7 Steps To Keep Your Lawn Healthy And Fresh All Year Round
A lawn can be of great use. It can act as an air cooler, releasing a lot of Oxygen during the daytime, keeping the environment fresh, and can also catch dirt and prevent it from getting inside your house. It can even be a good place for having small games with families and friends. Nifty is it not? But there is a catch. If you want full benefit from your lawn, you also need to take care of it, just as it takes care of you. How to keep your lawn healthy? Here are 7 easy tips to keep your lawn healthy all year round.
1. The 3-Season Maintenance Rule
Let us separate the year in 3 seasons. Summer (June-October), Winter (November-February), Spring (March-May).
During winter, keep off your lawn. Dew will wet your lawn and walking over a wet lawn is a bad idea.
In Spring, rake the lawn well to remove any weeds or moss. Also, use treatments to kill weeds. Weeds and moss prevent sunlight and nutrients from reaching your grass.
If your lawn has a lot of worm castings, make sure you brush them away before raking. numerous worm castings mean that your lawn is in a healthy state.
During summer, use self-propelled lawnmowers to cut & adjust the height of the grass to around 2.5 cm. If it is an ornamental lawn, 1.2 cm is the perfect height.
2. Aerate The Lawn
Do you have kids or pets in your house? That means your lawn is used and walked over a lot. This causes the lawn soil to be compact and stiff. Even if you mow your lawn every week, it might make the soil on your lawn stiff.
This compact soil can also be harmful to organisms such as earthworms. It causes problems such as bad water drainage, hampers air circulation, and cannot absorb nutrients for the grass.
How to take care of this problem? Just Aerate the land. Aeration simply means digging a hole in your lawn about three inches deep. Punching holes in the ground help loosen up the soil and soften up the compact state of the soil.
It can easily be done by a handheld aeration tool. You should aerate at least once every year, and it is advised to water your lawn one or two days prior to aeration.
3. Watering Your Lawn
Contrary to what most people say, watering your lawn often does not have any benefit.
Many people water their lawn a few times every week. This causes the grass to be more vulnerable in times of heat or drought. For instance, if you water infrequently, the root of the grass will grow deeper, enabling them to get water and nutrients in times of these droughts in summer.
Experts advise that it is better to water your lawn once every week and make sure, rather than just sprinkling, the water goes deep inside the soil.
How do you test if the soil is watered deeply? Just keep shallow containers in your lawn and turn your sprinklers on. If you see the containers have at least 1-inch water in them, that means it is enough. As for knowing when to water, if the first 3-4 inches of the soil feels dry, that means it is necessary to water your lawn again.
4. Use Natural Fertilizer
Now, it is very common knowledge that natural fertilizers are much better than synthetic lawn fertilizers.
Why do you ask? They are better for the grass and the environment, this is also scientifically proven to be better than synthetic ones.
And if natural fertilizers are not available you can compost kitchen and garden waste, which also works as natural fertilizers. Compost improves water drainage, balances pH level, attracts beneficial worms such as earthworms and other organisms.
5. Respond To Drying Lawns
Suppose after all the hard work, you still see your lawn drying up and the soil is turning grey, it means the soil needs more water.
Dry lawns can also be caused by sandy soil, which drains water fast, resulting in the grass not getting much water.
To mitigate this, watering must be done more frequently on the sandy parts, but the overall quantity of water sprinkled should not be too much.
6. Prevent Thatch Buildup
Thatch is a brown spongy substance that gathers on top of the soil. Thatch buildup does not pose much of a threat unless it is over 1.25 cm thick.
A thick layer of thatch can prevent water drainage which results in the grass getting little water. Buying a thatch remover is the easiest solution for this problem. Aeration as mentioned before should also help with this. But be sure not to use thatch remover on thatch that is below 1.25 cm thick.
Even though many people believe it, grass clippings are not responsible for thatch buildup.
7. Know When To Plant New Grass Seeds
What if you are about to plant fresh grass seeds to your new lawn?
What do you do then? The most important thing is timing. Not all grass grows at the same rate or at the same soil.
So, synchronizing the time of the seeding with the grass’s natural growth is a must-do for new lawns. There are 2 types of grass seeds, cool grass seeds that thrive in cooler climates, warm grass seeds that thrive in warmer climates.
For cool grass seeds, fall or late autumn is the best time to plant the seeds. The soil remains warm from the summer sun and is in the perfect temperature for seed germination and growth. The temperature required for the cool grass seeds to grow is 10-15 degrees Celsius.
For warm grass seeds, spring is the best time for this purpose. The seeds germinate faster when the soil temperature is around 18-25 degrees Celsius. Planting should be done by the end of spring or at the beginning of summer.
Final Thoughts to keep your lawn healthy
A lawn might seem just like grass growing on the land around your house. But the value of it is much more than that. It reduces dust, can be a place for relaxation, or a place for a family gathering it can also help to reduce stress besides providing a fresh and healthy environment and much more! As the lawn is doing so much for you, it is only fair that you also take care of your lawn and keep it green and healthy.
