Important Lawn Care Tips For Growing Lush Green Lawn
Do you want a lawn thats all green? Are you looking for some lawn care tips to make your grass grow healthy?
Growing lawn weeds can be tricky since you may end up with a lawn with many types of weeds. Luckily, there are many ways to keep your lawn from becoming a forest of weeds.
This article takes a look at the best lawn care tips to keep your yard healthy and green. Keep reading to find out how to care for your lawn.
The Importance Of A Lawn Soil Test
A soil test is a crucial step in finding out what nutrients your lawn is lacking and what fertilization and any other treatments can do to improve its density and color.
For instance, if your soils pH is off, then the fertilizer youre feeding it might not be working at all on your quest for greener grass. Poor pH could limit nutrient uptake.
In Central and Southern Maryland, lawns tend to lean on the acidic side. Limestone applications can help to correct your soils pH and bring it back in balance.
Also, only some lawn care professionals like Natural Green Systems Lawn & Pest conduct free soil tests on their customers properties to ensure the custom program they develop for each lawn meets that lawns specific needs.
How To Fix Dirt Patches In Lawn
Say youve overfertilized or have become the target of some pesky dandelions. Whatever the reason, tending to a dirt patch is easy and will have your lawn looking lush and green in no time.
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Control Lawn Weeds Insects & Diseases
All of the tips above help create the best lawn possible to ensure thicker, greener grass. This naturally reduces weeds, insects and diseases. However, these pesky lawn invaders are always lurking, waiting for the opportunity to infiltrate your lawn if it shows any signs of weakness.
Sometimes, certain conditions can lead to some weed breakthroughs or an excessively wet season can result in turf disease. Keeping an eye out for these challenges and managing them quickly can make simple problems disappear versus exacerbate into bigger, more visually unpleasing results.
A lawn care pro can offer solutions such as a combination of pre-emergent and post-emergent weed control tactics to keep all weeds at bay. Nothing blemishes thick, green grass faster than weeds, insects, and diseases.
Choose The Right Lawn Seed
If youâre looking out at your lawn and seeing light greens and yellows but wondering what makes grass green, you may not even have the proper variety of grass to grow a dark green lawn. So the first thing you need to do is select the right lawn seed for your lawn.
Not all grasses will produce the dark green lawn that youâre looking for, and different results are depending on the region of the country you live in. There are a wide variety of different grasses, and they vary quite significantly in color. If youâre in the Wisconsin area, you of course should be choosing the best grasses for Wisconsin lawns.
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How To Keep A Lawn Green In A Drought
Americans like manicured green lawns. How do we know? There are more than 25 million acres of lawn in the United States, roughly the size of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island combined, and every year, homeowners spend more than $6 billion to keep those lawns looking tip-top .
Keeping them green, mowed and maintained is good for more than aesthetics — turfgrasses are good for the environment because they release oxygen while trapping dust, dirt and polluting gasses such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen fluoride and perosyacetyle nitrate. They’re also responsible for water filtration, and they help reduce erosion and runoff.
So what can be done when drought conditions try to ruin our lawns? Keeping grass green has more to do with how it’s maintained before the drought hits than how often it’s watered during lean times. Lawns are able to survive long periods without water — often they will turn brown and go dormant, but after the drought lifts, they’ll bounce back in a few weeks.
The good news is that there are steps you can take before the brown sets in, including making small changes to the way you mow. By raising the lawn mower blade, you’ll remove only the top third of each blade and keep the grass tall . This gives the roots increased shade and more shade means less evaporation. Mulching also helps a lawn retain moisture the simplest way to mulch is to leave grass clippings on the lawn after mowing.
Optimize Your Soil With Lawn Surfactants
Soil often becomes compacted and hydrophobic over time, causing slow water penetration, run-off, erosion problems and standing water. Water-repellent soils do not wet when a drop of water is placed on the surface. Its common to see water pooling on the surface of dry soil rather than soaking in.
Sometimes soil will repel water even though sprinklers are working effectively and thirsty grass roots have a hard time expanding through the hard-packed earth causing dry spots. Many soils are water repellent to some degree, which means the precious water being pumped into your lawn is going to waste.
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Replenish Vital Nutrients After Heat Stress
With so many benefits that come with watering and starting a full-season lawn fertilization program in the fall, you might think everyone would want to help their lawn recover by feeding it the right nutrients. Unfortunately, many people neglect these two critical treatments.
But necessity is the mother of all inventions. Perma-Green occasionally offers a special incentive created to entice new customers to begin a full-season lawn care program in the fall. Its a win-win! The new customers lawn is assessed and a strategy is customized to fit the unique requirement and goals of the homeowner.
