Are you having troubles getting your lawn to look as green and lush as you would like? Tired of slaving away, attempting to have a rich, full lawn, but keep ending up with dead or brown spots in your lawn? Urban Eden Landscaping has good news for you! Armed with these tips, you can quickly have your lawn looking beautiful again. Aside from aeration and dethatching, which are two extremely beneficial services you should perform on your lawn (and which we have discussed extensively in the past and will again in the future), proper watering and fertilizing are two of the most important services to help restore your lawn.
Watering
Watering seems like a simple task and, really, it is, once you know the proper techniques. Not watering your grass enough can, obviously, dry out your lawn and leave it looking brown and dead; similarly, over-watering your lawn can create fungus and cause your grass to have a shallow root system. A shallow root system means that your grass is not reaching further down into the soil to access the nutrients it craves and needs to be healthy.
The best time to water your lawn is early in the morning before the temperatures heat up. If you water your lawn during the peak hot hours, most of that water will evaporate before it reaches down into the roots, where it is needed most. Some say that watering at night is a good option, however, leaving water on grass blades (much like over-watering) can encourage the growth of fungus. Watering in the morning, before it heats up, allows the water to penetrate deep into the root system and any water left on the grass blades will evaporate as the temperature increases.
A healthy lawn has a root system that goes roughly 5 to 6 inches underground. So, watering long enough for water to seep down that far is essential. During the warm, summer months, in the Vancouver, Camas and Washougal, Washington area, water should easily reach the root depth within 15 to 20 minutes of watering. Watering for this long 2 to 3 times a week should suffice and your lawn will thank you for it.
Fertilizing
Fertilizing is, in essence, giving your lawn the essential nutrients that it craves; nutrients that don’t always naturally occur in your micro-climate. Though proper fertilizing is different for various types of grass, there are some general rules of thumb to follow to achieve success in fertilizing.
Fertilizing should always be done before the peak growing seasons. Applying fertilizer just before the grass starts growing ensures that it is feeding off the nutrients that you have provided for it; applying fertilizer while grass is dormant does not have much of an effect because, essentially, the grass is “sleeping” and will not use these nutrients like it would if it were “awake” and trying to grow.
In regard to how you apply fertilizer, there are several different options for spreaders: rotary spreaders, which work well when doing large lawns, a drop spreader, which is great for average to medium sized yards, and a hand-held spreader, which is best used on smaller lawns or areas. When applying fertilizer with any of these spreaders, you will want to slightly overlap each pass to ensure that the entire lawn is covered.
Urban Eden would be delighted to offer watering advice or help with ensuring your lawn is property and timely fertilized. Give Urban Eden Landscaping a call today at (360)567-6399, contact us here, or fill out our FREE estimate request form online.