If you have a beautiful, thriving lawn, you’ll be the envy of the neighborhood.
Want to know how to get the lawn you’ve always wanted? It’s all about how you care for it. However, keeping your grass green and healthy takes continued effort and some careful research.
Follow these 5 essential lawn care tips however, and maintaining a healthy lawn will be much easier than you think. To learn how to save time while keeping your lawn looking its best, read on.
5 Lawn Care Tips for Healthy, Happy Grass
1. Aerate Your Lawn
You probably already know that grass needs water and nutrients from the soil to survive. But did you know that your lawn also needs oxygen?
When you aerate your lawn, you remove little cylinders of soil from the ground. This helps to create the space grass needs to take in oxygen and nutrients.
With aeration, fertilizer and water can get to where it’s needed. The added space also allows roots to grow and helps with soil compaction.
You can aerate using an aerator.
There’s no need to buy one – just rent it once a year. The ideal time to aerate is in the fall, as there are less weed seeds in the air.
This saves you from needing crabgrass treatments and other forms of weed control.
2. Water the Right Way
Deep watering, or completely soaking the lawn, is actually better than a light sprinkle of water.
As an added bonus, deep watering can be done less often than more traditional methods.
With a light watering, only the top surface of the soil and the grass itself gets water. Deep watering, on the other hand, reaches, well, deeper.
This helps your grass develop the deep roots it needs to tap into water below the surface.
3. Sharpen Your Blade
If you cut your grass with a dull blade, the grass is torn instead of being cut clean across.
This damaged grass tends to take on the yellow hue that we associate with an unhealthy lawn. It will need more water and more care in order to recover once it’s been damaged.
4. Mow a Light Layer
If you can mow only the top third of the grass stem, you will get clippings that decompose fast. Leaving this light clipping layer on the ground actually helps your grass. It can also prevent weeds from thriving and reduce water evaporation.
This saves you the extra work of raking up clippings every time you mow.
5. Time Your Fertilizers
Fertilizers are more effective when applied at the right time.
In the early spring, when roots are starting to develop, fertilize your lawn. Do a complete round of fertilizer again in fall to help fix any damage from the summer. In between, fertilize lightly to encourage growth.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
You may have noticed that many of these lawn care tips actually make your job easier.
Caring for your lawn shouldn’t be an exhausting task. Water more, but less often. Fertilize strategically. Cut grass to the right length so you don’t have to rake the clippings.
More work isn’t always better when it comes to lawn care – instead, it’s when and how you do the work.
If you want to take it one step further, try lawn care that’s as easy on the environment as it is for you.
To go green both in your lawn and in your life, check out our eco-friendly tips.
