Mowing frequency depends on whether your lawn is made up of cool season grass variety or warm season grasses. A basic rule is that you should never cut off more than one-third of the grass blades' height at any one time. In general, you should plan on mowing your grass about once a week, keeping in mind that it will need to be mowed more often at some times of the year and less often at others.
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Lawn edging is a barrier between your grass and bedded areas, typically made from plastic, recycled materials, treated wood, or concrete. Similar to a long strip, lawn edging accomplishes two critical duties. First, it stops weeds from encroaching flower beds, gardens, and other sensitive areas. Also, it keeps mulch and other fertilizer additives from escaping these beds onto your lawn.
According to the Environment Protection Agency, "lawn and garden edging creates a barrier between lawns and landscaped areas or garden beds…that helps keep grass and weeds out."
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Knowing how to cut your lawn is just one of those little things that we take for granted. But if you are a first time homeowner and have never had a lawn to cut, then you need to know these lawn cutting basics. Follow this plan and you'll get good results.
Cutting your grass can be much tougher than it looks. You need a definite plan to deal with tricky aspects such as navigating rough terrain and achieving desired blade length. These are general guidelines for cutting your grass that you should be aware of. Of course, every yard is different and each has its own set of rules.
Blade Height. Set the blade height on your push or pull lawn mower to the middle setting. Cutting the grass too low results in scorched soil in the sun. Cutting it too long encourages difficult cutting the next time.
Cut in Rows. The safest pattern for you to cut your lawn as a rookie is straight lines along one of the sides. This will keep your rows even and ensure that you cut all of the blades without missing spots.
Circle the Beds. When you reach a Bed in the middle of your lawn, cut a row or two around the circumference of the bed. This will make sure that you get all of the blades around a difficult section of the grass.
Check the Bag Often. One thing that can ruin your lawn is to let the catching bag get too full. Then clumps of grass begin falling into freshly cut rows which can cause the grass that the clumps fall on to die.
Cut Often. Cutting your lawn often is the best way to encourage it to grow lush and full. Cutting too often is simply a waste of effort and materials. Once every week or so should be plenty for most climates.
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In general, the longer you let your lawn grow, the deeper the root system will develop, thereby increasing its chance of withstanding periods of drought and severe heat. Higher grass also allows for increased ground cover to help protect soil from drying out and lets the grass absorb more sunlight. Conversely,if you cut too low, your lawn may develop a shallow root system, making it susceptible to drying out and requiring more maintenance to stay healthy. Additionally, too low a cut may also provide just enough sunlight for weeds to germinate and gain a foothold. The only negative side effect to growing taller lawns is that your lawn may develop a large amount of Thatch over time and may need to be de-thatched or aerated seasonally (see: Aerating). Basically, Thatch is collection of grass clippings, dead stems, and debris that collects on the ground level of the grass.
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Trimming your lawn is usually not as pleasurable and glamorous as mowing. However, the difference between a good lawn and a great lawn may only be a trimming and/or edging away. Trimming differs from edging in that edging refers to a vertical trim of the edges generally along sidewalks and driveways. Trimming, on the other hand, is a technique used to cut grass and weeds in areas a mower cannot reach, such as walls, fences, around mailboxes ad light poles, trees, flower beds, and sometimes driveways and sidewalks. Obviously, there can be confusion in differentiating between trimming and edging. As a general rule, it is best to remember edging as a "vertical" cut and trimming as a "horizontal cut."
Most trimming is commonly done with a gas or electrically powered trimmer that operates a nylon string that spins in a whipping motion to cut the grass. Some more advanced models have reciprocating blades in place of the nylon strings. Trimming should be carried out to "level" the remaining grass so it is flush with the mower cut grass. Again, it is important to remember that the 1/3 cutting rule applies here, too. If you trim in excess of this amount, the trimmed areas may get scalped and look worse then they did prior to trimming. Another thing to remember is to ALWAYS wear protective eye ware when operating a trimmer. Although some trimmers may contain "guards", they are not sufficient for keeping your eyes free of danger! Additionally, most people choose to wear jeans or other clothing over their legs to protect from flying debris and the nylon string that can puncture and cut your skin while power trimming.
Edging
Edging can make your lawn look finely groomed along the borders and prevent "creeping" grasses from growing outside of their boundaries. The Vertical cut is commonly made in a straight line fashion along the grass boundaries between sidewalks and driveways. Edgers are typically gas powered or electrical. If you have a smaller lawn that requires minimal edging, you may want to use a pair of vertical cutting shears to do the same job. However, if you have over 1/4 acre of lawn, you may want to look at the gas powered and electrical options.
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Drain the gas out of the tank. Let the mower run until it's out of gas. I know... that's wasting! But hopefully you thought ahead and let most of the gas run out on your last mow of the season. What's a few dollars in gas compared to the hundreds of dollars invested in your lawn mower?
