Whenever time shrinks because life is too hectic, one of the first parts of the garden that we tend to forsake is the lawn.
Since the grass is very resilient and holds up to most conditions, it’s natural to overlook and even misinterpret some obvious symptoms of stress and sickness that fall upon it. However, there are things you can do for the betterment of that green sea that covers your house’s surroundings.
Let’s see what those are and how to go about them. One by one, these tips should make your lawn lusher and hopefully strong enough to be stepped on by those hundreds of guests you had no choice but to invite for your sweet marriage.
Water it thoroughly
Plants usually benefit greatly from a watering that’s more thorough instead of frequent. When you wet the soil in its entirety, allowing further depths to remain moist, the roots will continue penetrating that layer, downwards over the days, in search of that humidity.
This is what down the line will save your garden plants from drought, for they’re not so vulnerable when, for some reason, you’re unable to water them as you normally would. This means every other day or more during the hottest months of summer, and maybe nothing at all during the colder seasons, if they also happen to be humid and rainy.
Do the irrigation late in the evening or early in the morning, seeing that these two moments are those when immediate evaporation will hardly occur and also because the plants are in a state of greater balance than when the high sun is heating them up and stressing them out.
Sharp and regular cutting
Another thing that drains the vigour of your lawn is cutting it too sporadically when we know that grasses respond very well to more regular trims. Along with this mistake, there’s one other which relates to how short you cut it: anything lower than 1 centimetre will most definitely do more harm than good if we’re talking about a young patch that was recently implanted.
An older lawn is better rooted and solid, that means that your cutting line has to rise too as a consequence, to the mark of above 2-3 centimetres.
As I said, frequent mowing will promote a thicker and more energetic development. Still, this is something to be done less often when the period is of draught and, thus, less friendly when it comes to fostering high growth rates in your garden.
Avoid stepping on it
Despite how cosy it is to run around on top of it, throw parties and even host said dream marriage I was just talking about, your lawn would rather have no one stepping on it, for that’s the way it grows most free from damage.
But when the hour is for using the garden and walk across it, be mindful to avoid doing it while it’s soaked and the earth muddy, as this will cause more compaction than during any other time.
Also, when the grass is more obviously out of shape and under hydric stress, that’s surely not a good moment to plod across the brittle leaves of your vegetation. But anyway, if you do it calmly and without excessive pressure or tear, the velocity with which the lawn rejuvenates itself shall exceed that of the damage caused.
Consider sporadic tilling
It’s understandable that many times, to till a lawn isn’t the handiest nor most desired deed to do. A lawn is supposed to be neat and vibrant, and if you shred it with a revolving machine that mashes dirt and grass together, then there must be something very wrong with you, right?
Well, actually this procedure might be sometimes necessary because every piece of yard tends to wear off over the years and produce less with each passing season.
So if any dry Winter day you feel like taking further care of your garden and lawn during those months when nobody is really out to witness how you turned a weakened lawn into a renewed muddy field that’s fertilised and sown anew, you better do it then than later on.
Weed it for the wedding
Weeds and all kinds of other invasive species tend to, without any doubt or hesitation, sprout here and there within the leaves of your lawn. Very often they’ll even rise much taller than the latter, making your negligence more than obvious to the public eye.
Weeding doesn’t have any right season to be done in, as long as there’s what to pluck in the garden. Sure that if you find yourself those wetter days following fresh showers, then that’s the best moment to pick weed by weed, their roots should come out almost entirely if the soil isn’t too hard.
Apart from a few types of weeds that flower in an exquisite way, there are barely any that you’ll rather save in the garden than remove. Remember that to care for a lawn is as much about boosting it up as it is bringing down all those other plants that aren’t it.
Beware of too bulky patches
This practice falls into the same box as the thinning of weeds. Some spots of our lawn appear to have a monstrous life to them and grow so much fuller than the rest.
While this can be interesting to watch and enough to make the surrounding grasses jealous, it’s also something that doesn’t suit the desired smoothness and tamed growth that a perfectionist gardener aims to cultivate.
For that reason, be sure to dilute such unexplainable spurts by using some scissors, a knife or but your hands, as long as they’re gloved because the lawn cuts us when we least see it coming.
Fertilising: top dressing and deep placement
Whether it’s from the top or down the bottom, fertiliser is never rejected, be it organic or chemical.
Top dressing is fertilisation done from above when you sprinkle those white or blue pebbles of synthesised nutrients that help every plant grow so vivacious — except when you abuse it and burn the greens out.
This method should be applied over well-grown lawns that have already been planted, thus making it impossible to do any deep placement of humus or other enriching materials. But you’re free to add whatever you think best suits your lawn’s needs from below their roots too. This can be done whenever you till the ground to refresh your grass or before you even plant your first seeds.
Once underground, that organic matter and supplement of macronutrients will be slowly released for as long as there’s any latent life to it. After it’s depleted, it’s time to invest on said top dressing again, which will be the most viable option then.
As you may easily understand, a healthy and thick lawn not only looks amazing and feels great to the naked foot, it will also be more capable of enduring the attacks of the many existing vegetable, fungi and animal plagues there are. And all this in a fashion that can be as organic, cheap and easy to employ as you’d like.
It has always been simple to keep a lawn growing without breaks, only that some tips are sometimes so basic that they’re forsaken, and that’s the great mistake of many of us gardeners who are so busy outside the garden that it’s hard to keep up with all that’s going on within it.