If you are wanting to learn how to properly maintain your lawn and landscape, you are in the right place!
We aren’t here to waste your time. We are about to get you up to speed on lawn maintenance by sharing our 7 best lawn maintenance tips for homeowners. Plus, we have a bonus lawn tip for you at the end.
The List of Lawn Care Tips:
- Water infrequently and deep
- Raise your mower blades and more!
- Stay on top of weeds before they become a big problem
- Prune your plants twice per year to keep things manageable
- Mulch is primarily for appearance – just realize that!
- Aerate and consider seeding in the fall
- Remove all leaves/debris before winter sets in
Bonus lawn tip: You'll have to stick around to the end!
We hope you are ready to become the envy of your neighborhood!
Water Your Lawn The Right Way
Believe it or not, there is a definitive right and wrong way to water your lawn. If you are watering your lawn incorrectly, you risk training your lawn to develop a shallow root system or could inadvertently introduce turf disease and/or fungi into your lawn.
The trick to watering is to water infrequently and to water deep. Now, what exactly does that mean?
Water Your Lawn Infrequently and Water Deep
The whole concept here is the fact that your lawn does not want or need a little bit of water applied every day.
Your lawn can go days without water as long as it got a healthy dose of water days prior. You can get away with watering your lawn every 3-4 days, maybe pick Mondays and Thursdays for example, as your lawn watering days to keep things simple.
If you are applying enough water each time you water, the water will soak its way deep into the soil where it will be much slower to evaporate. This is also where your lawn’s root system happens to be. Grass can only utilize water taking consuming it via its root system. Water droplets solely on the foliage will not improve the health of your lawn in the least bit.
Encourage Deep Roots In Your Lawn
We hope you are starting to get the concept here. If you water ‘shallow’ you will train your turf’s roots to search for water near the surface. If you water ‘deep’ your turf’s root system will dig down to retrieve that water and the nutrients within.
A deep system will allow your lawn to keep its color better over the hot and dry summer months, along with making it more resilient to turf disease and fungi. Speaking of turf disease and fungi, to limit the chances of introducing either of these things when watering, be sure to water as early in the day as possible. It’s best your lawn is left dry overnight.
Raise Your Lawn Mower Blades
The height that you cut your grass matters! And, before we forget, it is also important to keep your lawn mower blades sharp so they cleanly cut the grass blades instead of tearing them. Another best practice to remember is that you never want to remove more than 1/3 of the grass blade per mowing service.
Why does the cut height matter to your grass?
Each blade of grass is casting a little bit of shade over your soil surface. Even just raising your lawn mower’s deck a half-inch will make a big difference as to how much sunlight reaches the soil surface and keep it much cooler. The longer grass blades will keep the moisture in your lawn’s soil there longer and you will enjoy a greener, thicker lawn because of it.
If you need a mowing service in Northern KY, talk to our friends at BNB Lawn Mowing.
Stay On Top Of Weeds In Your Flower Beds Before They Become A Problem
This just makes sense doesn’t it? Pulling or spraying the weeds in your flower beds sooner than later is beneficial for a number of reasons. It certainly makes the task much less daunting and should consume much less of your time overall.
By killing or removing weeds before they mature and overtake your garden beds, you accomplish several things. You will have controlled these weeds before they had a chance to develop seed heads and repopulate themselves.
Also, weed control products will be much more effective when used on younger weed plants. And, if you are pulling the weeds, their root system will be less developed making them much easier to remove.
Prune Your Plants Twice A Year To Keep Pruning Manageable
This goes along with the same concept as staying on top of the weeds in your beds. By pruning your plants bi-annually, you will remove less foliage each time you prune making the job easier and less time consuming, not to mention it will be much more enjoyable.
The whole idea of pruning plants is to help them maintain their natural shape and remain within their designated space in your garden beds. Some plants should be pruned at certain times of the year so it is a good idea to identify the plants in your beds and learn how to properly prune that species of plant. One thing you definitely want to avoid is cutting off flower buds which will affect future blooms!
If you'd like to learn more about pruning plants, read this excellent article on how to properly prune plants.
Mulch Is Primarily For Aesthetic Purposes
Sorry to burst the myth that mulch will eliminate the weed problem in your landscape beds!
