Yesterday, Mickey opened his e-mail inbox to this question… ” I saw a picture of your house on your blog. How do you always get your yard to look nice?” I laughed because a green lawn is his pride and joy, so that reader just made his day!
Mickey and I have lived in three houses since our marriage in 2004. In each house, he has surprised me by taking our grass from awful to amazing. I’m sharing a few ideas below, with affiliate links, to help you find what you are looking for. Our latest yard does throw a few ‘stones’ into the mix, literally… our yard is filled with stones, but he is doing great with it, nonetheless.
Here are my husband’s tips for having a great yard…
1- First, you are going to Aerate, but before you do this, you need to locate your sprinkler heads and mark them with yard flags (or use plastic hangers to mark them).
2- Aerate your yard in mid-September. He suggests core or plugs aerating. He doesn’t like the pull behind ones but said that you have more control with the walk-behind. He also said that you need to do a double pass (doing each area twice), but he does three or four passes in areas that need it more. He will go horizontal and then does the second round vertical (to your yard pattern).
2- Over-seed. Use a good starter fertilizer. By over-seed, he means that you put a LOT of seed down, even more in the areas that you did your extra aerating.
3- With your starter fertilizer, you will want to go over and add fast-acting lime on top of the fertilizer (on the same night).
4- It is best to do all of this either right after it has rained when the ground is soft.
5- In the winter, you want to put down a winterizer, to help control the weed growth that will occur in the spring.
6- Keep your grass tall, about 2-3 inches. This prevents it from burning (looking white) and it keeps the roots healthy. Cutting it too short will kill the roots and allows weeds to grow. (You can even get a robot lawnmower like this one from Husqvarna.)
7- In the spring, you will want to use pre-emergent fertilizers, with herbicide. This will prevent weeds.
8- Go over the pre-emergent fertilizer with lime.
9- Water early morning, before the sun rises. We set our irrigation timer to run at 3:00 am. Do not do this at night, because the water will sit all night and mold can grow (mushrooms and fungus). In the day, the sun will dry the grass. Plus, if you use it during the day or evening when the sun is up, it will just cause the water to steam and cause damage to your grass (plus, it wastes water because it is evaporating so quickly)
10- Ensure that your grass is cut with a SHARP lawnmower blade. You can tell that the blade is getting dull because the tips of the grass will turn white within a day of being cut (so even the best-looking yards will look dried out and not “clean-cut” all because of the blade).
I hope this helps! 🙂
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This content was originally published here.