Six ways to do Lawn Repair

29 May, 05:00, by spencer Tags: , , , , , ,

To tune up your lawn it is good to do the following. One or more of the following may be applicable. How the lawn should be repaired really has a lot to do with what is causing the problems.

These are some things that can help

Thatching- especially if you have cool weather grasses, moss instead of lawn, or a lot of dead material in your lawn. Experts recommend thatching cool weather grasses once every 3 years.   (For on dethatching a lawn.) 

2) Aerating- this helps to soften hard soils. It also allows deepen penetration of air water and fertilizer into the soil. The main purpose of aeration is to allow roots to go deeper and eventually create thick, self-sustaining turf.

3) Regular mowing- never mow more than 1/3 of the blade at a time. The general rule is mow high, mow often. For more information see our article on mowing. Mow more frequently during peak growing seasons and less frequently during slow grow seasons.

4) Fertilizing often also helps maintain a thick healthy turf. With the advent of slow release fertilizers, one can usually get away with fertilizing every two months during periods of active growth. In the northwest, this would be about 4 times a year.

5) Top soil or topdressing is also a good idea, especially when the soil is lacking in organic material. It can also be very good to use when you are over seeding.

6) Over seeding. With cool weather grasses this is best to do in the spring or in the fall. With warm weather grasses it is best to over seed in the late spring or early summer. If it never gets cold where you live, we can overseed any time the grass is actively growing. The most important thing to remember when overseeding is to water your lawn daily and keep the grass seed and seedlings wet. This will affect the germination rate of the new seed.

What is a liquid lawn aerator?

One of the Best Ways to Do Lawn Repair Is with an Aerator

27 October, 16:41, by spencer Tags: , , ,

There are a lot of different ways to repair a lawn. A lot depends on what is wrong with it and what caused that problem. But one thing that almost always seems to help is to use a lawn aerator. If you aerate your lawn, then you will have no a much easier time seeding it. Also using a lawn aerator once a year helps your grass to develop a thicker turf and a healthier root system. If your grass has healthier roots, it will be more resistant to droughts, and damage from insects and long grubs. Another benefit of aerating your lawn, is that it helps to provide oxygen for the grass and it makes it easier for you to fertilize. Both of these things are needed if you are trying to repair your lawn and keep it healthy.

The last reason why it is so important to do use an aerator to help you with lawn repair, is that it can actually poke holes through a lot of the thatch that is on your lawn. If you have too much thatch, your lawn will have difficulty breathing and will be more susceptible to lawn disease.When you aerate lawn, you allow oxygen to get below the surface. This oxygen helps aerobic bacteria to break down the thatch and turn it into useful components in the soil that the grass can metabolize.

Even though a lot of people think that you should only aerate your lawn as needed or once every three or four years, I think you should do it a lot more often. I have had the experience of aerating more than 5000 lawns, and I know that for the vast majority of my customers, it has helped them out significantly. The best time to aerate your lawn is in the spring, but the second best time to aerate is in the fall. Also, any time you’re interested in repairing your lawn or giving it a facelift, you should definitely think about batching and aerating at the same time.

Lawn Repair Tune Up Thatching, Aerating, Fertilizing, Overseeding

18 January, 21:17, by spencer

To tune up your lawn it is good to do the following. One or more of the following may be applicable. How the lawn should be repaired really has a lot to do with what is causing the problems.

These are some things that can help

1) Thatching- especially if you have cool weather grasses, moss instead of lawn, or a lot of dead material in your lawn. Experts recommend thatching cool weather grasses once every 3 years.  Thatching can be done one of three ways.  Either by using a power rake rental, using a dethatching rake, or else by adding a thatching blade to your lawn mower.

2) Aerating- this helps to soften hard soils. It also allows deepen penetration of air water and fertilizer into the soil. The main purpose of aeration is to allow roots to go deeper and eventually create thick, self-sustaining turf.

3) Regular mowing- never mow more than 1/3 of the blade at a time. The general rule is mow high, mow often. For more information see our article on mowing. Mow more frequently during peak growing seasons and less frequently during slow grow seasons.

4) Fertilizing often also helps maintain a thick healthy turf. With the advent of slow release fertilizers, one can usually get away with fertilizing every two months during periods of active growth. In the northwest, this would be about 4 times a year.

5) Top soil or topdressing is also a good idea, especially when the soil is lacking in organic material. It can also be very good to use when you are over seeding.

6) Over-seeding. With cool weather grasses this is best to do in the spring or in the fall. With warm weather grasses it is best to over seed in the late spring or early summer. If it never gets cold where you live, we can overseed any time the grass is actively growing. The most important thing to remember when overseeding is to water your lawn daily and keep the grass seed and seedlings wet. This will affect the germination rate of the new seed.

Tips for Effective Lawn Repair with a Hollow Tine Aerator

23 February, 07:29, by spencer Tags: , , , , , , ,

Lawn Repair with and Aerator.

To reverse the damage done by compacted soil and a buildup of thatch, employ the use of a hollow tine aerator.  These tools, available in both manual and power varieties, create space in the soil for water, nutrients and air to reach the roots.  They are also very helpful in helping you repair your lawn.  They do so by removing chunks of soil with small h0llowed spoons.

