What you need to know about lawn care

You may not need all those chemicals. Lawn-care providers rake in a lot of green for treating your lawn to get rid of weeds and pests. The typical homeowner spends $200 a year on such services. But as a rule, proper irrigation and mowing will fortify your lawn against pests and disease as well as chemicals can. To find out whether your lawn is suitably moist, probe it with a screwdriver. The soil should be moist to a depth of up to 4 inches. A hint: Occasional soakings strengthen roots better than frequent mistings. Their "preventive" treatments may be overkill. Customers may be persuaded to pay for additional treatments to prevent diseases and deter garden pests at a cost of $50 to $100 a year. But the risk of disease may be far lower than the lawn-care company claims.

The recommended lawn edge height

 Maximum: 4cm (if the height is more then 4 cm, the wide-leaved grasses force out the narrow-leaved).

Ordinary lawn in spring, autumn and during a drought: 3cm.

Ordinary lawn in summer: 2.5 cm.

Minimal: 0.5 cm.(The shorter grass height may weaken the grass)

Lawn Care

It is necessary to carry out correct, constant and complex lawn care. It includes carrying out of such actions, as regular edge and watering, application of fertilizers, duly weeding, annual autumn hilling, pricking, sod aeration, additional fertilizing, sowing, treatment and replacement of the sod if necessary, garbage-cleaning. High quality of the lawn is reached only at regular and correct performance of all set forth above during all periods of vegetation.

Lawn edge

The edge renders dicisive influence on the condition of cereal grasses. At a correct edge the dense and beautiful grassy cover is formed. At an irregular and wrong edge there is an excessive increase in sheet weight, charges of nutrients increases, narrow-leaved grasses are quickly weaken, the quantity of weeds increases, cereal grasses start to cluster, the lawn becomes non-uniform because of occurrence of grass hummocks.

Terms of the Lawn Edge

The first edge must be done in the end of May (as grass height achieves about 10 sm), and the last edge - in the beginning of September. Optimum frequency of an edge during the vegetative period depends on many factors, such as type of the lawn, weather conditions, fertility of ground. The best defining factor is the grass height : by the moment of carrying out the edge it should not exceed the recommended height more than on 1,5 cm. At stabilizing the frequency of the lawn edge it is necessary to follow following recommendations:

- Summer time when the active growth of the grass occurs - the edge must be done once in 5 days (or once a week);

- In spring, autumn and during the long droughty periods - the edge must be made once in 10 days or in two weeks.

If the edge hasn't been lead in due time, and the grass has unduly grown - it is necessary to cut only its tops at the first edge. Some days later, at the following edge its must be done once again to reduce height. Only after that it is possible to cut on the recommended height.