Lawn Care Tips - Top Seven

Regular Lawn Mowing

Regular lawn mowing

When lawns are mown at the right frequency, matched to how fast they are growing at the time, you help to reduce the build up of thatch, and water gets to roots more easily. With utilising this quality lawn care, more of the lawns energy is spent tillering (making more green leaves) so turf looks better and won't spread as fast. And by mowing lawns correctly, you get rid of many flowers and seeds from weeds that would otherwise drop into the lawn leaf foliage and make more weeds.

Lawns love being mowed at the right frequency, it keeps them healthy, and definitely look much better after each lawn mowing.

Fertilise Lawns Regularly

Lawn Fertiliser

All lawns are not from around here remember, depending on their variety, the original lawn plants would have come from any number of different places from around the world, perhaps Africa, China or even the Americas.

The food lawns need to stay healthy isn't quite right in Australian soils, if you love your lawn, and want it to flourish, they will need the extra nutrients that are missed when they are grown as lawns at your place.

Lawn Fertiliser is the food needed for lawns to look beautiful, stay healthy, and fight weeds and diseases.

Water Lawns Correctly

Correct Watering

Yes we all know lawns need water. But are you giving the right amount, are your sprinklers working correctly? Did you know that if turf gets too much water, it's leaves and stems will become weak and get easily damaged when walked on or played on, lawns can even drown when roots are water logged and they can't get the oxygen needed for survival.

Adjusting lawn watering is easy, by monitoring lawn health in any of the growing seasons, and adjusting watering times up or down until it's just right.

Lawn Weeds, Pests and Diseases

Lawn Weeds

Weeds, pests and diseases make lawns ugly and sometimes very sick. If left untreated, weeds, pests and diseases will only get worse over time until a lawn can no longer be recognised as the lawn you once loved. That once beautiful lawn will become depressing to look at, make a home ugly, kids will hate it, and it will take a lot of work and money to make a sick lawn healthy again.

A little bit of lawn care maintenance is all that is needed.

Avoiding and Rectifying Lawn Compaction

Worn out lawn

When you squash a lawn, it breaks. Leaves break and stems break, if it gets squashed too much it may not survive the damage.

Lawns need to get oxygen from the soil in which they live in. While leaves absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, roots need oxygen from the soil, or a lawn will become sick or even die.

Lawns can get squashed and soil can become compacted from having a regular walkway over the turf, or if cars are driven on it. But because it's a lawn, it's here to be walked on, and played on, and picnicked on, so over time lawn soils will become compacted anyway. Look out for this and aerate the lawn every few years, a Lawn Coring Machine will do a beaut job.

Sunlight Is Life For Lawns

Direct sunlight is vital

It doesn't matter what type of lawn is planted, they all need direct sunlight every day for their very survival.

Direct sunlight reacts with the green leaves and turns on the Photosynthesis Process. Photosynthesis turns the nutrients from your soils into the carbohydrates needed for the lawn to consume as food. It's a miraculous process, but without direct sunlight it doesn't work, and a lawn will become sick and even begin to starve to death.

Depending on what variety of lawn is used, each lawn variety can survive on different levels of direct sunlight each day. A Couch or a Queensland Blue would need direct sunlight for most of the day, and would hate any shade at all. Whereas a Zoysia, Durban Grass or a Soft Leaf Buffalo on the other hand would be happy enough with less direct sunlight and a bit of shade.

So if a lawn is not looking the best, perhaps it just needs more light, why not check your surrounding trees and bushes and give them a good pruning every so often.

Remove Buildup Of Lawn Thatch

Vertimowing Kikuyu

Over time, the natural thatch layer that keeps lawns healthy, makes them durable to walk and play on, and protects the soil underneath from evaporation, will just keep building up and building up. When you mow the lawn, it will look brown and ugly, you may think you cut it too short, but the fact is, if you just kept raising the height on your mower, the thatch would grow even faster, and the problem with the lawn thatch would just get worse, quicker.

The thicker or more spongy the thatch layer becomes, the more difficult a lawn is to mow, and will begin to just waste time in more difficult mowing.

Every so often a lawn will need to be trimmed down by a process called Vertimowing, (sometimes called Scarifying). The process removes all the excess thatch and lets the lawn regenerate from anew from it's runners. When you vertimow as part of your lawn care regime, the lawn will love you for it, it can even out unevenness in appearance, and makes for a beautiful lawn when mowing resumes.