A Short Guide to Cost Effective Lawn Care

Lawn maintenance and repairs cost homeowners about 40 billion dollars annually according to the Environmental Protection Agency's home and garden survey. In a country where the lawn is seen as a status symbol, being cost effective with lawn care can do a lot to make your home more beautiful as well as your wallet less empty. For the most part, we fuss over our lawns way too much. The number one way to be more cost effective is generally to back off a bit with not only worrying, but watering, mowing, fertilizing and the like.

Timing

The best time to fuss over your lawn is in the fall. During the fall months, rains will return and the lawn can rest a bit from the summer sun. By doing most all lawn treatments during this time, the lawn can get a jump start for a healthy spring season. The summer is also a time when the lawn receives the most use and abuse, so fall care has the largest effect and the longest time to be effective.

Watering

Over watering can not only cost your pocketbook a very large hit, but can also hurt both the lawn and the environment. Turf grasses need only 1 inch of water a week to maintain active growth and say lushly green. Added water only depletes the soils and fertilizers which have been given to help the grass thrive. In this way, the extra water really hinders growth. Not only that, those chemical fertilizers are being washed out of the lawn and into the storm water downstream as pollutants. Lastly, chlorine has been added to most all municipal water and can really damage the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soils. Minimal watering may seem counter intuitive, but is often best.

Fertilizer

If possible, leave the clippings to fix nitrogen to the soils. The clippings will return half the nitrogen back which the grass needs. Not only does that mean less synthetic fertilizer is needed, but it also means less money for the homeowner. Grass should only be fertilized once a year if the clippings are used. For best results, use a nitrogen fertilizer and only apply as directed. More is definitely not better in this instance. Unless you specifically know there is a phosphorous deletion in your soils, you should never add phosphorous. Most all soils have abundant amounts and too much can harm the lawn.

Mowing

Don't buzz cut your lawn. Raise the mower blade to be 2 inches or higher. The higher the grass, the larger the photosynthetic ability. Since the green leafy part of the grass is what feeds the roots of the plant, buzzing the grass down doesn't allow much left for food. This directly hinders the grass health. Also, the intensity of the sun can then shine directly onto the soils. Without the buffer of slightly longer grass the sun and water can be too harsh.

Seeding

For areas which have become overly damaged, fall seeding by hand scatter is best. Seed can be purchased in small quantities at most home and garden stores.



Source: Being Cost Effective with Your Lawn Maintenance and Care