Mowing, watering, and weed removal practices can greatly improve the health and appearance of your lawn. These cultural practices are some of the best and easiest ways to maintain turf vigor.
Lawn Mowing
One of the best ways to maintain a thick, weed-free lawn that does not only survive but often thrive during a growing season is to use a few basic proper lawn mowing practices.
- One of the most important practices is grass length maintenance. The length of the grass is important for many reasons. When the temperatures climb into the 80’s or above, a taller blade adds more insulation to the turf canopy. In turn, this shading holds in critical soil moisture that plants can draw from. Taller grass equals deeper roots and together these are a great way to compete against weed invasions.
- The sharpness of the mower blade also plays a key role in lawn health. A dull blade will rip the grass apart during cutting. Ripped or shredded blade ends do not heal up quickly and cause moisture to bleed out of the grass blades more rapidly. These open wounds are also a prime entry point for fungus to enter into the plant tissue. This, coupled with mowing during wet conditions, can quickly spread devastating fungus onto what once was healthy turf grass.
Proper Watering
- Mimic Nature by Watering Deep which promotes deep roots by chasing water and help plants during dry conditions
- Water during in the morning helps avoid creating fungus
- Grass blades that remain wet for long periods of time during periods of high humidity can create a perfect opportunity for fungus to develop
- Water 2x per week during hot dry conditions
- Avoid stressing the turf by cutting more than 1x per week
How to remove weeds from flower beds, keeping weeds from germinating, and why pulling weeds is counter productive.
Avoid weed pulling, why? Because pulling weeds bring new weed seeds to the surface, and with hundreds of thousands of weed seeds in the soil it’s easy to see why pulling them is a never ending battle. Once closer to the surface weeds get sun and water and sprout. Many tubular rooted weeds like Canada Thistle and Nutsedge actually get worse when pulled. Our trained staff can identify many types of these hard to kill weeds and help to reduce these weed populations in the soil using our proven bed weed control program. We start with timed treatments of pre-emergents to keep weeds from germinating, coupling that with spot spraying weeds to reduces chemical usage. Removing only certain uncontrollable weeds by hand pulling.
- Hand Pulling
- While it’s best not to disturb the flowerbeds as much as possible, carefully pull any weeds that are growing in the plant material where sprays cannot be applied. In this way, the layer of pre-emergent is not disturbed and additional weed seeds are not brought to the surface.
- Mulching
- Be sure to freshen up the flower beds with mulch, which helps reduce weed growth