A healthy lawn is key to curbing pests and weeds. Choosing the right lawn care company is essential, as well. Many reputable companies offer satisfaction guarantees to ensure that your lawn looks great. Contact Lawn Care Harrisburg PA now!
Watering deeply and at the right times is crucial to a lush, green lawn. Aerating breaks up a thick layer of organic matter known as thatch, allowing roots to breathe and improving water and nutrient penetration.
Lawn care may seem simple enough to do yourself, but it requires attention to detail for optimal results. Hiring a professional lawn maintenance business can save time and energy and prevent common mistakes that lead to unhealthy grass and an unsightly yard. A landscaper has the right tools to mow correctly, quickly, and thoroughly. They can also weed whack and clean up the trimmings for a crisp, pristine yard.
A good lawn starts with a well-designed sprinkler system that delivers the right amount of water. The best time of day to water is the early morning, which allows for maximum soil penetration and minimizes fungal problems. If grass doesn’t receive enough water, it will start to die.
Regular aeration promotes healthy soil, which reduces compaction and improves drainage. Aerating also encourages root growth, making it easier for grass to establish in bare spots and thicken up. If shady areas have trouble growing, lawn experts can sow shade-tolerant seeds and apply a weed killer.
Lawn care professionals know when to apply fungicides to control diseases like brown spot and summer patch. They can also prevent pests by creating a dense, healthy lawn that deters insects.
If you want your lawn to look professionally mowed, bend the grass blades in opposite directions when you mow. This creates the classic baseball field look, but you can also use a striping kit to achieve diagonal stripes, waves, or other shapes. Instead of bagging grass clippings, leave them on the ground to serve as a natural mulch. Avoid putting them in the trash, which takes up valuable landfill space and removes nutrients from the earth. If you need to dispose of them, shred leaves and shrubbery to make compost or a leaf mulch.
Watering
Grass needs to be watered often and thoroughly enough to promote deep root growth, but not so much that the soil becomes saturated or disease-prone. A lawn maintenance company will know how to balance the needs of your specific grass type, climate and soil conditions.
The best time to water is the early morning, when the sun hasn’t reached its peak and the temperature is still cool. This way, it’s less likely that the water will evaporate before the roots can absorb it. This is also the ideal time for applying liquid treatments like weed killer, since these products require moisture to be effective.
Avoid watering late at night, as this can lead to fungus problems. This is because droplets will cling to the grass throughout the night, and wet turf attracts lawn diseases and pests.
Performing a simple test can help determine if the lawn needs more water. Just step on the grass and if it springs back up, it’s wet enough; however, if it stays flat, it’s time for more watering.
Another important aspect of lawn maintenance is mulching. This is a layer of organic material that’s spread over landscape beds and under trees to help hold in moisture, block weeds and regulate soil temperatures. It’s a great way to keep the grass looking nice and promote healthy soil.
Finally, regular lawn care will include removing leaves and trimming trees and shrubs. This will prevent thatch buildup, which is the accumulation of dead and living grass tissue that can trap water and nutrients at the surface of the soil and inhibit the growth of the lawn’s roots. It’s recommended to perform this task once a week during the fall and spring, and every two weeks during the summer.
Fertilizing
Lawn care includes proper fertilization to promote strong grass growth that is dense and healthy. Fertilizing also helps to prevent damage from insects and weeds.
Most lawns need regular feeding to maintain good health. As a result, they must be fertilized three to six times per year. Fertilizers help to make the grass more resilient and able to withstand wear and tear from frequent mowing, kids’ sports games and weather events.
Many fertilizers are made to work during specific seasons, as well as for particular types of grass. For example, starter fertilizers are often designed with a higher percentage of phosphorus to encourage the root development of new grass. Some fertilizers also contain a pre-emergent herbicide or post-emergent herbicide to prevent or kill weeds such as crabgrass, clover and bindweed.
If you choose to apply fertilizer yourself, it’s important to read the label carefully and follow all instructions for application. This will help to ensure that the fertilizer is not applied too heavily, which can damage your lawn or soil. It’s also important to water the lawn after fertilizing. This rinses the fertilizer off of the grass blades and allows it to sink down into the soil where it can do its work.
Before you apply any fertilizer, it’s best to have your soil tested. This will tell you which nutrients are deficient and which ones the grass already has in abundance. There are at-home soil testing kits available, but professional tests done by a laboratory will provide the most accurate information. A soil test can also reveal if the lawn has any compaction problems that are impeding root development and hindering nutrient uptake.
Weeding
Weeds steal nutrients from your grass, so removing them is essential to having a healthy lawn. Ideally, you want to encourage the growth of desirable plants and crowd out any weeds that are growing. This can be done through a combination of organic and chemical treatments.
Organic weed control involves the use of natural materials like vinegar, salt, and baking soda to kill weeds. For more serious weed infestations, chemical treatments can be used. Some of the most common herbicides include glyphosate (Roundup), dicamba, and urea. These are nonselective herbicides that will kill a wide variety of plants, including your lawn grasses. Therefore, they should only be applied to isolated weeds and not your entire lawn.
Another way to help prevent weeds in your lawn is through aeration and dethatching. This process removes the layer of thatch, which is a buildup of dead and living plant material between the soil and grass roots. A layer of thatch can be detrimental to the health of your lawn because it inhibits water, oxygen, and nutrient flow from reaching the roots.
Aerating and dethatching also improves the quality of your lawn by removing compacted soil. This helps to promote the growth of a deeper root system that is more resilient to drought and heat. It will also reduce the incidence of diseases and pests. Mulching is also an excellent way to promote the growth of desirable plants in your flower beds, as well as suppress weeds and keep soil temperatures moderate. The mulches can be organic or synthetic, but the most important thing is to have a mulch layer of at least three inches in depth.
Aerating
Like the body, the lawn needs healthy soil to grow thick and strong. If the ground gets too compacted, air, water and nutrients can’t penetrate to the roots. Heavy foot traffic, heavy clay soils and excess thatch build-up can all cause compaction. Aerating loosens the soil and alleviates this problem by perforating the surface with small holes. This also helps remove excessive thatch and improves root growth and depth.
Aerating also helps maximize the effectiveness of fertilizers by ensuring that they reach the grass roots. This also helps the lawn resist weeds and tolerate stressors such as drought. Aerating a lawn every two to three years is ideal, but it’s especially important to do so if the yard is used heavily and/or has heavy foot traffic.
Core aeration is the most popular method of aerating lawns. This treatment uses an aerator machine to punch out small “plugs” of thatch and soil from the lawn surface. Aerators are available in both manual and mechanical versions, so you can rent one at your local lawn and garden store or do it yourself.
Aerating should be done in the early spring or fall for cool-season grasses and late spring through summer for warm-season grasses. It’s also a good idea to overseed at this time, which adds new grass seed that can better withstand stressors and compete with weeds for space. When coupled with aeration, this technique helps to naturally choke out the weedy dandelions and other common broadleaf varieties such as crabgrass. It’s also a great time to apply pre-emergent treatments for crabgrass, which can be particularly troublesome in thin and weak lawns.