What To Do About: Thinning Grass And Bare Spots
Weather extremes, playing with kids, and horseplay with the dog are all examples of ordinary activities that can cause the grass to thin. You may need to plant fresh sod or extensively seed the afflicted area, depending on the size of the barren areas. Make sure the grass treatment you use is prepared specifically for the environment and grass type. If the grass is thin in certain areas, overseeding it in the fall might help it recover before winter arrives. If you want to overseed the grass, start at least 45 days before the first frost of the season.
Reseed Thin Areas Of The Lawn
If some parts of your lawn look great and other areas are patchy, its time to do some reseeding. Lawn spots that are overgrown with weeds may also need reseeding. Start the reseeding process by killing all weeds with a powerful herbicide.
Then, choose a hardy grass seed variety that thrives in your climate zone. Rake and aerate the soil to prepare it for seeding. Finally, spread the seed with your spreader, fertilize, and water every day until your grass grows to about two inches.
How To Store Lawn Bowls
Lawn bowls are best stored in a bowls bag. This is a small carrier that has four pockets one for each bowl. This prevents the bowls from getting damaged, as they would otherwise bash together
When youre not playing, or during the offseason, it is best to store your lawn bowls in a cool dry place. Avoid any environment that is humid or one where the temperature fluctuates.
A cupboard under the stairs, or a garage will be ideal. Avoid places such as the attic, or the garden shed.
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Watering And Feeding Your Lawn
A Lawn Is Easy To Care For But You Have To Be Committed
As with any DIY project, dont hesitate to call a professional for help. Its better to ask questions and care for your lawn properly than to make crucial mistakes that you need to spend copious amounts of time and money repairing. Taking care of grass isnt rocket science, but consistency is key. Homeowners often let their lawn go without a trim for several weeks, then find themselves struggling to get it under control and back in good condition.
Faoro concluded, Overall, grass is the lowest maintenance thing you can put in your landscape. It requires diligent, frequent maintenance, but its the easiest thing to take care of. If you let it build up, it just gets worse.
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Slow Release Vs Fast Release Fertilizer
Long Islands soils are very sandy, resulting in rapid percolation of rainwater into the ground, which brings surface nutrients and chemicals down into groundwater. Nitrogen is the leading cause of poor water quality in Long Islands fresh, salt and ground waters.
Slow, or controlled-release” nitrogen fertilizers break down slowly, releasing small amounts of nutrients, which is good for steady plant growth and deep roots.
Tip #: Test Your Soil
Knowing the pH of your soil can help you determine how to care for it. If the pH of your soil isnt optimal for the species you have, the grass can have trouble growing. Collect soil samples from different sections of your lawn, especially problem areas, and bring them to a Cooperative Extension lab for testing. You can also purchase a home test kit and run the experiment yourself.
With this information handy, seek advice from a lawn care professional on how to address any pH-related issues. They may advise you to use certain fertilizers to bring the soils acidity back into an ideal range.
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Minnesotans Are Proud Of Our Natural Resources We Want To Protect Our Water Land And All The Wildlife They Support To Ensure The Future Of These Natural Treasures We Need To Re
Minnesotans are proud of our natural resources. We want to protect our water, land and all the wildlife they support. To ensure the future of these natural treasures, we need to re-examine and modify our lawn care practices.
To encourage that process of change, the city of Bemidji participated in the “No Mow May” project this spring. That multi-city project promoted a voluntary moratorium on early season lawn mowing.
This initiative helped the community to become more aware of pollinator food sources and habitats. The animals that do most of the pollination are insects like bees, butterflies, and wasps.
Not mowing in May permits our lawns to use their available energy to develop vigorous and abundant root systems better able to retain and use natural rainfall in the summer months.
In addition, leaving a lawn unmowed in May provides vital food sources to bees emerging from hibernation. Even those pesky dandelions that pop up so early provide pollinators the nutrition they need until summer blooms emerge on a different schedule.
Careful mowing as the season progresses can also be beneficial. One recommendation to help pollinators is to mow every other week, instead of every week. Keeping grass at 3 inches in height keeps out weeds and protects grass roots by keeping the soil cooler.
Local Master Gardeners will respond to questions via voicemail. Call and leave your name, number and question.
