Did your lawn take a beating in last year? Now is the perfect time to start planning to keep your lawn looking good! Heat may have affected your lawn, making it brown and hard to look at, but there are things you can do that will help in keeping your lawn green.
1. Keep Your Grass Long
Remembering to keep your lawn cut at about 3 inches (or higher) is important to keep your lawn healthy. By doing this, it helps to keep the soil shaded from the summer heat, which can help prevent weeds from growing and diseases from forming.
2. Get a Soil Test
If your grass is persistently thin and patchy, it may be due to a problem with the soil and not necessarily with the grass itself. A soil test may be a good idea to determine the exact problem and to find out if amendments are needed. Correcting the soil deficiencies with a few additional treatments will help to bring your lawn around.
3. Proper Treatments Throughout the Year – Especially in the Fall
Future summers will benefit with proper maintenance of the lawn, specifically in the fall months. With the temperatures dropping and the rain falling, aeration, seeding, and top dressing are important for maintaining and helping to prepare it for the winter.
Core aeration is often overlooked. This is a major contributor to turf health. This technique pulls plugs out of the ground. The holes create allow oxygen and water to get down into the soil and roots. Most importantly, this helps remove soil compaction.
This is a great time to overseed! With the plugs that are created, the seed falls into the holes and begins to grow. But aeration and overseeding is not a cure-all for bare areas in lawns. Generally, about 30% of grass germinates with overseeding after aeration.
For areas where bare ground exists, slice seeding would be the best option. Don’t forget to water, because if the seed is not kept moist, even the best seeding job will not be successful without proper moisture. Just remember, fall seeding will give you the best opportunity for a successful lawn!