Will mulch help with weed control at all? Maybe a little by smothering some infant weeds at the time of mulching but that is about it. Mulch is organic material and weeds can literally grow straight out of mulch alone whether soil is beneath or not.
Why mulch if it doesn’t help with weed control?
Mulch does have some beneficial characteristics over and beyond improving the aesthetics of your flower beds. But the number one reason you should mulch your beds is that you want to enjoy that well-maintained look it provides.
Mulch does retain moisture in the soil beneath and insulates plant roots over the winter months. These are 2 great qualities mulch does offer. By guarding the soil surface against the sun, more moisture will remain in your soil longer which your plants will love. Some plants are sensitive to cold temperatures over the winter months. Mulch will insulate the soil containing the plant’s roots.
Aerate Your Lawn Each Fall & Consider Over-Seeding
Aerating is truly the key to achieving the lawn of your dreams. Aerating is the single best thing you can do for your lawn’s overall health.
Core aerating specifically pulls ‘cores’ or plugs of soil from the soil beneath your lawn. This allows water and nutrients to more easily travel down to the root zone. We already know how important getting water deep into your soil is!
Along with this benefit, aerating also de-compacts your soil. Less dense soil is easier for roots to expand into compared to compacted soil. This makes developing a deep root system easier for your turf. The health of your lawn’s root system is directly reflected by the turf’s appearance on top!
Considering Seeding Each Fall
Fall is the best time to sow new grass seed because this is when the climate is most ideal and that is something we cannot control. Over-seeding your entire lawn after aerating is always something to consider. All of the holes created by the aeration process make for great seed-to-soil contact which is an important factor in a successful grass seed sowing plan.
If your lawn doesn’t really need new grass plants everywhere, consider spot seeding bare or thin areas by hand.
Remove All Leaves & Yard Waste Before Winter Sets In
We cannot stress how important it is to pick up those leaves each fall! This goes for the leaves in your lawn and your landscape beds, and you might as well remove them from any hard or paved surfaces at this time too.
If you fail to collect and remove the leaves and other yard debris such as twigs or limbs that have fallen from trees, you are just asking for a disease or fungi to enter your lawn or landscape plants. On top of having to worry about disease and fungi, you are also inviting critters to create their winter home in your leaf piles!
Leaves left on your lawn can also simply smoother the grass beneath creating lots of bare patches. One important thing to note regarding removing leaves is to ensure you also thoroughly remove the leaves that build up around the base of your plants. Plants with low-hanging branches are notorious for collecting and trapping leaves beneath.
Bonus Lawn Tip: Hire a Local, Reputable Lawn Treatment Service
As a final tip, we encourage you to support a local small business to handle your lawn’s fertilization and weed control needs.
There is an art and science to properly fertilizing and controlling weeds in your lawn and a number of products are needed to do it properly. By the time you add up all of the equipment and products you will need, it very well could also be more cost-effective to hire a professional lawn care company to do this for you.
Lawn care services have tried and true programs they have refined over the years to provide the lawns in their area with exactly what they need when they need it. Plus, controlling weeds is much more effective when the herbicide is sprayed on the lawn instead of spread.
If you are really wanting your lawn to pop, we definitely recommend finding a reputable lawn treatment company in your local area. If you happen to live in the Spokane Valley area, reach out to Jose at Spokane's Finest Lawns and receive the best lawn care in Spokane Valley.
Now Your Ready To Maintain Your Lawn and Landscape Like A Pro
We hope you enjoyed our 7 lawn care tips and a bonus!
Please feel free to leave a comment with any questions you may have for us regarding maintaining your lawn or landscape. If you need any lawn tools, supplies, or replacement parts, be sure to check out the iGoPro Lawn Supply online store.
The number one thing is to remember to have fun while working on your lawn and garden!
Ryan Sciamanna
Ryan is the owner and founder of Lawn Crack, LLC the parent company of iGoPro Lawn Supply. He has worked in almost every capacity within the lawn and landscape industry for small local companies, nationwide companies, and of course, owning his own lawn & landscape business which he sold in 2018 before starting selling lawn and garden products online. Learn more about Ryan by subscribing to the LawnCrack YouTube Channel.
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