Keeping up with your lawn care has a huge impact on the curb appeal of your home. Even if your home belongs on the cover of a magazine, if the lawn care isn’t maintained, the whole property looks unattractive. And — unlike the home itself — lawn care is a never ending feat. You can put forth the effort to make it perfect, and then the grass (and weeds) continue to grow and you’re back at square one a week later.
The best way to keep your lawn looking perfect is to use professional landscape services. If you have professional landscapers to keep an eye on your lawn and make sure it’s perfect, lawn care really isn’t too bad. However, much of us do not have that option. The second best option is to use a landscaper to get your lawn in order, and then follow our simple tips for keeping it that way:
Four Simple Tips for Maintaining Your Lawn
- Frequent “trimmings” wins the race.
You’d think the easiest way to keep your lawn from looking overgrown is to cut it as low as you can every few weeks, so that it takes a little longer before it’s overgrown again. However, cutting your grass too low will prevent it from growing full, lush and green, like you’d hoped. Instead, the weakened grass will be overtaken by invasive weeds. And once the weeds have staked their dominion in your lawn, it’s very difficult to remove them and get your beautiful lawn back.The best way to keep your lawn healthy is to keep it a tall. Most professional landscapers suggest that you cut about one-third of the grass length per mowing session. Yes, this entails more mowing sessions than if you cut it bare once a month, but the extra exercise and sunlight isn’t going to hurt you anyways.
- Give your mower blades a day at the spa.
The most pristine lawn care requires having a sharp blade on your lawn mower. When the mower is able to swiftly slice the grass blade in a clean slice, the lawn remains tidy and uniform in length.
However, as your blade gets dull, it tears each blade of grass instead of slicing it. This leaves each blade of grass damaged and dull; multiply that by a few million and instead of that perfect green lawn that you want, you’ll end up with a scraggly, brownish grey lawn.
Ideally, sharpen your lawn mower blade once every mowing season, or more if you have a large lawn and use it frequently. The best way to gauge when it’s time to replace or sharpen the blade is to read the lawn: after you mow, are you seeing the blades of grasses frayed? If so, it’s time to sharpen them up. - Water the grass as the sun is rising.
Watering the grass in the morning puts it in the best position to soak up the sun and remain green and happy. As the sun shines on your lawn, the excess water that the roots do not use dries up. On the other hand, if your lawn is still wet as the sun goes down, it will likely remain wet all night, which makes it more prone to disease, mold, fungus, and mildew.
We’ll add this tip for free: the best strategy for watering your grass is to give it a good “soak in” less often instead of a light watering regularly. When you soak the water nice and deep, it helps the roots get the moisture it needs to thrive; which is the whole point of watering the grass. As a rule of thumb, if you put an empty cup next to your sprinkler, once the cup has half an inch of water, you know you’ve given your lawn a good soak in. - Give your lawn nutrition.
Like all living things, grass needs food to survive. They get some nutrients through photosynthesis from the sun, and some from water, but the rest of the nutrients they need to grow green and hardy they get from the soil. As those nutrients get depleted, you need to refresh them with a good natural fertilizer.
Do you have any other great tips for maintaining a beautiful lawn? Please share with us below.