The secret to getting a deal on a full-season program is keeping your eyes open for this Fall Special. I found mine on the Porter County Lawn Fertilizer & Watering Page. Just look for the specials found under Dalys Tips. Another place to keep your eyes open for the Fall Start-Up Special on the Valpo Restaurants website. As a member/sponsor, Perma-Green has a landing page with Valpos top chefs. Here is a link. https://valpodining.com/listing/perma-green-lawn-care/
How To Apply Iron To Your Lawn
So how exactly do you apply iron to your lawn? Itâs pretty simple to do so. When temperatures start to rise above the 60s in the Spring, mix some granular iron supplement with a slow-release fertilizer and apply it with a broadcast spreader.
You can continue to add iron to your fertilizer applications throughout the rest of the year so you can keep your lawn that darker shade of green youâre looking for. However, there are some things to watch out for when using the iron.
Make sure you carefully follow the iron dosing instructions so you avoid overdoing your lawn with iron, which can cause damage or even turn your grass gray. Keep in mind, however, that iron overdosing wonât typically kill your grass.
Another issue with iron supplements is that you need to be extra careful to make sure that it doesnât touch concrete. When synthetic iron supplements come into contact with concrete, they can stain it an unpleasant shade of orange, which is something you want to avoid.
Another alternative is using organic iron fertilizers such as Greensand or Milorganite, which absorb easily into the lawn and supply it with additional essential nutrients.
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Pro Strategies For Thicker Greener Grass
For many Central and Southern Maryland homeowners, a green grass shows they care for and have pride in their properties.
In summers heat, its especially important to do all of the things all year long that contribute to a lawns health. Because, as the pros know, you cant do just one thing to nurture a thick lawn. A mix of the right strategies is necessary when it comes to how to make grass greener.
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Cut The Grass A Little And Often
If you want to have a lush green lawn, its important to cut the grass a little and often. This will ensure that your grass is always kept at a manageable level, and it will also encourage new growth.
Also, cutting the grass a little and often will also help prevent it from getting too long and out of control. This helps to ensure that your lawn stays healthy and lush green.
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Use The Right Fertilizer
Choosing the right fertilizer is another key how to making grass green. Youâre going to do a little research to figure out the best kind of fertilizer for your region, soil type, and grass type. If you want to dial in your precise needs, doing a soil test can give you a great idea of what youâll need in a fertilizer.
As a general rule, choose a fertilizer with a relatively high percentage of slow-release nitrogen in it, as well as a low percentage of phosphorus. If youâre completely unsure of where to start or youâre worried about using the wrong fertilizer, we offer excellent lawn fertilizer servicesto help you figure out what you need and implement the fertilization effectively.
Another choice youâll need to make is whether or not to use organic fertilizer. While it doesnât absorb as quickly, it may be preferable to synthetic fertilizer if you have kids and/or dogs. If you opt for organic fertilizer, make sure itâs nitrogen-rich as well.
Is Zoysia Grass Hard To Maintain
As long as you follow good maintenance practices, your Zoysia lawn will do fine. However, the biggest maintenance concern with Zoysia is mowing. Zoysia grass requires frequent mowing and can thicken and become difficult to mow. But that thickness is what makes the lawn appear lush and deep green! To keep your lawn looking attractive, you should mow zoysia grass to 1/2 to 1 inch high once or twice every week in the summer. If you do not mow often enough, the thickened grass will give your lawn a puffy appearance. To maintain an attractive lawn, you may have to switch from a rotary mower to a reel mower to avoid scalping or cutting your Zoysia grass too short.
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Aerate Your Lawn Once In Spring And Fall
Aeration is the process of creating small holes in the surface of your lawn. This can be done using an aeration rake. Some companies even sell aeration sandals that you can strap on your feet! This process allows water, nutrients, and air access to the roots. It also creates better drainage which reduces runoff.
If you’ve followed all these tips and you’re still not getting the results you want, your lawn may have a disease or insect infection. It’s important to identify the problem accurately, so it’s best to take a sample of your grass and soil to an expert for help in identifying the root of the problem.
Have questions? Contact us today by phone at 480.456.1199 or email at . Better yet, come on down to our Chandler office located at 11407 E. Germann Rd and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have!
For more lawn care information, visit our website .
Select the perfect turf using our lawn selector. Once you’ve found the perfect type of grass, you can order online or by phone. Learn how to measure your lawn and how to install your new lawn with our helpful online guides.
What Are Surfactants
Lawn surfactants help water spread out and fully penetrate compacted soil instead of just where its easiest to soak in. Lawn surfactants can be applied to soil in either granular or liquid form, and popular products like Revive and Aqua-Drive treatments help improve soil quality, allowing water and grass roots to penetrate deeper.
