A healthy, clean home and aptly green lawn are a sight for sore eyes, and lawns are an extension of your house and thus, hold a place in our homes. But keeping it healthy and tidy is a task that can be daunting.
Keeping a lawn in its tip-top shape requires a lot of work, time, effort, and care, but they don’t have to be complicated. From finding the right time to water, when to aerate, and what to do with weeds, here are some ways to keep your lawn healthy.
Simple Ways To Keep Your Lawn Healthy
1. Keep your feet off the grass.
The most common and most popular lawn care of all time: keep your feet off the grass! but grass often under foot traffic will stop growing. Also, grass that is usually stepped on may not grow taller and mulch on the ground instead Stepping away from the grass may seem unnecessary.
You can try fertilizing it or applying boosters, but the grass won’t be the same. There are two options for this: replacing the grass with new grass itself and replacing the grass with a path or stones instead. The thought is simple, but better keep off the grass instead.
2. Remove and clean away weeds.
What to do with weeds as they are prevalent in lawns or areas with grass. One weed or two is fine as long as you remove them immediately. However, if left forgot, weeds can take over your lawn and dominate the grass instead.
Therefore, it’s essential to take care of the grass by using handheld weeders or garden hoes to remove weeds. If ever the weeds have taken over your lawn, natural herbicides might do the trick- as long as you use natural and non-chemically sourced ones.
3. Dethatch and aerate your lawn occasionally.
Dethatching and aerating are two common ways to ensure the healthy growth of grass and avoid dead patches of grass. Both of these can be done easily and simultaneously.
Thatch or thatches usually accumulate between grass blades and their roots, causing dead patches and spaces in which weeds grow. Thatches happen for several reasons, but most commonly, they can form from poorly mowed grass and too much organic matter for the grass to absorb. To perform dethatching, a thatching rake or a power dethatcher can remove the thatch effectively. Dethatching might make your lawn look terrible, but it helps with grass growth.
Plants and soil need occasional aerating to get oxygen and allow the roots and soil underneath to breathe. Aerating can also help in avoiding compacted soil. Compacted soil prevents water drainage, fertilizer absorption, and oxygen circulation. It’s easy to aerate your lawn; simply poke holes on the lawn at around 3inches or 15cm deep with a garden fork.
4. Grass needs food too.
You might think the grass is easy to grow and can be left alone with water and sunlight, but grass, like any other plant, needs food too. Fertilizers and grass seeds promote grass growth and can help maintain a green lawn.
Feed your plants seasonally, preferably during summer. Fertilizers can be applied during spring and autumn but can also be used all year round, depending on the manufacturer’s instructions.
5. Mow the grass properly.
A properly mowed grass is essential to grass growth. Not only does it keep a perfectly manicured lawn, but it also promotes weed resistance and prevents soil compaction. That is, if the lawn is mowed correctly. When mowing, remove only the ⅓ of the grass to give the grass more time to grow more efficiently. Also, sharpen your lawn mower blades before using them to avoid brown and yellow spots on your lawn when mowing; mow the grass when dry, and mow in a different direction to prevent compaction and help the grass grow evenly.
6. Don’t forget to hydrate your lawn.
Other than aerating your grass for proper oxygen absorption, don’t forget to water the grass adequately. Watering your grass prevents it from drying out and becoming dry patches. Also, grass needs more watering when it’s the dry season. You can set up a sprinkler system or water it manually, but don’t water it every day. Weekly or every other day will do.
Don’t leave a water hose in the ground and then call it water. Too much water will form puddles and leave extra moisture that the grass can’t absorb and lead to more weeds and impacted soil.
To sum it up…
Lawn care is pretty simple and easy with the right amount of energy (from you) and proper research from both online and offline resources of what to do for your lawn. Many resources online offer specified lawn care and solutions that cater to different types of problems.
Various sites such as Trugreen lawn have some great tips to help you keep your lawn healthy with comprehensive and detailed lawn care guides. So, get your gardening tools and shape your lawn as you want it to be, considering all the tips you got here. Get your landscaping game on!
