Your lawn is the part of your home that takes the most amount of care, attention, time, and effort over the years. While your lawn demands so much from you, this makes sense; after all, it is what everyone else sees when they look at your home. Your lawn is what defines your home, as it is what surrounds your home, provides a face or a “skin” for it, and which changes over the seasons, requiring new and different approaches with each month, each season, and each change in climate.
With the passing of winter, the coming of spring, and summer imminent, it is important to begin making plans for landscaping your yard so that you can present the best possible face for your household. Not only will this improve the perception others have of your home (particularly useful if you attempting to sell your home!), but it is also a duty you have to maintain your household so that your neighborhood as a whole can enjoy having a well-kept look to it.
While it may seem intimidating at first to have your entire lawn to care for, by targeting certain problems that most lawns experience, as well as making a habit out of the more humdrum activities those lawns require, you can make the process of lawn care easy and fast. Here are some tips to accomplish that!
1. Get the Lay of the Land
It’s important to determine what your lawn needs from you. What parts of your lawn aren’t getting enough sun, and what parts are getting perhaps too much? What parts seem under-watered, and which appear to be under attack by bugs, disease, and other pests? You may have to make some changes to your yard – adding trees, sprinklers, and other accommodations – in order to help transform your property into a healthy, beautiful landscape.
2. Keep an eye on how your lawn is growing and developing as compared to your neighbors.
Short of a neighborhood-wide conspiracy to out-lawn you, the difference in lawn quality may very well come down to problems with the soil in your lawn. You should get your soil tested to determine if its PH levels and other various measures of soil health are all as they should be. Your soil may need to be aerated, cultivated, or loosening. It’s hard to say without further testing, but knowing is half the battle!
3. Water, Water Everywhere
Ultimately, however, the best way to be proactive about the health and wellbeing of your lawn is to water regularly, intelligently, and diligently. Keeping your lawn hydrated is key to the health of your garden, your grass, your trees, and just about every other aspect of your lawn. Your plants will be greener, your flowers will be brighter, your fruits and vegetables will be tastier – the list goes on and on.
Be sure to apply roughly one gallon of water per foot of root zone every week, keeping in mind that larger plants have larger root zones; in general, your lawn needs 1 inch of water every week.
With those tips in mind – know your lawn, identify problem areas, and water regularly and generously – you can help your lawn to become one of the best in the neighborhood. Didn’t we say it’d be easy?
+Ken Uhrich likes houses. In fact he lives in one. He gives home building and home improvement tips on the Custom Home Group website.