Homeowners are always searching for innovative landscaping ideas and new ways to make their lawn look lush and beautiful. But lawn care is no easy task and the challenge is understanding the fundamentals of fertilizing, trimming, and maintaining your grass so that it always looks and feels its best.
So how do you go about doing that? Read ahead for some helpful lawn care tips from Richmond’s landscaping supply headquarters.
Mowing Your Lawn
We all love the look of a perfectly-manicured lawn so our first inclination is to trim the grass as short and tight as possible. But this isn’t always the smartest idea as you can actually do damage to the lawn by placing undue stress on the blades and stunting it’s deep root growth. As a result, this can make the lawn more vulnerable to weeds and pests, both of which can have a tremendously negative impact on the appearance of your lawn.
Fertilizing Your Lawn
Here is one of the most critical aspects of ensuring a perfect lush green lawn. Fertilization enhances roots and keeps those weeds at bay. But here’s the thing, you have a full array of choices from which to select the right fertilizer for you, though just about all of them have three main nutrients that are essential for proper lawn growth: potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen.
Among these, the last is the most important to keep those blades of grass looking full and green. Too much nitrogen, however, can be damaging as your lawn may grow too much and that can result in portions of the lawn become discolored and patchy.
When you choose your fertilizer, you can go with organic or synthetic. Both are just as effective at spurring growth and they each come in granule and liquid versions. Whichever you decide to choose is entirely up to you, but if you go with the former you will need the proper equipment for laying it down across your lawn.
The purpose of that additional equipment is ensure that the granules are spread wide and evenly throughout the expanse of the yard. Too much fertilizer in one place won’t promote grass growth, but instead kill the grass that you are hoping will come up and flourish.
There’s also slow and fast time-release versions of fertilization out there, so you don’t put too much stress and strain on the grass.
Maintaining Your Lawn
You can mow and fertilize all you want but all of it will be for naught if you aren’t prepared to put some time and effort into caring for and repairing your lawn if and when problems arise.
And you can bet they will do just that. Lawns can be a fickle organism, one minute you think they’re in ideal shape, the next you start to discover some dead spots and a few dandelions have popped up. Each and every potential problem that you may experience with your lawn can be fixed, but some are easier repaired than others.
For most homeowners, bare spots in the grass are the most common damage that needs to be repaired. The best fix for that is usually sod but it can be tough to make sure it looks seamless against the surrounding borders with the rest of the grass. You need to be careful of how you use sod with your lawn, it can appear like it doesn’t belong and that can make the lawn look hap-hazard and choppy.
It also matters where your bare spots emerge as that can be helpful for solving the problem as well. You may find them near your flowerbeds or in regions that are not exposed to the sun very often. Sod may not be the best choice for this version of the problem, you may want to turn that spot into a flowerbed instead.
Dead grass is also a possibility and while this is usually due to the grass getting too little water, it could also be a result of too much fertilizer in one spot or, if you have a dog, your grass may be suffering the effects of too much pet urine. That can have a significantly damaging effect on your lawn as well.
You probably want to keep your pets from urinating on your gorgeous, lush lawn and take them for a walk instead. As for repairing the damage, remove the damaged or dead blades and reapply some new seed to get the grass growing in that spot again. If fertilizer did the grass in, remove the granules first.