Watering Your Lawn For Great Results
Generally, lawns need about one inch of water per week, which is best done in one or two applications, including rainfall. Install a simple rain gauge in your yard to measure rainfall and irrigation each week. The best time to water is from 4am to 8am. This allows the grass to dry in the morning sun, reducing the chance of turf disease.
Short, daily irrigation is unnecessary, too light and too shallow to support deep grass roots.
Pro Tip: Fine fescues are among the most drought tolerant varieties of lawn grass and will bounce back from dry spells faster than other grass types. Letting fine fescues grow taller helps preserve soil moisture.
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Large Lawns And Golf Courses
Large lawns, and especially golf courses, require large amount of herbicides and chemical fertilizers to maintain their condition and appearance. The impact on the environment is considerable.
Recent experiments using organic compost have shown this method to be very promising. Generally, researchers and practitioners recognize that incorporating high-quality compost does several things:
For a detailed report on the science, application methods and results, read our article Using Compost to Improve Turf Ecology.
Redraw Bedswith A Garden Hose
You may wish to redraw the boundary between your garden beds and grass in springtime. Wider beds mean less lawn care, too. Heres a simple way to do it yourself: Use a garden hose to mark out a nice line for your garden beds. Then, along this bed line, take a sharp metal edger and drive it into the ground as deep as it will go. Dig all along the hose line and then remove the grass thats there, creating a nice bed. Once done, fill up the bed with 2 to 3 inches of mulch or youll just get a bed of weeds! Then youre ready to transplant or plant perennial flowers.
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Homeownership : The Ultimate Guide To Lawn Care
Amid a pandemic and a potential recession, Americans went on a near-record homebuying spree over the last couple of years. Many were first-time homebuyers and, according to Realtor.com, more buyers searched for homes out of state in 2021 than the previous year.
If youre a first-time homebuyer or buying a home in a new city, you know what an exciting and overwhelming experience it can be. Knowing which home maintenance projects are the most important can make things a lot easier.
When making a house a home, many homeowners often focus on the interior. However, the exterior of the home is equally important, says Brian Feldman, senior director of technical operations at TruGreen. A green lawn is often the first place you will see as you make your way to the front door, and to keep your outdoor living space looking its best, youll need to know key seasonal maintenance practices to achieve a lush, healthy lawn.
Whether youre a first-time homeowner who may not have had a yard before or are moving to a new home in a different climate, it can be tough to know how to care for your lawn. TruGreen, the nations leading lawn care provider, highlights six maintenance tasks homeowners can follow to help learn the basics of lawn care and start creating a healthy outdoor living space.
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Lawn Care Tip #3 Follow These Mowing Best Practices
Avoid the temptation to cut your grass extra short. You might think this will buy you time in between mowings, but grass that is mowed too short is more susceptible to damage from harsh environmental conditions. In Texas, grass thats cut too short runs a greater risk of getting damaged by the hot, dry summer weather.
Another common mowing error is cutting more than 1/3 of the total grass height at a time. We understand the temptation. Your grass grewand grew. You didnt have time to cut it. Once you had a chance to mow, you decided to go ahead and cut the grass down to its recommended height. Ideally, you should adjust the mowing frequency based on how fast your grass is growing, so youll need to mow more often in early spring than in late summer.
Only cut off 1/3 of your grasss total height at a time.
The other problem is, you can damage the lawn if you leave long grass clippings on your property. Those clippings will basically suffocate the healthy grass, preventing nutrients, sun and oxygen from reaching it.
In Texas, our lawns are one of these three turf types: Zoysia grass, Bermuda grass and St. Augustine grass. Zoysia can be mowed at 1½ to 3 inches. Bermuda grass should be mowed to 2 inches in height. And, St. Augustine grass can be mowed to 2½ to 4 inches.
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Clean Up Leavesgo Easy
Even if you cleaned up some leaves in the fall, there are many trees that shed leaves over the winter and well into spring. Now lets not go crazy as if we have to clean up every single leaf off our lawn to compete for the neighborhood beauty pageant. A little leaf litter helps our pollinators and wildlife survive the winter.
Remove any debris or heavy piles of leaves or any layers of leaves. This invites mold and disease and decay. However, dont rake into wet ground. Its best to wait until temperatures are reaching the high 40s or the 50s. If you have a compost pile , add those leaves to the pile. Otherwise, just mow any thin layers of leaves in with the seasons first cut, and theyll also break down and add organic matter and nutrition to the soil.
