A typical homeowner spends about 208 hours a year in yard maintenance and mows his/her lawn about 30 times in the same period. While these numbers may seem like it’s a great deal of work (and it is!), your lawn certainly makes up for that amount of labor.
Your lawn is responsible for a great deal of oxygen and keeps your residence cool. It potentially acts as a dust and dirt remover and maintains the hygiene of your home. And as they say, it’s when and how you put work into your lawn that matters, meaning, the hours don’t matter if you play the game right.
Below are some pointers that are essential for a healthy lawn and will undoubtedly make your grass greener:
Ensure On-Point Prepping
Regardless of what you’re going to do to your new lawn, perfect preparation is the key to it all. Eliminate any sort of weed or remnants from your lawn and go for a spade or rotary hoe to cultivate the soil, leaving a crumbly mix of the depth of about 15 centimeters. Spare 21 days to dig out the extra weeds from your lawn and the strong germinating seeds of your lawn will amaze you.
Decide on a Cutting Height Accordingly
For the first mow of the year, choose a 1-½ inch cutting height for cool-climate grass and 1-inch height for warm climate grass. This will eradicate dead grass and permit sunlight to reach the crowns of the plants. During summer, a rise of two inches or more will do, and then for the final cut of the year, lower it to the initial state again.
Use a Sharper Mower Blade
If you don’t want your grass to be damaged, i.e. yellow, needing more water and nutrition for recovery and more disease-susceptible, you’d want a perfectly sharp blade to cut your grass with. A non-uniform blade tears grass, damaging the bearings of your lawnmower. Sharpen and balance a blade thrice a year, and you’ll have a decent blade in your hands whenever called to work. To handpick the best self-propelled lawn mowers to do your job, check out the site!
Test the pH Level of the Soil
The pH determines the acidity level of your soil. The lower it is, the higher the acidity level you’re dealing with. A pH of 6.0-7.5 is preferred for grass, but many soils, more so in rainy areas, are a lot more acidic in general. Pick out a soil testing kit from a nearby hardware store to know exactly where your soil hits on the pH scale. Use raking gypsum or lime into the top of the soil 14-21 days before sowing to balance the surplus acidity.
Make Sure the Soil is Right
Wet and soggy soil won’t ever work for the grasses in your lawn, so implement drainage coils if needed. Sowing a new lawn onto a heavy clay soil will require you to take out some clay and instead, use top quality topsoil to ensure the maturity of the seedlings early. About 10-15 centimeters of good soil is a must.
Fertilize just Enough
You require nutrients to give the soil a decent head start for lush, green grass. The existing fertility levels won’t do you any favors more often than not, and thus, stop depending on it and pick a fertilizer for the purpose that has an all-round balance of all the nutrients the soil needs: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc. Last but not the least, spread the fertilizer evenly!
Level it
Before sowing seed or turfing, even out the surface of the ground. Start the procedure by filling in the visible hollows with topsoil and then try using a wide rake to level it. You can check how far you’ve gone by laying down a leveled sawn timber on the ground. Leave the ground to settle for about a week and then re-level it. If the soil you’re dealing with is very soft, try a roller to compact it. Remember, even while renovating lawns, leveling your soil is imperative.
Water Regularly, but Intelligently
Frequent light watering of your grass is essential up to 2-3 times a day during summer. When temperatures start to reduce and your grass seedlings are growing quickly, you can gradually lessen the watering times accordingly, but not by much. That being said, how much water your soil needs usually depends a lot on the type of grass and soil conditions as well.
Lawns in sandy soils, for example, require twice as much water due to their swift drainage, and on the contrary, lawns in slow-draining clay soils require half as much. Early morning is the best time of the entire day to water. At that time, evaporation isn’t fierce and your lawn will have a lot of time to dry out before night strikes. Lawns remaining wet at night are more likely to catch mold and fungi-stricken diseases.
Ensure Sunlight
Most of the grass seedlings aren’t capable of growing in deeply shaded areas (e.g. under big trees) because those areas block the sunlight necessary for plant growth. Moreover, the seedlings themselves suck out most of the nutrients and moisture of the soil around their root regions, so if you want your grass plants to grow under shaded regions, choose wisely. Some plants that thrive under the shade are clivia, mondo grass, and rengarenga lily.
Maintain a Weed-Free Lawn
One of the crucial features of a perfectly maintained lawn is a few gaps for weed attack. And what helps in this regard? A decent fertilizing routine. While killing off the weeds in your lawn, either opt for an inorganic or an organic approach: pour boiling water, white vinegar, or salt into the middle of dandelion and other deep-rooted perennial weeds; use more for shallow-rooted plants. You can also go for strong weed pullers available on the market to ensure a weed-free lawn by flexing your muscles!
These are just the mere basics of having a perfect lawn. Putting hours here and there will definitely help, but get these basics right first, and you’ll be surprised by how well your lawn serves you in exchange!