Beginner’s guide to lawn care

Achieving a gorgeous and healthy lawn doesn’t have to be a total hassle. With some time, some know-how and a few deep breaths, you too can have a beautiful lawn to be proud of.

Mowing: The long and short of it

Properly mowing your lawn requires a little more expertise than you think. Properly mowing your lawn is about three things: blades, height and frequency.

• Blades: Before you even think about mowing your lawn, you need to make sure that your mower blades are sharp. Mowing your lawn with dull blades tears your grass instead of cutting it, which is unsightly and unhealthy. If you don’t want to deal with sharpening blades yourself, check out your local home improvement shop or garden store – they can do the job for you quickly and usually for cheap!
• Height: It can be tempting to crop your grass as close to the ground as possible, so you don’t have to mow every weekend. However, when you slice your grass too close to the root, it can become unhealthy and start to die.
• Frequency: Mowing more frequently and at a taller height will give you healthier grass, which means your efforts will be rewarded with a lush, healthy landscape.

Watering: Give your lawn a drink

Follow these great tips to maximise your watering efficiency and effectiveness, so that you can hydrate your landscape like a pro:

• Water in the early morning. Watering your lawn in the early morning allows the moisture to get down into the root systems before the heat of the sun evaporates it. Don’t water at night as this could bog down your roots and give you soppy, saturated soil.
• Water about 2.5cm during each watering session – this is the perfect amount of water for your landscape to absorb without becoming oversaturated, and enough to keep your grass perfectly hydrated.
• Water about three times per week. Any more than that could oversaturate your soil; any less could leave your grass roots high and dry.
• Check your grass for puddles and dry spots after you water. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a perfectly flat landscape, so it is important to see where your water is running to. If you see dry patches, focus on watering more in those areas. If you see puddles, try to divert some of that moisture away. Equalising the water you expose your lawn to will help you achieve perfectly green, lush grass.

Remember to adhere to water restrictons in your area.

Fertiliser: A well-fed lawn is a happy lawn

One of the best ways to ensure that you have a healthy and gorgeous lawn is to ensure that its nutritional needs are being met with fertilisation treatments. But you can’t just throw grass food out there and expect results. Instead, follow these tips for success:

• Timing is everything when it comes to fertiliser – you want to apply fertiliser to your lawn only during its growing seasons. For cool season grasses, fertilise in autumn and spring and for warm season grasses, fertilise in the spring and summer.
• Regularly test the pH of your soil to ensure that you are using the right kind of fertiliser.
• Consider using a spreader or a calibrated spray nozzle to help spread your fertiliser over your lawn, rather that doing it by hand. Not only will this save you time, but it will help ensure an even spread of fertiliser.

Weed control: Don’t feed the weeds

Pesky weeds are more than just nuisances, they can do some serious damage to your lawn if left unchecked. Follow these tips to get rid of weeds in your lawn so you can spend less time on in the dirt and more time enjoying a weed-free lawn:

• Most of your lawn includes weed seeds – they just haven’t germinated yet. Avoid tilling your soil too often to avoid plopping these unseen weed seeds into fertile soil to keep more from popping up.
• Make mulch your friend. Weeds need light to germinate and grow and covering portions of your land with mulch stops weed seeds from getting that sunlight.
• Keep your plants closer together. When you reduce the space between the plants in your garden, the weeds will have less space to grow and more competition for nutrients and sunlight.

Revitalise and rejuvenate with aeration and seeding

If your routine lawn maintenance doesn’t have your landscape looking the way you want it to, aeration and seeding can help. These processes help to revamp an exhausted lawn after a year of inevitable wear and tear. If you spend a lot of time out in your yard, or if you have started to notice bald or browning patches, your grass may be crying out for help.

Aeration is the process of taking small plugs of soil out of your yard. This process can be done using an aerator, which can be bought at your local hardware store or garden shop. When you aerate your lawn, you will help to break down the thatch layer that may have accumulated on your lawn over the year. We would recommend hiring a professional to aerate your lawn. Doing it incorrectly could result in even more damage.

This process has the following great benefits:

• Improves moisture retention;
• Increases nutrient uptake;
• Gives your grass roots some breathing room.

Now it’s time to fill in bald spots

Once your lawn is aerated, it is in the perfect position to benefit from overseeding. During the overseeding process, you can spread grass seed over your newly-aerated lawn. This will help to fill in bald patches in your landscape and will make your lawn fuller and healthier overall. This is one of the many tricks that professionals use to bring a failing lawn back from the brink and revitalise lawns that need a little bit more than just routine lawn maintenance. You should aerate and overseed your lawn at least once a year to ensure that your grass receives the full benefit of this lawn care technique.
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