Using an aerator is not complicated, though there are some things to think about ahead of time.  The first thing to decide is whether you will use a manual or power aerator.  Manual aerators, also called hand aerators, look a bit like a shovel with several hollow tines at the base.  The tines are inserted into the soil with the force of the operator’s weight.  Because they are time and labor intensive, hand aerators are only recommended for aerating very small areas of land.  For full lawns, you will want to use a power aerator.  These tools look like a large, heavy-duty lawn mower.  They have a cylinder surrounded with hollow tine aerators that remove plugs of soil as the cylinder rotates.  Though far more efficient than the hand aerator, the power core aerator is very powerful and requires some physical strength and endurance to operate it.

Once you have decided which tool to use, you will need to plan when you will aerate.  In most climates, you only need to aerate once a year; however, if you live in a very hot and dry area, you may want to do so twice a year.  It is best to aerate right as the grass begins to grow, so in either late summer/early fall for cool season grasses or in spring for warm season grasses.

After Aerating your lawn, you may want to rake up all of the plugs. One of the best ways to this is by using garden carts. Plugs can get very heavy, and they are a great way to haul them around your lawn.

Next, you should identify any sprinkler heads and mark them with flags to avoid damaging the aerator or the sprinklers.  On the night before you plan to aerate, thoroughly water your lawn.  This will make the process go more smoothly.

To operate the aerator, set the penetration at its deepest setting, usually about 3”.  Pass over your lawn as you would with a lawn mower – in straight lines, back and forth.  If it has been a long time since you last aerated, your soil is high in clay content, or your thatch is more than ¾ inch thick, you will want to do a second pass perpendicular to your first.  For very severe cases, you may want to do a third pass.

When you are done, you can either rake up the resulting soil plugs or simply wait for them to be reabsorbed into the lawn.   By the time your grass has fully grown, you should see a marked difference in the quality of your lawn.

Learn all about Lawn Aerators!

When to Repair or Replace a Lawn?

09 December, 07:36, by spencer Tags: , , , ,

Many people ask me if they should replace or repair their lawn.  I  tell them it depends on what is wrong with it.

Bad grasses can ruin a lawn faster then most other things.  Yellow annuals or bent grass can take over a lawn completely in just a few years. You can repair these when the spots are small but after the 1st year or when the grasses have become much worse, it can be a lot harder to repair.

Weeds are usually fairly easier to fix.  Most can be eradicated with a few treatments of weed and feed.  If you lawn is all weeds, you may want to have it replaced.  A ball park figure your tearing out and replacing a lawn with new sod is roughly $2 per sq ft.  This could be more or less depending on where you live and how big of an area you are replacing. The cost or repair is a lot less.  (Subscribe to my blog and I will keep you up to date on some of these best and latest methods.)

If pests have damaged your lawn and the dead layer of thatch is more than 1/2 to 3/4, replace it.  Be sure to put a heavy dose of insectiscide on it befor you tear it out to prevent the pests from returning.  If damage is only in spots and non extensive, this lawn can be fixed.  Some insects leave your lawn and migrate away, some stay.  Some have suckers and some chew.  For insect the chew such as beetles and grubs, use a contact pesticide.  If they suck use a sestemic one. (spiders, fleas, and flys. )

Grasses can be repaired or replaced anytime lawns are actively growing. Cool weather grasses like to be dealt with in in the spring and fall.  (Less weeds in the fall.)  Warm grass lawns  like to replaced or repaired in the late spring and summer.

More to come on lawn repair!

Type of Grasses: Cool Grasses vs Warm Weather Grass

25 June, 20:37, by spencer Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Lawn repair with Cool Weather Grasses vs Warm Grasses.

The type of grass growing in your lawn depends more on the variability of sunlight and the variety of the existing soil, then it does on the outside temperature.

Did you know different type of grasses in different parts of the country grow differently.  Warm weather grasses such as those found in southern California, Florida much of the south and the south eastern coast are thicker, warm weather grasses.

Generally speaking, the hotter it gets, the better warm weather grasses grow. The faster growing time for these grasses is when the weather is between 85 and 95 degrees.  Warm weather grasses are a lot better at repairing themselves or self lawn repair.  They are also more vigorous and grow by shooting rhizomes out in many different directions at once.  Two of the most common types of warm weather grasses are St. Augustine and Bermuda grasses.

Cool weather grasses are a lot different.  These are predominately the types of grasses that grow in the north west.  Although this grass grows like crazy in the spring and the fall, it grows a lot slower in the winter and the summer.  Part of the slow grow in the summer is due to the hardening of the soil. This compacts roots and prevent water absorption.  In the winter, many of backyards in the northwest see less than 4 hours of sunlight a day.

Cool grasses grow in a circular pattern and are far less vigorous than warmer grasses.  These grasses also face a few other problems including poor drainage and competition from moss.  Lawns that don’t get a lot of sunlight in the winter may be replaced by moss (which has a shallow root system and needs less sunlight.)  Cool grasses includes different varieties of fescue and ryegrass.

The best way to maintain a lawn healthier is to mow higher and mow more often.  As  a general rule don’t moth your lawn under 2 inches and mow regularly so that you never have to cut more than 1/3 of the blade at a time.  Both types of grass benefit from longer, less frequent watering as a method to help develop the roots.

If you have trouble with your lawn, you may want to consider using a lawn sweeper.