Lawn Care Tips for Beginners

A beautiful lawn is a source of pride and happiness for homeowners, and it also adds to the curb appeal of your property. These lawn care tips for beginners can help you have the gorgeous lawn of your dreams.

Lawn Care Tips for Beginners

Test Your Soil

The health of your lawn begins with the quality of your soil. The soil is where each blade of grass gets important nutrients that will keep it growing strong and healthy, so it’s important that your soil has the proper attributes. You can test your soil with a testing kit purchased at a nursery or a home improvement store. Some communities also offer soil testing.

When you test your soil, you are looking for a few important factors. The ph balance measures the acidity or alkaline nature of your soil. Most grasses grow well in a soil with a ph between about 6.2 and 7.2.  Adding lime to your soil is an excellent way of bringing down the acidity so the grass will be healthier. The test will also show you levels of important nutrients nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.

Fertilize Effectively

Fertilizer is food for plants, and grass can benefit tremendously from being given a meal now and then. It’s good to fertilize your lawn in the spring when the grass begins to warm up and grow. You may want to feed your grass again in the late spring when it has used much of its energy in restarting growth. Finally, a winter fertilizer is great in the fall for helping grass survive the winter and come back lush in spring.

You can add fertilizer to your lawn in a variety of ways. Many people use a spreader, which is a tool designed for spreading fertilizer and other materials over a large area. Other fertilizers will attach to your garden hose and can be sprayed on to your lawn.

Water Correctly

Under normal weather conditions, you will want to water your lawn once a week. Do it in the early hours of the morning for the best results. That’s because water that is given later in the day under the warm sun can quickly evaporate before it gets to the roots of your grass. If the weather is unusually warm and dry, you may want to water your lawn more often. If your lawn is not getting enough water, footprints will not easily disappear and your grass may appear dry.

It is possible to overwater your lawn. If you are having a lot of rain, you can cut back on your watering. If your grass gets squishy beneath your feet or if the weeds seem to be growing faster than usual, you might be watering your lawn too often.

Control Weeds

When your lawn includes weeds, it will never be as healthy as you want it to be. You can’t create a beautiful, green, abundant lawn until you gain control over the weeds. To get rid of existing weeds in your lawn, you will need a product that can kill the weeds without damaging your grass. At Weed-A-Way Lawn Care, we use weed control that is safe for the environment, children, and pets but is strong enough to destroy weeds.

Once you get the weeds out of your yard, you can keep them away with regular maintenance. Following the right schedule of weeding, watering, and mowing will keep your grass strong and keep weeds from cropping up and taking over once again.

Mow Properly

The way you mow your lawn is critical when it comes to keeping it strong and beautiful. It’s important for weed control and lawn health to keep your lawn at a proper length. Use a blade of 3 inches or under when you mow and don’t allow your grass to grow any longer. Mow as often as you need to keep the grass to this manageable and optimal height.

If your grass does get longer than 3 inches, cut it back as soon as possible. Cutting a lawn down significantly can stress the grass, so do this on 1/3 of your lawn at a time. Keep your blades effective by sharpening them about once a year. Also, leave the clippings on your lawn when you are finished. They provide nutrients to the grass beneath.

Overseed

Overseeding is a technique that will turn a thinning lawn into one that is vibrant and abundant. A lawn will naturally get thinner as it ages, and the process is accelerated if you use your lawn for family activities. If children and pets play and run on the lawn, it will get sparse. You can fix this by overseeding.

Overseeding simply means spreading new grass seed over an already existing lawn. Adding these new grass blades helps invigorate the entire and lawn with lush, youthful, growth. To get good results from this process, you need to do it correctly. You will need to use a seed mix that is optimal for your yard’s conditions, and you will need to be sure to apply proper maintenance after the seeds have been spread.

Aerate

Aeration is the key to getting the most out of your lawn, and it is often overlooked by homeowners. With time and use the top layers of soil on your lawn will naturally compact. Compacted soil has fewer open spaces that roots need to properly absorb water and nutrients. Without proper access to oxygenated soil, it is more difficult for your grass to survive stressful situations like harsh weather conditions and bugs.

There are different tools that can be used for aerating your lawn. Spike aerators move over your lawn and create spikes in the dirt where air can enter. Some homeowners even wear shoes with spikes to create holes in the lawn as they walk. Slicing aerators are similar, but they create thatches of space where air can circulate. Core and plug aerators take out small plugs of soil and move them to the top of the lawn where they can break down.

Fight Pests

Pets are a frustrating problem that can quickly ruin your lawn. Various bugs like chinch bugs, sod webworms, and cutworms can make a home in your lawn and bring problems.  They may feed on your lawn and actually kill it if the infestation isn’t taken care of right away. When you see these creatures on your lawn, you will want to apply treatment to get rid of them as soon as possible.

Grubs are among the most destructive pests to your lawn. They are a particular problem because they destroy the turf and attract small animals like skunks and raccoons that will dig under the ground to eat the grubs,  leaving holes and bumps in your lawn.

You can have a beautiful, abundant, green lawn if you take the proper steps to care for it. The best thing you can do for your lawn is to bring in knowledgable professionals who know how to combat lawn destroyers to keep your lawn free of the problems that can easily damage it. Use these lawn care tips for beginners and contact us at Weed-A-Way to have an assessment of your lawn’s needs and learn how you can get your lawn into the best condition possible. You can have a gorgeous lawn, and we can help.

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