Does your home need a boost in curb appeal? Short of a complete landscape makeover, simply focusing on a healthy and thriving lawn could do wonders for the overall appearance of your home. Here’s how to improve your curb appeal with proper lawn care in Lehigh County, PA.
Apart from your house, the first thing people are likely to notice is the condition of your landscape—and since the lawn is probably the most prominent part, it jumps out. Messy edging, weeds, brown spots, dry grass, heavy thatch, bare spots, or even that awful brown “haze” that comes from using dull mower blades can make a lawn look unkempt.
Keeping your lawn healthy involves regular knowledgeable care, which few homeowners have time to do well all by themselves. Here’s what’s involved in properly caring for your lawn:
1. Mowing to the proper height. Your lawn may require frequent mowing during the height of the growing season. Trying to mow the lawn shorter than it should be to minimize the mowing times could have negative consequences as that could expose the soil to too much sunshine, and the lawn could quickly dry out. On the other end of the spectrum, too-tall grass can retain too much moisture, which can lead to rot.
A lawn is a man-made collection of tightly spaced grasses; in nature, grasses clump in hummocks, but there is space between the hummocks for optimal sun and moisture no matter how tall the grass grows. Since cultivated turf grasses are encouraged to have no space between them, it’s up to good lawn care to ensure the right balance of air and moisture at the root level. Keeping the lawn mowed to about 3 inches tends to be optimal for a vigorous root system and healthy soil.
2. Edging gives your lawn a finished look. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving the edges a military buzz cut, but neat edging is one of those details that demonstrate attention to the overall appearance of the lawn.
3. Proper fertilization and weed management all follow a set schedule, with different products used at different times of the year. For example, using last year’s leftover post-emergent herbicide won’t do anything to manage weed seeds that are just getting established. And using fertilizer that encourages too much growth during the hottest days of summer can cause the grass to become stressed. Then there’s the issue of fertilizer burn, which comes from improper application. The remedy is often to create a landscape maintenance plan with specific products applied at specific times, and following the manufacturer’s directions.
4. Deep watering, where the lawn receives at least 1 inch of water per watering, encourages deep and robust roots. However, simply setting the sprinklers to “go” for an hour or so in the early morning isn’t enough. Areas of the lawn with intense sun exposure need more water than shady areas, and watering schedules also need to be adjusted to prevent overwatering and the creation of spongy areas that are prone to mildew and disease.
5. “Behind the scenes” lawn care is necessary. This includes twice-yearly soil testing—soil amendment, dethatching, and aeration.
This is the level of care that supports a beautiful lawn! Carefully planned and executed lawn maintenance also ensures early detection of potential problems before they get out of hand and become more expensive and time-consuming than necessary.