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How Much Is Too Much
Adequate nitrogen is crucial for lush, healthy, green grass. However, there can be too much of a good thing. The general rule of thumb is this: you should apply no more than one pound of nitrogen for every thousand square feet of lawn, and you should do so no more than twice per year .
So, say youre using a fertilizer with 5% nitrogen, you should use 20 pounds maximum.
What to do when youve applied too much?
Many of us have experienced a phenomenon called fertilizer burn, where we used too much fertilizer and our grass ends up with yellow and brown stripes, or patches of dying or dead grass.
Fortunately, there are things we can do to correct this:
- Leach excess fertilizer. Use a sprinkler head and a garden hose to fully saturate the overfertilized area. The water will drain through the soil, bringing the fertilizer with it. Apply about an inch of water and repeat this every day for a week.
- Remove dead grass. Use a rake to remove the fertilizer-burned areas, add to a compost pile or trash can.
- Plant new grass seed. When spring arrives, plant new grass seeds.
How To Get A Beautiful Green Lawn Without Chemicals
Nothing sets off your home and garden like a lush, green lawn. Its a living framework that makes trees, flowerbeds and shrub borders look their best. Lawns are the ideal carpet for outdoor recreation and entertaining. They draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and give off oxygen, and they help keep air temperatures cooler in the summertime.
But our love affair with lawns comes with a cost. Each year U.S. homeowners apply more than 3 million tons of synthetic lawn fertilizers and 70 million pounds of lawn pesticides and herbicides. These chemicals pose serious hazards to our children, our pets and wildlife of all kinds. To make matters worse, its estimated that 65 percent of these chemicals find their way into our lakes, rivers and underground aquifers. With water shortages and droughts becoming commonplace, its also becoming much more difficult and more expensive to pamper a chemical- and water-addicted lawn.
Converting to a natural, low-maintenance lawnone that you can feel good about and thats also low maintenanceis easier than you may think.
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Try A New Variety Of Grass
One way to achieve a healthy lawn is to know what type of turf you have. Most lawns are a mix of Perennial Rye, Kentucky Bluegrass and Fescue. Some turf becomes stressed when exposed to hot temperatures. If its healthy grass, it may be able to recover. But if its already experiencing stress from drought, mowing damage or insects and disease, it might not bounce back.
If you have an older lawn, it might be time to consider a more thorough renovation. Some older varieties of turf may not be able to handle the heat as well, while newer varieties are better equipped to cope with hot temperatures. It may be worthwhile to reseed your lawn with a new variety such as a Tall Fescue mix, which does well under the hot sun.
Choose A Warm Season Grass
When it comes to keeping your lawn green in the heat of summer, its important to understand your grass type.
There are two types of grass cool season and warm season.
Cool season grasses such as fescue, rye, and bluegrass do well in the spring and fall when temperatures are moderate. However, they struggle in the summer heat.
Warm-season grasses such as Bermuda, St. Augustine, and Zoysia, on the other hand, thrive in the summer heat.
If youre having trouble keeping your lawn green during the summer months, it may be time to consider switching to a warm season grass.
Bermuda, St. Augustine, or Zoysia can better tolerate heat and humidity than cool season grasses like Kentucky Bluegrass and Tall Fescue.
If you live in an area that can tolerate both cool and warm season grasses growing a warm-season grass, will ensure a happy, greener lawn during the summer.
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How To Keep Your Lawn Green In The Summer
There are several steps that can be taken to keep your lawn healthy and green even during the hottest, driest days of summer. Keeping your grass green throughout the summer months doesnt have to be overly complex. By following these tips with consistency, your lawn should remain beautiful all season long.
Water Deeply And Infrequently
In most parts of Texas, scorching temperatures and infrequent rainfall mean that your lawn can quickly become parched and dry. Adjust your watering schedule from the spring months to increase the amount of moisture delivered to your turf, based on the rainfall in your area and the condition of your grass. Have your irrigation system inspected, if you havent already, to ensure all parts are in working order and you dont have any leaks or broken sprinkler heads.
Keep a closer eye on your lawn so you can proactively water any dry spots, as needed, especially on the warmest days. You may want to try hand watering in particularly hot areas, such as near sidewalks. Youll need to water newer, less established grass and plants more frequently. Apply water to your landscape so that moisture goes all the way down into your grasss root systems, which is usually around 6 inches deep. This usually translates into one to two inches of watering once or twice a week. Resist the urge to overwater, since that can make your plants more vulnerable to pest damage and disease and your landscape can become more dependent on more water. Have someone check on your yard if you head out of town for summer trips.
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