Lawn Care - Tips for Keeping Your Grass Green and Healthy

Do your neighbors have lush, green, rolling lawns, while your lawn looks as though it needs emergency lawn care? If you have brown spots in your lawn or it just looks a bit weedy and tired, then you may want to take a look at some of these simple, quick lawn care tips for healthy lawns.

One of the most important lawn care tips is to water your lawn properly. Many people spend a few minutes a day watering their lawns by hand with the garden hose. Others run a sprinkler for ten or so minutes every few days and then shut the sprinkler off. Both of these watering methods only saturate the surface of the soil. This encourages the grass to keep its roots near the surface, too, since there is no moisture deeper in the soil. To help your grass develop vigorous, healthy roots, water your lawn deeply several times a week instead. If you aren’t sure if you are watering your lawn deeply enough, place a rain gauge in the area being watered and check to see if it catches at least an inch of water by the end of the watering session.

Another lawn care tip that can really help you improve your lawn is to use a bagless mulching lawn mower when you cut the grass. As grass clippings decay, they provide important nutrients for your lawn , so they should not be raked up or bagged unless the grass was extremely long and the grass clippings come out of the mower in heavy, wet clumps.

Of course, for proper lawn care, you should also plan to fertilize your lawn in the spring. The easiest way to spread fertilizer is with a wheeled spreader. Fill the spreader with granular fertilizer that is specifically designed for use on lawns. Then, move back and forth over the lawn with the spreader until you have fertilized the entire area. If you are concerned about environmental problems from fertilizer runoff, you may want to look for organic fertilizer.

Finally, don’t forget the biggest lawn care problem most homeowners face, the dreaded dandelion. Weeds spread fast and can do extensive damage if they aren’t controlled immediately. Some people prefer to hand dig dandelions and other weeds, while others use a broad leaf herbicide or other weed killer to control the weeds. If you do use a chemical treatment to kill weeds, be sure you keep your children and pets off the lawn for several days.