If you have perennial beds, wait to cut down those spent perennial stems until the weather has definitely warmed and it feels like spring is here to stay. So many beneficial insects and predators are still hibernating in leaf litter or hollow plant stems. They will wake up as the weather warms and daylight increases. If you just cant stand to wait, cut those spent plant stems and simply set them at the edge of your property or the woods. The native bees will thank you!
Mow Grassbut Not Too Soon
Mow the lawn when the grass level reaches 2 to 3 inches tall. The lawn needs time to recover after winter. However, if the grass grows too long, it shades the roots, which allows fewer weed seeds to sprout. If you use a traditional lawn mower, spring is the time to clean the filter and spark plugs. Its important to sharpen the mower blade every month or two for a clean cut. When you just rip grass and leave it with open cuts, you leave your yard susceptible to fungi and disease. See more about lawn care.If youre interested in alternative mowers, consider a reel mower or an electric mower as a more environmentally-friendly option. These mowers work best if your property is one-third of an acre or less. Its important to mow your grass regularly, as its much more difficult to cut the grass if it gets way too tall .Of course, we have to mention that there are alternatives to grass as well! Many folks are starting to use more ground cover plants , walkways, and wider flower beds. Theres also a growing trend to add vegetable garden beds or to integrate edibles into your front yard. See more about edible landscaping!
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They Can Save Money In The Long Run
Most individuals feel that they can save money by performing their own lawn upkeep, but hiring a lawn maintenance expert will save them much more money in the long term. Their lawn will be vulnerable to invasive weeds or vermin if they don’t have a good grasp of it and don’t follow the right management measures. Trying to fight these invaders without the right equipment or knowledge may result in a lot of money spent at the gardening center.
Don’t Let Your Dog Destroy Your Lawn
Four-legged, furry friends are wonderful, but maintaining an immaculate lawn with them around can prove tricky. Digging, urinating, treating it like a race track there are all sorts of ways that they can wreak havoc on your turf.
Luckily, it is possible to keep a lovely lawn and your beloved pet you just need some top tips on how to grow grass with dogs.
Dog urine can cause dead patches in your lawn
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What Is Drought Stress
- Changes in hue. Your lawn may change color from bright green to dull gray or blue-green.
- Footprints. Footprints will stay visible in grasses that are too tired to spring upright after theyve been pushed down.
- Wilting. Grass blades will roll or fold as they lose water content, wilting visibly in the heat.
- Changes in color. As drought stress becomes more severe, your lawn may do more than lose its bright green hue. If youre asking, How can I get my grass green during a drought? you may already be noticing shades of yellow or tan. Once you see tan coloration, your lawn is in a state of drought-induced dormancya last-ditch attempt to survive the dry heat by shutting down.
Add Fertilizer To Your Lawn Maintenance Routine
To get that grass is greener on the other side of the fence look, you will also need to add fertilizer to your lawn care routine. Fertilizing a lawn is an easy do-it-yourself project for homeowners, the only supplies youll need are a lawn spreader and a high-quality fertilizer that meets the requirements of your grass variety.
There are two types of spreaders, a drop spreader and a broadcast spreader. Drop spreaders are best for small lawns and broadcast spreaders are ideal for larger areas.
Before fertilizing, youll need to water your lawn a few days in advance to prepare the soil. Then, youll need to get your spreader ready. Fill the spreader with an appropriate fertilizer product from a home improvement or gardening store. The packaging for the fertilizer should give directions about how to adjust the settings on the spreader.
Then simply walk along the perimeter of the lawn to fertilize and feed your lawn. Fill in the middle of the lawn with the fertilizer and properly dispose of the remaining product when you are done.
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Tip #: Thatch Your Lawn And Aerate The Soil
When organic matter builds up faster than it decomposes, it forms a layer of thatch that protects the lawn from fluctuations in moisture and temperature. When thatch grows to be over an inch thick, however, it can keep nutrients, water, and air from getting deep down into the soil and make the lawn susceptible to disease and insect damage.
Removing thick layers of thatch can prevent those issues. Frank Faoro, a managing member of Allscapes NW LLC, recommends that you fertilize , water it, maybe thatch it once every couple years. If you keep your grass healthy, you shouldnt need to thatch it too much on a regular basis.
Landry also recommends aerating the soil to prevent it from becoming too dense. Aeration involves making holes in compacted soil so that water, air, and nutrients can reach the grasss roots.