Effective and Easy Tips for Taking Care of Your Lawn

Everyone wants to own a very beautiful and healthy lawn. But to get such a lawn like this, you don’t need to put in as much effort as you might think. Just follow these useful tips on lawn care and maintenance to have your lawn manicured beautifully all year round.

Cutting

It’s important to have your lawn regularly cut, especially when the lawn is covered in lush green. You should do the trimming as often as possible since more trimming is much better than less. Obviously, a length of about three to five cm is recommended for a lawn.

Yet, during scorching hot summer days, you can let it grow quite long so that it can better withstand damaging droughts. When you keep grass blades longer a little bit, it not only brings a great feeling to walk on but helps protect plant roots and enhance photosynthesis as well.

In the spring or summer when it gets warmer, you don’t need to use the catcher in your lawnmower. Instead, you can use mulching mode to mow the lawn as long as you trim more frequently. When you do this, the

clippings then land the ground and dispose of, thus adding invaluable nutrients to your garden soil.

Finally, varying the mowing direction on a weekly basis is also a great idea since it allows the grass to grow straight and tall.

Watering

You don’t always have to water the grass; just every seven days is OK. Yet, remember to water deeply. Soaking every week helps the grass’s roots grow deeper underground.

In contrast, if you water shallowly, though very often, that tends to cause thatch – an ugly web of dry brown roots hovering only above your soil. Deep watering can also help grass avoid chinch bugs – a pest prone to attacking dried and stressed-out lawns in middle areas in the country.

You may wonder, which is the best amount of water for your lawn? To answer this, you should consider the type of your soil. Sandy soil, since drying out faster, needs frequent watering; meanwhile, clay soil holds moisture for a longer period, so you don’t need to water it so frequently.

If your lawn is newly seeded, water it daily for about 5-10 min only. You just need enough water for seed dampening; too much water only causes runoff and washes all the seeds away, or ruins the surface with deep ditches. When the seeds have all germinated, and the grass has grown half an inch tall, you can water 15-20 min every day.

If you don’t have time and are too busy with working, I highly recommend using the wifi smart sprinkler controller system which would enable your sprinkler system to use sufficient amounts of water for your lawn.

Fertilizing

To give your lawn the best look, you need to provide it with vital nutrients by feeding it regularly. Taking into account your lawn type, I highly recommend you feed it every 4-5 weeks in the spring and summer.

When you take out one kilo of lawn cuttings, you also take out about 10 gr of phosphorous, 20 gr of potassium and 30 gr of nitrogen. You have to refill in place of these three valuable nutrients. Nitrogen promotes greening while potassium allows your lawn to withstand droughts, and phosphorous makes roots grow faster for water retention.

In today market, a great deal of specially formulated products is available for lawn care. So, make sure you choose one that is suitable for the type of your lawn. Also, remember to follow the instructions of the manufacturer to feed the lawn correctly.

To facilitate your work load, my advice is you should use a spreader for fertilizer application. This way helps you make sure of the dose and spares you clean as well as safe hands.

Doing Away with Weeds

Undoubtedly, crabgrass casts a blight on any lawn gardeners. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that only herbicides can give healthy lawns; in fact, most experts try not to use them. According to what they say, the best way to banish weeds is growing healthy grass so that it will naturally choke out those invaders.

You can remove most weeds by hand, especially after rain or when you’ve watered the lawn because the soil becomes looser and you can pull up all the weed, including its roots.

In case weeds outgrow grass, to know how to revive your lawn, you’d better seek advice from a grass-care specialist or nursery in your locality.

Air Supply

Too compacted grass hinders essential nutrients from penetrating into the root systems in need. In this case, the best solution you should take is aeration, which is to poke holes in the lawn for improvement in oxygen circulation. Here, you have to scarify or rake your lawn since it’s an essential task and you’d better perform it when the weather is good enough for the lawn’s full recovery.

The best times of the year are spring and autumn because, during these seasons, it’s generally warm, rains and sunlight are available and not too extreme.

You should scarify the lawn one or two times each year, which enables more fresh air to reach the root system of your lawn. Moreover, scarifying also means greater light supply for the grass’s lower parts and easier fertilizer access for the roots.

Gradually bringing down the grass height one or two weeks before you do the scarifying is a good idea, since this lessens the damaging threats facing grass blades.

Vigorous lawn raking helps do away with dead leaves, grass, and thatch ( thatch includes dead and living shoots, roots and stems which form a layer between the grass and the soil).

You should bear this in mind: modern varieties of lawns typically do not form heavy thatch, as opposed to older varieties like couch.  On the other hand, thatch that only forms a thin layer gives a protective shield for your lawn to cope with extreme heats. However, a heavy thatch with a height of more than 0.5 inch can do harm to your lawn. Scarifying should only be performed when necessary.

Aerating

Another essential task to perform is lawn aeration. This task helps separate the grass blades, thus improving the fresh air supply for root systems later on.

Use a gardening fork to aerate the lawn. Drive it into your soil about 0.5cm deep then move it forward and backward for several times.

Perform this task over and over again for your whole lawn, approximately every one cm or so.

You can save your energy, especially when you have a large lawn, by hiring an aerator, and all you have to do is just rolling over your lawn.

Conclusion

You can tell whether a lawn is healthy by looking at it: a soft, lush green carpet-like lawn ideal for croquet as well as cartwheels. The season for outdoor activities has begun; it’s time to start enjoying your lawn again.

Give your lawn love and care, then what you receive is a lush green carpet that can make your neighbors green with envy.