5 Tips for a Perfect Lawn

The average homeowner spends nearly 4 hours per week on yard work and mows their lawn 30 times a year. That’s a good chunk of time, but believe it or not, your lawn pays you back for all this work. It serves as a gigantic air conditioner to help cool your home. It releases a tremendous amount of oxygen and captures tons of dirt and dust to keep you and your family healthier. It even gives you a nice place to play croquet. And the healthier your lawn is, the better it can keep up its end of the bargain.

To a great extent, it’s not the amount of work you put into your lawn, it’s when and how you do it.

Here are 5 simple tips:

TIP #1:  Use a sharp blade and adjust the cutting height based on the time of year.

For cool-climate grasses, use a 1-1/2 in. cutting height for the first mowing of the year to remove the dead grass and allow more sunlight to reach the crowns of the grass plants. Raise the blade during the heat of the summer to 2 or more inches. Then lower back to 1-1/2 in. for the last cutting of the year. For warm climate grasses, these heights will be about ½ in. lower.

When adjusting the blade height, measure from a hard surface to the bottom of the mower deck, then add ¼ in. (most blades sit ¼ in. above the bottom of the deck). Cut your grass using a sharp blade; a dull one tears grass rather than cutting it cleanly. Damaged grass turns yellow, requires more water and nutrients to recover, and is more susceptible to disease. Sharpening and balancing a blade 3 times a year is usually enough to maintain a good cutting edge.

TIP #2:  Give your lawn a few good soakings rather than lots of light sprinklings (but not at night).

Deep watering helps develop deep roots that tap into subsurface water supplies.  Light sprinklings wet only the grass and surface of the soil; this encourages shallow root growth and increases the need for more frequent watering. As a general rule, lawns require 1 to 2 in. of water per week (from you or Mother Nature), applied at three or four day intervals. But this varies greatly depending on the temperature, type of grass and soil conditions. Lawns in sandy soils may need twice as much water, since they drain quickly. Lawns in slow-draining clay soils may only need half as much.

When your lawn loses its resiliency, or when it wilts, exposing the dull green bottoms of the blades, it needs water. Water until the soil is moist 4 to 5 in. down, then wait to water again until the top 1 or 2 in. of soil dries out. The best time of the day to water is early morning. Water pressure is high, less water is lost to evaporation and your lawn has time to dry out before nightfall. Lawns that remain wet overnight are more susceptible to disease caused by moisture0loving mold and other fungi.

TIP #3:  Mow only the top one-third of the grass blade (and don’t rake up the clippings).

The top one-third of the blade of grass is thin and “leafy”, decomposes quickly when cut and can contribute up to one-third of the nitrogen your lawn needs. While decomposing, this light layer of clippings also helps slow water evaporation and keeps the weeds from germinating in the soil below. The bottom two-thirds of a blade of grass is tough, “stemmy’ and slow to decompose. It contributes to thatch, which when thick enough, prevents sunlight, air, water and nutrients from reaching the soil. Cutting more than the top third also shocks grass roots and exposes stems, which tend to burn in direct sunlight.

This means that if 2 in. is your target grass length, cut it when it reaces 3 in. Since grass grows at different rates at different times of the year, “every Saturday” isn’t necessarily the best time to mow. The ideal length for cool-climate grasses is 3 to 4 in.; for warm-climate, 1 to 2 in. Mow when the grass is dry and avoid mowing in the heat of the day when you are more likely to stress the grass – and yourself.

TIP #4:  Apply fertilizers and weed killers at the right time of the year.

When applying week killers and fertilizers, take into account variables such as geographic location, grass type, weed type and soil conditions.

Here are a few general guidelines:

* The best defense against weeds is a thick, healthy lawn that doesn’t provide weed seeds adequate sunlight or space to germinate.

* Attack weeds inearly spring and summer before they have a chance to develop deep root systems, go to seed or reproduce.

* Eradicate grassy weeds like crabgrass with preemergent weed killers, which destroy germinating plants just as they sprout. Broadleaf weeds need to be attacked while they are young and actively growing; spraying the leaves of the individual plants and patches of plants is most effective.

TIP #5:  Aerate your lawn to help it “breathe”.

Grass roots need oxygen as well as water and nutrients. Aerating – the process of removing small plugs of soil – produces multiple benefits. It improves air-to-soil interaction, allows water and fertilizer to penetrate the soil deeper, reduces soil compaction, and opens space for roots to grow. It removes some thatch and stimulates the breakdown of the remaining thatch. The best tool for this task is a gas-powered aerator, available at most rental centers.

Timing is critical. You can aerate in the spring. But fall, after the kids are through trampling the grass and there are fewer weed seeds to set up home in the open spaces, is the best time to aerate. It’s usually best to aerate first; then apply any weed killers so the open holes are protected against weeds.

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