Lawn Care Do’s & Don’ts
Taking care of your lawn can feel like such a task on top of your normal day-to-day routines, especially if yours is larger than average. Unfortunately, if you don’t put enough love and care into your grass, then it will certainly show on the outside. We can’t keep up with the Joneses with a brown and patchy lawn, now can we?
Fortunately, there are a few simple steps that you can implement each year to ensure your yard stays healthy and green. And no, it shouldn’t eat too much time out of your week to do so.
Create a Schedule for Yourself
Just as you would get an oil change in your car every 5,000 miles or change your bedsheets every week, your lawn also needs a little bit of maintenance each season to keep it pretty. Try not to get too far behind or else you will end up creating more work for yourself in the end.
- Spring
Bill Martin from Top5LawnMowers.com suggests that spring time is best to test your soil and fertilize in preparation for the hot months of summer. Use a fertilizer that is three parts nitrogen, one part phosphorus, and two-part potassium. Also, don’t fertilize too often or else you risk drying out your lush grass.
“Also it is time to put out some fire ant control and other insect treatments,” Martin writes. “If you wait too long those little devils will take over a lawn….might even try a hostile takeover of your garage!”
- Summer
Water, water, water. Get into the habit of watering your lawn in the early morning hours. Watering during the day can cause you to waste that precious H2O due to evaporation in the hot Florida sun. If you’re able to set your sprinkler system to go off ahead of time, schedule it the night before to water the grass before or as the sun comes up.
Also, if you plan on adding any plants, be sure they’re able to withstand the heat.
- Fall
Although your kids and dogs may love to play in the mountainous piles of leaves in your backyard, letting the leaves stay all fall and winter long will make way for not-so-good growth the following spring. So once you and your family are done playing, just make sure you put the leaves in bags and dispose of them.
Martin adds once again that you should give your lawn some more fertilizer and do another insect treatment.
- Winter
You’ll like the sound of this! Martin suggests you can’t really do much when there’s snow or frost on the ground anyways, so take this time to relax from your lawn duties. Once spring rolls around again, you’ll be ready to go!
Mowing
Of course, mowing your lawn is essential, especially for those who live in HOA communities. However, try to avoid mowing the grass too often or mowing it too low or else you risk drying out your healthy yard. Also, wikiHow suggests you try changing the direction you mow in every time you cut the grass.
“It will help cut down on stress to the lawn, and may also prevent divots from forming in your pattern,” the article states.
Carissa Gingras from the Briggs & Stratton Corp. tells us to “be sure to only cut off one-third of the grass’ length at a time and to cut it no shorter than three inches tall. Cutting grass too short leaves it vulnerable to insect invasion and disease.”
A few other tips from Gingras is to keep your mower blades sharpened, change the oil in your lawn mower regularly, and change the spark plug when needed.
Have a Picnic!
After your yard looks as green and luscious as you dreamt it would – take that, Joneses! – make sure you take advantage of it. Have a family picnic, play an outdoors game (football, manhunt, practicing cartwheels, etc.), put in a little tire swing, or have a barbecue. You put it in a lot of work to make your lawn look good, so take advantage of it and have a blast!
Questions? Comments? Contact your FIT rep today!
