A picture perfect lawn
An ideal lawn or a picture perfect lawn seems like a worthy goal in lawn care. How do you achieve such a lofty goal? Well, it all starts with obtaining the right information. And despite what the television and newspaper ads proclaim, if you only use the right products, then anyone can achieve such spectacular results that they will be the envy of the neighborhood. In fact, these advertisements are designed for one purpose only: to sell more of their products.
What they don't tell you is that for a picture perfect lawn you need to go deeper and understand the true basic elements that go into an ideal green space. If you already have this ideal green space, then you're probably not reading this article. For whatever reason, these homeowner's already have the foundation for a great looking lawn.
Commercials and advertising programs only give you one part of the picture. It's not that what they're saying isn't true, most of it is, but it's not the entire story.
If these lawn care products were the only missing elements to a healthy green lawn, then more people would own a lawn. Most homeowners are puzzled when their grass doesn't stay green and vibrant all season lawn, or when it suddenly turns yellow or worse, deathly brown after applying expensive fertilizers. Sure, the grass did perk up for a little while, but continuing to use the fertilizer is only putting a band-aid on the problem— and an expensive one at that. The problem lies lower down in the soil.
Fertilizer provides the nutrients that microbes convert into a solution that is easily absorbed by the turf grass roots. The key is MICROBES! You must have microbes to convert the fertilizer so it is usable. Without the microbes, then too much fertilizer never gets used and is wasted.
Microbes like soils with lots of organic matter, isn't compacted, and doesn't get flooded very often. You don't really need to add additional microbes, they will come if you just roll out the welcome matt and give them some good healthy soil.
If you already have a healthy soil and you're still seeing brown spots, it could be that the soil simply needs a different kind of boost. Perhaps a pest is thriving in the soil such as white grubs or chinchbugs that eat away at the roots or the grass' root crown, both of which will cause the grass to wither and die. With just a little bit of research, these problems can be overcome, and it usually isn’t expensive to do.
The important thing is to make sure you understand what the problem is before trying different treatments. That's one of the main reasons for hiring a professional lawn care provider: they can give you a good assessment of any problems that you're experiencing and they can treat the problem the right way, the first time, without lots of trial and error.
The basic elements for a healthy, beautiful lawn include:
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Fertilizers
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Soil health
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Good soil drainage
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Seed mixtures for the right location and purpose
Fertilization
Every soil that contains organic matter has what experts call native fertility. The more richly organic a soil is, the greater is its built-in fertility. (We improve this when we add additional organic matter.) This is quite different from the kind of fertility that we get by adding fertilizer products.
Native fertility is available for plants to use over a long period of years, even over a period of neglect.
We should not rely on this native or fertility reserve for the regular nutrition of a lawn. This is particularly important with newer, more vigorous grass varieties. If we fertilize improperly or not at all, the grass will have to depend on the soil's natural fertility and will soon use it up.
Present-day feeding recommendations for quality turf call for applying as much as 4x more nitrogen than recommended for home lawns in 1945.
