Lawn 9-1-1: Bringing Your Lawn Back To Life

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Lawn 9-1-1 Bringing Your Lawn Back To Life
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• It happens to the best of green thumbs you
  were a little overzealous with the fertilizer or
  a little under focused on watering. Before you
  know it, your lawn is looking tired, or worse,
  brown and dying. There are a lot of things you
  can do to bring your lawn back to life, that
  wont require anything as drastic as sodding.

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Reasons Why Lawns Go South

• Weve talked before about pest control, pet
  urine damage and weeds, so visit that post to get
  more information on those issues. In this post,
  were going to talk about other ways your lawn
  can go downhill in the summer too much or too
  little watering, cutting the lawn too short, soil
  that is hard and compacted down, a pH imbalance
  in the soil and so on.

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• Your first step should be to test your soils
  pH levels to see if the levels fall within a
  normal range. Good quality compost can help to
  balance high levels of pH in the soil. That said,
  your patchy lawn might be the result of other
  activities, so read on!

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Is Your Lawn Acidic?

• A pH level that indicates acidity in the soil
  means adjusting the balance. A natural, simple
  way to do this is to add epsom salts to your
  lawn. Despite its name, its not actually sodium
  based. Epsom salt is actually made of magnesium
  and sulfate, a chemical compound that will help
  balance the acidity in your soil naturally.

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Compost Your Lawn

• Yes, your lawn needs to eat but too much
  fertilizer creates a two fold problem first, it
  creates a dependency. Your lawn will not draw
  nutrients from the soil but rather wait for you
  to feed it. Second, fertilizer will attract some
  pests.
• Adding a layer of high quality compost, on
  the other hand, will enable your lawn to build up
  and draw the nutrients it needs, without your
  help.

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Cut With Care

• The single most frequent way people kill their
  lawns is by cutting the grass too short. The tiny
  blades will dry up far more easily in the summer
  sun. Set your mowers blades at the highest level
  to make sure youre not cutting off more than a
  third of the blades at a time. Its better to cut
  less, and cut more often, rather than thinking
  that one big chopping will do the trick!

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Pull Up Dead Grass

• After you mow your lawn, use a rake to pull up
  dead grass. Too much of it in your lawn will only
  prevent the roots of healthy grass from getting
  the water, nutrients and fresh air it needs to
  thrive. If you dont do this, over time, your
  lawn will build up a thatch of dead grass and
  other detritus, again preventing water, air and
  nutrients from reaching the roots. You can break
  up the thatch, if youve built one up, but best
  to avoid it in the first place!

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How Are You Watering?

• In the middle of a hot day, you might enjoy a
  nice misting from the hose, but your lawn wont.
  First of all, water early in the day. Middle of
  the day watering leads to heavy evaporation in
  the hot sun and late night watering just leaves
  the lawn waterlogged through the night, making it
  prone to fungus and other issues. If you have
  in-lawn sprinklers, get a timer and set it to run
  in the early a.m.

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• Now that weve got timing down, how much should
  you water? It might be intuitive to assume that a
  light but more frequent watering would be best,
  but in fact, that can lead to a shallow grass
  root structure. That shallow structure will
  become dependent on you to water regularly.
  Instead, water less frequently but when you do,
  give it a good soaking so that the root
  structures that develop are deeper and more
  solid. Half an inch of water a couple of times a
  week is all it should take, even in the hottest
  weeks of summer.

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Aerate Compacted Soil

• If part of your lawn issues are that your
  soil is too compact, particularly in high foot
  traffic areas, water, nutrients and air cant get
  to the roots. Its time to aerate your lawn! You
  can rent an aerator, which will pull plugs of
  earth out, allowing the water, air and food to
  reach the roots more easily.

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Starting From Scratch

• If, despite all your efforts, your lawn just
  isnt coming back to life, you might decide your
  best course of action is to start all over again.
  Its a big job but a lush, green lawn is such a
  lovely sight Heres how you would go about it
• Cut the sod. You will be slicing through existing
  root structure to make it easier to pull up.
• Remove the sod / grass. You can then lift up
  existing sod, roots and all.

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• Till the soil.
• Spread a good dose of compost, to the tune of 2-3
  inches, all over.
• Grade your soil / compost. You want to break up
  any big clumps and give yourself a level playing
  field!
• Spread the grass seed.
• Water well for the first soaking and every day,
  possibly twice a day during very hot weather,
  until you start to see the grass seed sprouting.

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• Bringing a dying lawn back to life isnt
  impossible but it does take a little hard work. A
  good landscape company will be able to help you
  out, if you cant manage it. The time and effort
  will be worth it when you can sit on your lawn
  chair and enjoy your fabulous lawn for the rest
  of the season!