The best lawns look green and lush during summer and often appear weed-free. This doesn’t just happen by accident, and in most lawns, a careful process is followed to produce the right results.
So if you notice browning off in your lawn, or weeds popping up it is time to take action now, and even employ a weed removal service, or alternatively do it yourself. Once you have taken the right steps to resurrect your lawn it responds to the care by becoming green and thick.
5 Tips to Get Your Lawn Ready for Summer
Before you even start your lawn, if you want it to be ready quickly you may need to install turfs rather than laying down seeds. If you have never had a lawn in that spot before, is the site shaded or in full sun? Then do you have pets?
Pets and kids will be quite hard on the lawn and you will need something hardy like Soft Leaf Buffalo Grass.
This is a good choice as it also resists many pests and diseases, so you will need fewer chemicals to keep it in top condition. If you already have a lawn it may be in bad shape, and here is how you get back to optimal condition for summer.
1. Get Rid of Pests and Weeds
Any pests in the lawn should be eradicated now. Ask the garden store what you should use, as you won’t want to spray anything toxic and you may be able to use a biological control on the area.
Then rake your lawn to loosen dead grass, remove the weeds as they eat up the nutrients.
When the weeds are allowed to grow they will take over the whole lawn, and you don’t want clover and dandelion spreading and growing. The right weed control will get rid of them.
2. Aerate your Lawn
All lawns need aerating, and this is best done with a spike roller. You may be able to buy some shoes with spikes under them, and these will perform a similar function in aerating your lawn when you walk up and down across the grass.
Once the air gets down to the roots it reduces the soil compression and increases the capacity of the soil to hold water. After you have used the spikes the next step is to water your lawn.
3. Apply Lawn Dressing
The lawn is now ready for top dressing, and this should always be applied in spring. The top dressing is a mixture of soil and compost and it helps to enrich the soil and promotes growth.
At this time weed removal is important, as sometimes weeds pop up in the top dressing so concentrate on pulling them out when the need arises. You can get someone in to maintain your lawn and provide a weed removal service.
4 Apply a Lawn Fertilizer
Your lawn requires a well-balanced fertilizer four times during the growing season. In colder climates, you won’t be able to start this until late spring.
Throughout the growing season, it is essential to apply fertilizer, follow this up with a good watering. this prevents the fertilizer from burning the grass off.
Where possible, set up the right watering system, the lawn prefers to be watered with a sprinkler, the type of watering it would receive from a gentle rain. During winter you may not need water at all.
5. Mowing your Lawn Properly
Before every summer, get the blades on your mower sharpened, or on an old mower replace them. You can remove them from the Kubota Mowers and take them to the hardware store for sharpening. This way they will cut the grass cleanly.
Increase the time between mowing the lawn and don’t cut it too short as this will damage your new grass. If you cut the lawn too short it exposes the roots to the hot sun and the lawn becomes stressed and will burn off.
Only mow one-third of the growth of your lawn to give it that lush effect that you are trying to achieve. When you have mowed your lawn leave the clippings on the surface of the lawn, don’t rake them up. They will break down adding nutrients to the soil.
