A healthy, thick, lush green lawn gives your home curb appeal and helps it stand out in a neighborhood. But if your lawn is suffering and thinning out, all hope isn’t lost. A few maintenance alterations should easily help you make some show-stopping alterations to your home landscape.
If your lawn is looking thin, there’s usually a reason why, and the first step is finding out what that reason is — climate or environment, for instance. Maybe your lawn isn’t too thin but it simply isn’t as thick as you’d like. Let’s take a look today at a list of tips compiled by our landscaping professionals at Promier Landscapes in Kingsport to help keep your lawn looking its very best:
Manage Your Soil
Your soil’s overall health can significantly alter your turf grass’s appearance because grass health largely depends on the soil in which it grows. A great place to start is by collecting and submitting a soil analysis to determine pH balance and the nutrients that are in (or missing from) your lawn.
Fertilize Regularly
All plants — including your grass — need nutrients to survive and flourish. A regular fertilizing regimen throughout the active growing seasons for both warm- and cool-season grasses helps your grass perform.
Irrigate Adequately
Most warm and cool season lawns need about one inch of water per week. This includes rainfall during the active growing season. Like all living things, lawns need adequate water. However, overwatering can lead to disease. Conduct a water irrigation audit to make sure your lawn is receiving the recommended amount of water each week.
Water irrigation audit — This is an audit to evaluate the current performance state of your sprinkler irrigation system. It’s an inexpensive way to determine if changes need to be made to your irrigation system. Look for any visible issues that may be impacting your system, such as broken sprinkler heads, then place same-size cups or tins in a grid pattern on the lawn. The amount of water each cup catches during a usual watering period will help you determine your system’s efficiency and uniformity.
Mow Regularly
Regular mowing promotes vertical growth and lateral density of grass in your yard, contributing to a thicker, fuller lawn. Different types of grass require different mowing heights, depending on its growing pattern. Mowing more than 1/3 of the leaf blade off your grass will cause unnecessary stress and may result in thin areas of your lawn.
Aerate Properly
Aerating your lawn can seem like a big task, but it is actually less daunting — and more important — than you may think. Aeration makes a huge difference in your lawn’s density, and it is especially valuable with hard, compacted or heavy clay soil types. These kinds of soils often prevent the proper amount of nutrients, water and oxygen from getting down to the roots of grass where they are needed most. Aeration helps break up those soils. If you have a highly trafficked lawn because of kids or pets, or if you see water standing for long periods of time in areas of your lawn, aeration is likely the ideal solution for you.
Overseed or Plant Grass Plugs
A beneficial way to help your lawn develop a dense, thick carpet over your soil is by spreading seed on top of existing grass (called overseeding) or by planting grass plugs in the bare spots. The grass plugs or grass seed will begin to fill in bare areas over time. Overseeding or planting grass plugs is also an inexpensive method that doesn’t take much time or effort.
Prevent and Control Weeds
Weeds compete with your grass for sunlight and nutrients. They also take up space in your lawn. Preventing and controlling weeds will help your lawn become thicker and more robust. Weeds are more likely to sprout up in bare or thin spots of your lawn, so choking them out with grass, seed or grass plugs is recommended. This prevents more weeds from spreading. The thicker your lawn’s canopy, the less likely weeds will be capable of growing.
Frequent mowing, hand-picking weeds and the use of herbicides will help you decrease the amount of weeds your lawn will host. It should be noted that a pre-emergent herbicide is used preventatively to keep weeds from popping up in the first place. A post-emergent herbicide is used after a weed has already established itself in your lawn. Do not use pre-emergent herbicide while overseeding your lawn because the same properties in the herbicide that kills weeds will also kill your new grass.
Prevent and Control Insects
Preventing or controlling lawn insects will prevent damage to your lawn, which means it won’t have to work as hard to repair itself and grow over damaged, bare areas. Bugs, such as grubworms, love to eat grass and grassroots. Over time, this can cause significant damage to your lawn and result in bare, patchy spots.
Thicken Your Lawn
If you’ve tried various repairs to your lawn with little to no success, give our landscaping specialists at Promier Landscapes a call at (423) 872-2988, or reach us online today. We have helped folks like you in the Tri-cities area with all their lawn needs for more than two decades.