Although my garden service does not include lawn maintenance I do know through my years of working in gardens that a beautiful lawn can be a lovely accent to the garden. It can also be a detriment and cause many extra hours of maintenance per year if it is not maintained properly.
Many of my clients hire me to maintain their garden beds, but take on the lawn maintenance themselves. This can help cut back on the overhead expense of lawn care, but can add to the expense of maintaining the garden and detract from the overall design if best practices are not utilized.
Proper tools are essential to maintaining your lawn. You may use a manual or gas powered mower, please note that with a manual mower you will want to mow very often as they tend to not do a good job on longer grass. Sharp blades cut the grass, dull blades rip and tear leaving the lawn looking dull and drab. To keep the edges of the lawn looking tidy you will need a line trimmer. There are both electric and gas powered types of line trimmers and both will work on a maintained area. An electric trimmer though does not have the power to take on overgrown areas however. Electric trimmers are generally much lighter than the gas powered versions. So depending consider what type of tasks you will use your trimmer for before choosing between an electric or gas powered version. Last, to clean up hard surfaces after mowing you will want a good push broom or power blower.
Other tools that may be needed from time to time are: edger, thatcher, aerater, spreader. These are all available to rent if you want to try to take on these tasks yourself or another option is to hire those yearly tasks out to a reliable company.
I do recommend fertilizing your lawns. The key here is to use the right amount, too little and your grass will have a hard time competing with weeds. Too much and your lawn will grow to quickly and become overstressed which can lead to disease. The lawn care company I recommend fertilizes with organic fertilizer in late spring and early fall. He may also recommend an application of moss killer in late winter or mid autumn if needed.
If a lawn does not get the nutrients it needs it will become overrun with weeds and sparse patches. These weeds if allowed to go to seed will blow into the surrounding landscaped beds, leading to more maintenance of the beds. The grass itself can also set seed which can spread into the beds if not mowed and trimmed on a regular basis.
Mowing season in the Puget Sound area starts in March and can extend into November. In cool weather when lawns are growing slow to moderately they should be mowed once every 10 days to 2 weeks at the minimun. As the weather warms in late April weekly mowing is best to maintain a healthy lawn. A lawn that is allowed to grow long between mowings and then cut very short becomes very stressed and can become vulnerable to disease, bare patches and invasion by weeds.
If you have not been using best practices to maintain your lawn don't worry, lawns improve quickly with the above listed techniques. And do consider that the time spent properly maintaining turf areas enhances the curbside appeal of your home and saves time and money on maintaining your landscaped beds as well.
Comments