Lawn Care
Most people with gardens love to gaze out at a beautifully landscaped lawn and yard. Although it sounds hard work to get that cricket pitch look or a lawn like you see in stately homes It is not as hard to achieve an attractive outdoor living area as you might think.
With the proper maintenance and lawn care, your landscape can provide a lovely backdrop to your home. Since your lawn will be one of the biggest focal points of your landscape, proper lawn care will keep that large area lush and green. If your lawn looks good, it wont be as difficult to make the rest of your yard look good as well. Proper lawn care to enhance your landscape is not that difficult, as long as you understand a few basic principles about how to keep your lawn healthy.
A Healthy Lawn Is A Happy Lawn.
The first step in caring for your lawn and landscape is ensuring that you have a healthy soil for planting. All plants require certain nutrients in the soil they grow in, along with particular soil conditions. For example, some plants like a sandy soil, where others prefer dirt that is rich in nutrients and holds water well. Soil requirements for lawn can vary based on the type of grass you plant as well. It is best to check with a local nursery or garden center to learn what your lawn specifically requires. You can also pick up a soil test to make sure that your ground is providing the best balance for your lawn. The healthier your soil, the lower maintenance your lawn and landscaping care will be.
Next, you want to provide irrigation for your lawn, water is a vital element, and few climates will provide sufficient water without supplemental irrigation. Most lawns require about an inch of rain per week. If you are in doubt as to whether Mother Nature is providing enough rain, you can use a rain gauge, and water your grass when necessary. If you do turn to irrigation, always try to water in the early morning hours, since this is the healthiest time of day for your lawn to take a drink. Keep in mind that healthy roots will require less water, so aeration is an important step in caring for your lawn and landscape. Aeration pokes holes into the ground to allow nutrients access to the roots of your plantings. It should be done every two or three years.
So you can see one of the key factors to a beautiful landscape garden is the care of your lawn. A lush, green lawn can be the focal point of your garden and offer space for playing and entertaining. With a little effort, you can keep your lawn healthy for a long, long time.
A Few Basic Facts About Good Lawn Care
Ever admired the beautiful green lawns enhancing a public garden or country club? When you compare these with the patched and dried out condition of your own lawn you may well feel disappointed that you cannot achieve that enviable pristine lawn look. Yet, with a bit of forethought and with a little effort there is no reason why you cannot also soon have an attractive lawn. There are several well-tried tips you can follow to make sure a newly laid out lawn does not start to wither away and to improve the condition of a lawn that has seen better days.
First of all, if you are laying a new lawn make sure that you use a quality seed. You may want to hire a special lawn sowing machine for a day to ensure that the seed is properly spread and laid into grooves of the correct depth. Also remember to choose a grass seed that it likely to do best given the soil and climate conditions in your area.
The most obvious aspect of good lawn care is to ensure that the lawn is sufficiently well and regularly irrigated. As a rule in the winter months your lawn is going to receive all the water it needs through natural rainfall but in the summer months dry spells can cause real damage. When the grass starts to lose its green coloring and become patched and brown you know that it needs watering. Depending on the size of the lawn you may be able to water it using a hand-held sprinkler but for most people a sprinkler system is essential. Automatic sprinklers can also be controlled by a timer to ensure that the lawn gets its water at the optimum time which is usually early in the morning or towards the end of the day when the sun has declined.
Another good idea is to use one of the recommended lawn fertilizers, preferably those containing phosphates and potash. The most important time for fertilizing the lawn is in the spring but a summer and autumn feeds are also good ideas, especially if the lawn is looking a little worse for wear.
Keeping weeds under control is also clearly essential. Regular mowing the lawn is the most important element in weed control but you need to make sure that the mowing is at the correct height and is done regularly in the summer months. The blades of the lawnmower should not be kept too low and ideally you should mow when the lawn is dry. As a rough guide when the grass has grown to three inches you can go and mow off the top two inches.