Clean the mower. Set it on its side and scrub all the stuck on grass and debris with a brush and hot soapy water. Give it a good rinse with the hose. If you leave this stuff on, the mower will rust and be in bad shape by April.
It's best to sharpen the lawnmower blade now. You will be eager to mow your lawn in the spring and most likely won't take the time to get the lawnmower blade sharpened. It's also a good idea to protect the sharpened lawn mower blade by applying a spray oil.
Replace the air filter and change the oil in your lawn mower. Some air filters can be cleaned in hot, soapy water. Be sure to properly dispose of the old oil in the same way you would for car motor oil. That means, of course, not on the ground or in the sewer, but at an authorized disposal site.
Apply a little clean oil to the sparkplug hole as suggested by an article in the fall 2004 issue of the North Carolina A&T State University Cooperative Extension Newsletter. The article also suggests pulling the motor a few times to evenly distribute oil in the motor. This should help keep moving parts from corroding during storage.
As you do with the lawn mower blade, use a little spray oil applied to other moving parts to keep them from seizing up. This includes cables and the throttle control.
Store your lawn mower inside if at all possible. A garage or storage shed is fine. If you must leave it outside, leave it protected from the elements and cover well.
Winterizing your lawn mower may seem like a lot of work. What sounds like even more work and hassle is pulling your lawn mower out of storage in the spring and finding that it just refuses to start. It seems like a lot less work to take care of business now and be rewarded in the spring with a lawn mower that starts right up.
How you treat your lawn mower now will determine how your lawn mower treats you - and your lawn - in the spring.
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It's amazing what a little fresh air can do for people, pets, and even lawns. While it might not be possible to take your lawn for a nice, bracing drive in the country, you can improve its health with a process called aeration.
When you aerate your lawn, you punch holes in the soil. These holes allow more air and water circulation around your lawn's roots, preventing fungal invasions, and they encourage the growth of healthy microorganisms in the soil. These microorganisms eat lawn thatch, a layer of dead bits of grass on top of the soil that can choke out your lawn. Aeration also makes it easier for your lawn to grow stronger, deeper roots. A good root system is essential for your lawn's survival in times of drought.
To get your lawn aerated, you have a couple of options. You can contact a lawn care service that will come over and aerate your lawn for you, or you can rent an aerator from a home improvement store and tackle the job yourself. If you opt to aerate yourself, be sure to make a couple passes with the aerator to ensure that you have gotten thorough coverageThe best times to aerate your lawn are the spring and fall. If you have warm season grass in your lawn, spring is preferable because the grass is gearing up for rapid growth and can recover quickly from aeration. Cool season lawns grow most vigorously in the early fall, so that is a prime time to aerate them. You should avoid aerating in the heat of summer, or if your lawn is very dry. Plan on giving your lawn a good watering two days before you want to aerate.
Some lawns are better candidates for aeration than others. Lawns growing in clay soils usually need aeration around twice a year because the clay compacts easily. Lawns in sandy soil usually need to be aerated much less. Once a year should be sufficient.
Aeration is an easy way to improve your lawn's health. By aerating just once or twice a year, you can ensure that your lawn's roots are strong. You will see the result of healthy roots every time you look outside: an emerald green carpet of thriving grass.
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There's really nothing complicated about lawn thatch and soil compaction. Core aeration is not part of routine lawn care, but you definitely want to fix any problems that threaten the life of a healthy lawn. There's an old saw that you can check soil compaction by trying to slide a wooden matchstick into your soil. If it won't go in without force, you may want to have a local lawn service out to your home to aerate your soil for a fee, sparing you equipment rentals and labor.
If your lawn shows considerable foot wear, drains slowly, or browns up quickly when dry, the soil is probably compacted. Thatch is the organic layer of material that wedges between your grass and the soil. If it gets thicker than ½" to ¾" it could lead to moisture starvation, foster insect growth, and festering lawn disease. In both cases, your lawn is most likely a strong candidate for aeration.
Cores and Plugs
Aeration equipment--the right kind--has hollow tines that pull ½" to ¾" plugs of soil from your lawn, boring down as much as 6" deep, drilling several inches apart. The benefits can be immense. Aeration is known to improve grass rooting capability, enable the "watering in" of fertilizers and pesticides, to increase air and water flow to the soil, and enhance the generation of microorganisms that will keep your thatch in check.
If you chose to rent your own aerator at a local lawn and garden shop, be sure you ask for one that draws plugs to the surface -- else you're probably wasting your time and money. Water your lawn several days ahead of the procedure. Your soil should be moist, but not wet and soaking. Run the machine in at least two different directions to ensure adequate coverage.
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Grass can grow just about anywhere, but sometimes it needs a little help. This is particularly true if you have heavy, poor draining soil in your backyard. If your grass has more or less stopped growing by August every year, and the ground feels like it's made of granite, you should be aerating.
