As you know, lawns take a lot of care to look their best. Yet, your lawn may not require the type of care you’re currently giving it.If you look ahead, you’ll notice that the first tip in maintaining a happy and healthy lawn is regular mowing. If you’re busy, traveling, or just don’t feel like doing it…. there’s MOWZ on demand professional lawn mowing service.
Here are 8 smart lawn maintenance tips to ensure a healthy yard:
- Mowing: Believe it or not, a simple household chore can actually harm your lawn if you’re using dull blades, scalping your yard or mowing right after it rains. Instead, you should do the opposite—mow when the lawn has dried after a rain event, only take 1/3 off the top, and use sharp blades to make a clean cut. Also, it’s smart to mow in different directions to avoid ruts in your lawn.
- Grasscycling: In your parents and grandparents’ day, people believed that grass clippings caused thatch. Yet, in reality, they don’t. You’re actually giving your lawn a 25% nitrogen boost—plus, keeping unnecessary clippings out of landfills. These clippings are made up mostly of water and dissolve quickly back into the soil—especially if you use a mulching mower.
- Trim around edges, corners and objects: Give your property that trim, neat look by taking a string trimmer around the edges where your mower just can’t reach.
- Give your lawn the right amount of water at the right time: Just because it’s hot doesn’t mean your yard grass needs water. If you got about an inch or more of rain within the last seven days, you don’t need to water your lawn. Likewise, you only need to give your lawn about an inch of water when you irrigate it. Let it soak deeply—not just a quick sprinkle. Better yet, consider installing an irrigation system that you can set up to turn off the water when there’s enough soil moisture.
- Your lawn’s soil is its lifeline: The key to a healthy lawn equals healthy soil. Feed the soil the right nutrients to keep it at its best.
- Don’t forget to aerate: Since your soil is a living thing, it needs to breathe. Consider having your yard aerated with an aerator that takes small plugs of soil out to allow oxygen, water and fertilizer to penetrate it as well as to release carbon dioxide from the soil. A landscape professional can aerate your lawn in the fall.
- Fertilize wisely: Before you put any fertilizer on your lawn, first get a soil test The results will tell you exactly what your soil is lacking. Once you know what it’s lacking, you can buy the right ratio of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Also, be aware of your state’s laws regarding nitrogen and phosphorous. Finally, don’t blow any fertilizer into storm drains, in the street or on your driveway. While fertilizer helps your soil and lawn, it causes a lot of damage to your local waterways.
- Allow your yard to go dormant: Sometimes in the summer, there may be a heat wave with no rain in sight. Your lawn may start to look brown—this usually happens at the end of summer. Don’t worry—your lawn is just going dormant. While it’s dormant, don’t mow or overwater it. Just let it go brown. Once it starts raining again, your lawn will miraculously green up.
You may be doing all of these smart lawn maintenance tips and your yard looks great. But you get busy at work or with family obligations and find you have no time to mow.
At PLOWZ & MOWZ, we came up with an app to make hiring a professional mowing service a snap. Want to learn more? Download our app or contact us.
Sources:
National Association for Landscape Professionals, “A Look at Americans Lawn Care Knowledge,” LoveYourLandscape.org: infographic.
Ibid., “A Seasonal Guide: Summer Lawn and Landscape Care.”