A professional Lawn Care Kentucky program will incorporate weed control, pest control, and lawn fertilization products. These are better formulated and tested than the average homeowner can purchase at a store. Watering correctly is essential to proper lawn care. It is best to water deeply and infrequently. Watering early in the day reduces evaporation loss and prevents disease-causing prolonged wetness.
Mowing
Mowing may seem like a no-brainer, but how and when you mow can have a major impact on the health of your lawn. You want to cut your grass when it is about 1/3 above its natural growth height. If you do this regularly, the grass will grow in a healthy manner, retaining water and nutrients more efficiently.
A reputable lawn care company will recommend the best mowing schedule for your yard. This will take into account the weather conditions and the type of grass you have. For example, cool season grasses go dormant during winter, so you’ll need to wait until spring to start mowing again. Warm season grasses are very sensitive to hot temperatures and can be damaged by too much heat, so you need to be careful about how often you mow them.
During summer, the lawn will need more frequent watering to keep it lush and green. You’ll also need to know how long you should water and where the water should come from (do you have a well or a sprinkler system?) to get the best results. Your lawn service provider will advise you on the best way to water your lawn, and they’ll likely test the soil for a balanced pH so you can fertilize correctly.
In addition to mowing and watering, your lawn will need regular weed control treatments and aeration. Lawn care companies will know how to spot and treat weeds quickly, before they spread and choke out your lawn. They’ll also be able to aerate the lawn, making holes so that water, nutrients, and oxygen can circulate more easily throughout your lawn. Typical services include fungicide treatments, which help prevent and cure many common lawn diseases like brown patch or leaf spot.
Watering
The way you water your lawn plays a critical role in its health and beauty. The goal is to establish a watering schedule that’s consistent and tailored for your climate, soil conditions, and grass type. Watering to the correct depth helps promote healthy root systems that are more tolerant of drought.
The soil in your yard also impacts how quickly it absorbs and retains water. A soil test can help you understand the proportions of sand, silt, and clay in your soil, and these are important to consider when watering. Sandy soils leach water rapidly, and you’ll need to water them more frequently. Compacted clay soils hold onto water for a long time, and you’ll need to water them less frequently. Loam and silt soils fall somewhere in between, retaining moisture with a moderate speed.
When watering, it’s best to do so in the morning, as this reduces leaf wetness that encourages disease. It’s also a good idea to use an irrigation system with a shut-off valve that stops watering once the soil has reached its desired saturation level. This prevents overwatering, which can lead to fungus and other plant diseases.
Newly seeded lawns need to be watered more frequently, with light soakings two to three times a day until the seeds are well established. Established lawns should be watered once or twice a week, with watering lasting at least 15 minutes. This is more than enough to wet the soil several inches down, and it trains your lawn to be more tolerant of droughts. Be sure to follow any local guidelines for water restrictions, if applicable. Also, don’t forget to check the lawn for thatch levels, which can interfere with the absorption of nutrients and water.
Fertilising
Lawns need three primary nutrients to look lush and green: nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Those nutrients can be depleted by use, weather and natural erosion, so lawn care services should recommend and perform regular fertilising to keep the turf healthy.
Fertilising your lawn on a routine basis will help the grass resist disease, drought and insect damage and keep it looking great. A good quality spreader makes the process easy and is generally recommended as a better option than attempting to apply the fertiliser by hand – lawn professionals often use mechanical push-along spreaders, which can save time and make sure the correct proportion of fertiliser is applied.
Depending on soil type, a lawn may require different combinations of the main components in a fertiliser mix to display peak growth and performance. A general rule is that fertiliser mixes with more nitrogen should be used in spring to encourage growth and a strong green colour, while those containing phosphorous are best applied in the summer for a hardy turf and to prepare it for winter. A low nitrogen, high phosphorous mix is also useful for autumn applications to improve colour and promote a healthy lawn.
It is important to understand that over-fertilising can be as much of a problem as not feeding the grass enough. Too much nitrogen, for example, can lead to excessive leaf growth at the expense of root strength and healthy vigour. This can also result in excessive runoff and leaching which can wash excess nitrogen into lakes, streams and wetlands. Clover, which helps to naturally replenish nitrogen, can help limit the effects of over-fertilising.
Weed Control
Weeds steal vital nutrients and water away from grass, but they also make a lawn less attractive. Annual weeds die in the summer but leave seeds to continue their legacy while perennial weeds come back year after year from root buds. These weeds are difficult to get rid of, but they can be controlled with proper lawn care.
The key to effective weed control is to prevent them from sprouting in the first place. Many professional lawn care companies use a pre-emergent herbicide to help prevent weeds in the fall or spring. This chemical soaks down into the soil and disrupts cell division in young weed seed, killing them before they can grow. However, this product must be applied correctly and at the right time in order to be successful. If it is applied too late, the weeds will have already sprouted and will be able to out-compete the turfgrass for resources.
Most pre-emergent herbicides will label the types of weeds they are effective on. These weeds may be either grassy or broadleaf, with each type requiring a different approach to killing them. For example, a pre-emergent herbicide for dandelion, clover, or crabgrass should be applied before these weeds germinate in late spring or summer. However, these products must be used in combination with other cultural weed control practices (such as mowing at the proper height for your lawn type) and after aerating or dethatching so that they do not remove the herbicide from the soil.
Grass-like weeds, such as oats, quackgrass, and ryegrass can be killed with spot treatments of a postemergence herbicide (such as glyphosate or benefin) or two applications of the selective postemergence herbicides halosulfuron or sulfentrazone. Perennial weeds, including field bindweed and purple nutsedge, require digging or cultivating to bring up buried propagules in the soil.
Aerating
Your lawn probably needs a lot of TLC throughout the year; children and pets running through sprinklers, outdoor entertaining and yard work can leave your soil compacted. Compacted soil prevents water and oxygen from penetrating to grass roots, causing the root system to struggle. Aeration relieves this pressure by poking holes into the ground, allowing stale carbon dioxide to escape and fresh air to come in.
Aerating your lawn can be done with a garden fork or by using more specialised machinery like core aerators (also known as soil cultivation, coring, spiking and dethatching). These machines use hollow tines that penetrate the surface of your lawn and remove small plugs of thatch and soil. This process breaks up the natural layering of your soil and allows for improved drainage and better nutrient penetration.
In general, aeration should be done at least once per year. However, if your lawn is heavily used or has heavy clay soil, you may need to aerate more frequently. You should also aerate after scarifying to help break up any thatch build up.
If you want your lawn to look its best, aeration is essential for a healthy grass growth. It improves the nutrient consumption of your grass, helps to keep soil healthy and thick, promotes new growth, reduces weeds, encourages deeper roots, prevents diseases and makes it easier to control pests. A well-aerated lawn is also more drought tolerant and has the ability to cope with heat stress and other environmental stresses. After aerating your lawn you should apply a preventative fungicide treatment to reduce and prevent fungal diseases from taking hold. This will help to make your lawn green and lush throughout the season.