Heat + Water + Gravity = Brown Grass
Left alone, grass will grow to be at least several feet high during the spring. And as the grass grows higher, the root network will grow deeper, breaking up the soil and allowing for good drainage. The deeper the root network, the better the grass is able to absorb water, and the better it is able to survive when the weather turns hot and dry. But we don't let grass grow to several feet high, and the result of our mowing is a diminished root network for our lawn. When the hot weather arrives we try to keep our lawn alive by watering it, but grass grows much more slowly the hotter it gets, and in very hot temperatures will even go dormant. Because the roots are also growing slowly and absorbing less water, the soil beneath the roots also absorbs irrigation water. This causes the soil to compress, which in turn stops root growth and eventually even causes your lawn's root network to shrink. The cycle repeats itself over and over until you're left with brown grass and rock-hard soil.
Lawn Aeration Breaks the Cycle
When you aerate your lawn, you're breaking up the soil, making it easier for your lawn's root network to spread. Plug aerators, which pull plugs of dirt out of the ground, also create more space for roots and soil, which slows soil compression. Aeration also improves drainage, allowing your lawn's root network to absorb more water. If your soil has a heavy clay composition, you should also put down gypsum pellets at a rate of 100 pounds per 1,000 square feet after you aerate each spring. The gypsum makes the clay more powdery and dramatically slows compression.
Grass won't grow on a rock. If your soil turns to rock every summer, turn the tables by aerating.
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Dethaching is the process or removing Thatch from your lawn. As a general rule of thumb, up to 1/2 inch of thatch is O.K.. Remember, thatch can be good for lawns, especially during times of drought, water restrictions, and high heat, when it can act like insulation for the soil by providing a screen from sun light and help to hold in moisture. Conversely, thatch that accumulates in excess of 1/2 Inch can actually work as a disadvantage to your lawn by creating too much buffer between the soil and the grass, thereby preventing sufficient amounts of water, air, and nutrients (fertilizer) to reach the soil. Excess thatch can also encourage the proliferation of pests such a Chinch bugs, insects, and various lawn diseases and fungi.
To help determine how much thatch buildup exists in your lawn, simply take a narrow wire or screwdriver and place it in the thatch until it reaches the soil. Then mark how high the thatch reaches up on the wire/screwdriver with your finger. Finally, hold it next to a tape measure or ruler to determine the depth. It's not rocket science, but it will do. If you find that there is an excess of thatch in more than one place in your lawn (usually more the 1/2 inch), then it might be time to dethatch. If you find in excess of 1 inch of thatch in your lawn, then you might seriously consider dethatching soon. Much like aerating, dethatching should be done when your lawn can best recover, usually not during times of drought, water restrictions, and heat waves. For most lawns this is either in the late spring or early fall.
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Thatch accumulates on the surface of your soil just below the grass line and usually out of sight. Thatch is a layer of grass stems, roots, clippings, and debris that settle on the ground and either slowly decompose and/or accumulate over time. Thatch buildup is commonly found in lawns where grass has grown tall, mulch is frequently left, and lawns that have never been aerated. Thatch is most common in warm-weather and with creeping grasses such as Bermuda, Zoyia, Bent grass, and Kentucky Bluegrass. If you have these grasses, you will usually have to dethatch more often than with other grasses. Dethatching is the process of removing thatch from your lawn.
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Lawns with heavy foot traffic or patches that don't drain easily need aeration. Without lawn aeration, grass roots tend to knot into each other instead of growing vertically into the soil. Due to the root's diminished contact with the soil's nutrients, lawn grass becomes vulnerable to predators like worms and insects as well as weeds like dandelions or crabgrass.
Plug Aerator
A core or plug lawn aerator actually pulls plugs out of the lawn. Pieces of your lawn are removed so that a direct open link is made between the surface air and the nutritious soil below.
With plugs, you know that the grass roots are going to reconnect with the soil.
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If you are looking at your lawn and you feel like there is something missing, there probably is. Shrubs are versatile plants that make the perfect accessory to your lush, green lawn. They are easy to plant and maintain, and they will give your lawn that little something special.
I just can not say enough about the beauty that shrubs will add to your lawn layout. Shrubs are small bushes that come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Shrubs are the perfect addition to your lawn because they are cheap and easy to maintain.
Shrub Designs. The key to getting the most beauty out of your particular shrubs is to plant them in a coordinated design. Try to get both small and large, tall and shorter shrubs together, as they offer the perfect compliment to each other.
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Chinch bugs are flying insects that produce larvae that nest in the stems of your grass. Typically, they'll fly in from nearby Alberta prairie areas, golf courses, or other infected lawns and set up housekeeping in your neighborhood. They drop their sharp beaks into your lawn and start gulping down nutrients.
