your lawn thick, green and healthy means doing several things right. One of the most important is making sure there’s enough moisture to maintain growth.

Nature’s rainfall schedule is not dependable. Some additional watering is almost always necessary, at least during the hotter and drier parts of the year, to avoid water stress. Lawns turn brown, thin out, and run into more disease and insect problems when under water stress. A thin, water-stressed lawn also creates room for weeds to invade. So whether you use underground or portable sprinklers, there are a few basic guidelines to follow to avoid these problems and maintain good lawn health.

TIMING MAKES A DIFFERENCE

One basic rule is: Water your lawn when the least amount will be lost. Avoid watering in the heat of the day to make sure your water goes down to the roots instead of going up as vapor. Also avoid watering when windy conditions will affect even watering.

SOAK THOSE ROOTS

When you water, saturate the soil to a depth of 6" to 8". Frequent, shallow watering causes the grass to send roots to the surface for water, where they suffer more quickly during dry hot spells. Also be sure to put down extra water along curbs and pavement, because these areas heat up much more and dry out much faster.

Mowing

Proper mowing is critical for keeping your lawn healthy and looking good.
There are three things you can do to keep your lawn a cut above the rest:

Mow High Enough

The basic rule is the hotter the weather, the higher you should mow. Higher mowing promotes deeper roots, prevents water loss by shading the soil, and reduces weeds by preventing sunlight from warming weed seeds. Taller grass also cools the soil and reduces heat stress.

Mow Often Enough

Be sure that no more than one-third of the total grass blade is removed in one mowing. Mowing too short removes too much of the green part of the plant, leaving stalky-looking crowns and stems. This gives the lawn a brown, scalped look and weakens the grass. Recovering from even a single scalping sets the growth of the lawn back many weeks.

Keep Mower Blades Sharp

Dull mower blades can rip and shred the tips of your grass blades, turning them a bleached, tan color and leaving the whole lawn looking brown. For best results, sharpen mower blades several times per year. If you have a large lawn, sharpen them once a month during the mowing season.

Drought Damage

Are your lawn and landscape plants showing the ill effects of dry weather?

Often, damage continues to show up for a number of years after a drought. To prevent more trouble, water when rainfall is scarce- and don’t wait!

A plant’s root system sustains the plant with the moisture and nutrients it takes in from the soil. For trees and shrubs, as for grass, most roots lie in the top few inches of soil. That means when it doesn’t rain, the root zone dries out fast unless you water. When roots are water-stressed, they shrivel and die, causing plants to suffer.

Even if you start watering at the first signs of trouble, such as leaf wilt or tip browning, chances are that damage has already begun occurring to plant root systems. That’s why it’s best to water before plants tell you they need help.

When moisture does return, plants go into a recovery mode. Lawns will need lots of water as grass plants that survived the drought spread to fill in bare areas left by the death of crowns of some plants. Some lawns will need overseeding or even total renovation if the damage is too severe.

For larger plants that have been without water, the diminished root system may be unable to supply all health and moisture needs. New shoots and twigs may not be sent out for years until the root system is once again capable of both taking care of current needs and sending out new growth. Some stressed plants will eventually lose the fight to stay alive, falling prey not only to lingering effects of drought but to insects or diseases that invade stressed plants.

Weed Control

Even the most beautiful lawn is likely to have weeds appear at some point. Keeping a lawn weed-free takes more than just having a couple of herbicide treatments each year. Nature finds ways to make sure something starts growing in any lawn that has become too thin. Bare patches of soil quickly fill up with broadleaf and grassy weeds of all sorts. That’s why a healthy, thick strand of grass is the very best weed prevention there is.

Below are a few facts you should know in winning your war with lawn weeds.

REMOVE THOSE ANNOYING WEEDS

All About Weeds

The two basic kinds of weeds in most lawns are broadleaf and grasses. Dandelions and clover are broadleaf weeds, while crabgrass is a grassy type. There are also perennial and annual weeds with very different life cycles. Summer weeds have a thick, waxy coat that makes them the toughest to control. We have specialized approaches for controlling the various types of weeds common to lawns.

Mow High & Water

Regular fertilization is the best way to produce a healthy, thick strand of grass that can fight off invading weeds. Working together, we can keep your lawn beautiful and healthy while keeping most of the weeds out. Please give us a call with any questions you may have about weeds or and other lawn concerns.

Crabgrass

To win the war against crabgrass, combine professional care with good follow-up practices.

Ready to Remove Crabgrass?

Thousands of seeds produced by last year’s crabgrass plants were blown and carried virtually everywhere. The trick is to keep the seeds from germinating. For that, action has to be taken early in the season, before the weather gets too warm. Once seeds have germinated, aggressive crabgrass plants can take over. Professional treatment includes an application of a preemergence herbicide, watered in by rainfall or supplemental sprinkling, creating a barrier against sprouting crabgrass.

Keep this barrier intact by not raking and by watering to keep the soil from drying out and cracking.

You should also be sure not to cut your lawn too short. Such scalping leads to grass thinning, making it easier for crabgrass to flourish. For the same reason, don’t get too aggressive with your string trimmer or blade edger.

In some seasons and areas, a second application may be a good idea. If some crabgrass plants get growing even under your watchful eye, post-emergence controls are available to take care of them.

Healthy, dense turf chokes out crabgrass, so the best defense against these unwanted plants is to combine our treatments with good mowing and watering practices to promote vigorous growth.