Adult Chinch bugs are black with white wings, and grow to about a fifth of an inch in length. In the first two weeks they visit, Chinch bug queens will lay up to 500 eggs in your lawn and the party is on. They love sun-lit areas, and that's where you'll find the brown halos with a yellowish ring where the lawn has been strip-mined of nutrients.
Thatch Removal and Lawn Insecticides Are Key
Since DDT was heaped on Chinch bungs in the 1950s, these highly adaptive insects have developed powerful tolerances to everything homeowners have sprayed on them. Lawn care experts now feel that Talstar is the most effective insecticide. Be sure to water the lawn really well before and after you apply any insecticide.
Since the bugs often over-winter in high thatch, annual thatch removal is one key in keeping down spring infestations. And using a relatively low amount of nitrogen will also keep them at bay, since they really prefer lawns with high nitrogen content.
Keep vigilant. Chinch bugs can produce two to four generations of young hatchlings a year.
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Yes, you can do a home test for Chinch bugs. Get a can, such as a tuna can, open both ends. Place the can half way into the ground and pour about half full of water. Wait and see if you see Chinch bugs! That is an easy home test!
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As we head into shorter days and cooler weather, how is your yard looking? If you've kept up with your yard maintenance during the summer months, you may have a special spot on the porch with your name on it for nice autumn weekends. If not, and your yard needs some attention, here are some simple tips for tackling one of the most common and invasive yard issues: weeds.
Before you get down on your hands and knees, give these remedies a try:
Bring your weed killing efforts to a boil.
If your weed problem is not severe, try a simple home remedy--boiling water. Simply pour boiling water over the weeds growing in cracks or on the edges of lawns. Pesky, strong weeds? Use a little salt and vinegar in the water as you boil it to show the weeds you mean business.
Turn the situation sour.
In addition to boiling water, straight vinegar has been known to solve weed problems. Simply fill a spray bottle with household, undiluted vinegar and spray away, particularly at the roots.
Smother the issue.
Heard of landscaping cloth? A simple, thin mesh, landscaping cloth is stretched across a surface of land during landscaping projects in order to prevent the rooting and growth of weeds. Not a solution for driveway cracks, but in backyard lawn areas, this may do the trick.
It's corny, but it works.
What is the future of automotive technology and tastes great when it's popped into a kernel or baked into a chip? You got it. And now you can use corn to kill weeds, too. But not just any corn: you need corn gluten meal, which is what's left over after corn is processed into starch and syrup. It interrupts the cell growth of weeds and causes stalks to bend and break. Ask a landscaping expert how to find it and use it correctly.
Water before weeding.
If you are using a standard, store-bought weed killer, try watering your lawn or yard area before using the product. When the soil around weed is moist, the roots are loosened and the weed killer can often seep down deeper and attack where it counts.
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Landscape fabrics are rated to last anywhere from 10 to 25 years. These ratings tend to be optimistic, but higher rated fabric typically lasts longer, and is less susceptible to tearing during installation. You should also buy anchor pins to hold the fabric in place. A good rule of thumb is one pin for every three feet of fabric length (e.g., 33 pins per 100-foot roll). When in doubt, err on the high side.
Lay it Down, Cover it Up
Begin laying the fabric on the longest, straightest edge of your planting bed. Hammer in an anchor pin every four feet an about two inches from the edge of the fabric touching the edge of the planting bed. When the first piece of fabric is laid out and anchored on one side, begin laying the second piece next to it, overlapping the two edges by four inches. Install the anchor pins every four feet in the center of the overlap, making sure the pin goes through both layers of fabric.
For small plants, cut an "X" in the fabric to let them poke through, then use pins to anchor the fabric around the base. For larger plants and trees, cut the fabric so it's just long enough to reach past the plant, cut a u-shaped notch to accommodate the plant, and then start again on the other side, overlapping the two pieces of fabric. Repeat these steps until done, cover the fabric with mulch, and forget about weeding for the next decade.
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Eliminate Your Weeds
Organically. These organic methods can help you safely eliminate most weeds without the cost or environmental dangers involved in using many herbicides:
Use mulch: this can help get rid of weeds before they begin to grow and develop complex root systems. Apply a thick layer (about 4 inches) each year.
Boiling water: this eliminates weeds from hard to reach places, like cracks in the pavement. Pour the boiling water directly onto the weed. Just ensure you don’t hit any nearby plants or it will kill them too.
Hoeing: this removes weeds from garden beds. But if the weed has already started to flower, then remove it by hand instead of leaving it in a compost pile as the seeds can still survive.
Manual methods: the best time to pull weeds is after a heavy rain when the soil is soft. You can also use your hose to wet the lawn.
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Spring Hill Lawn and Landscape, located on the web at http://www.springhilllawnandlandscape.com
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