lawn care tips Archives

Summer Lawn Care Tips

Posted on July 1, 2021August 31, 2021 by Hidden Creek Landscaping

Summer is almost here! Hot weather, occasional rain showers and intense sunshine can be good for your grass and hard on it at the same time. These summer lawn care tips can help you keep your grass lush and healthy all summer long. Make the most of your summer and your time spent outdoors by maintaining a green, vibrant lawn throughout the growing season.

Water Deeply, Infrequently and At the Right Time

Watering deeply encourages your grass to grow deep roots that embed it in the soil. These deep roots make it harder for weeds to grow on your lawn. What counts as deep watering? Stick a pen or a ruler in the ground after the sprinklers turn off. The soil should be wet to a depth of 4 to 6 inches. If the water in the soil doesn’t go that far, adjust your sprinkler to water longer for each stretch.

Water your lawn two to three times each week. Your lawn may need watering more frequently on the hottest and most intense days of summer, and less watering if you get a lot of rain. Adjust your sprinkler schedule accordingly.

Control Weeds

Controlling weeds is a weekly chore in the summer, but staying on top of the problem can prevent weeds from spreading. Once weeds mature, they can spread seeds that make controlling the problem even more difficult. Set aside time each week to use weed treatment on your lawn.

Use weed treatments carefully, following the manufacturer’s instructions exactly. Keep weed treatments away from children and store them in conditions as specified on the container.

Alternatively, you can also pull weeds the old-fashioned way. Some tips when pulling weeds:

Pull weeds straight up, including their roots.
Pull weeds after a rain or after watering your lawn, because it’s easier to pull weeds out from moist soil.
Wear gloves when weeding; some weeds have pointy leaves.
Use a shovel or a garden hoe to remove tough weeds.
Mulch beds after weeding, or fill in holes left by weeds with grass seed.

Weeding can be hard on your back and hard on your knees. To prevent damage to your body, weed in short spells. Wear knee pads or sit on a gardening stool.

If you’re not up for the hard work of weeding, contact a landscaper who performs garden or lawn maintenance. You don’t have to take on this job yourself. It’s best to do the work regularly and often than it is to let weeds get out of control, so contact a landscaping professional as soon as possible. Your landscaping professional can tell you how often they think weeding should happen based on the condition of your yard.

Cut Your Grass to the Right Height

Different types of grass should be cut to different heights, so research your type of grass to find out what height is preferred. If you’re not sure what kind of grass is planted in your yard, ask your landscape contractor for advice. Longer grass is usually best. Maintaining semi-long grass blades is healthy for the grass and also good for the soil. Long blades shade the soil and help keep it moist.

Avoid cutting more than one-third of the grass at a time. If your grass is far too long, cut it to about 30% of its current height, then cut again in a week to help keep your grass healthy.

Fertilize Your Lawn

Some experts say to fertilize your lawn about every six weeks throughout the summer. However, some fertilizers cause the grass to grow too quickly, which can lead to a lot of extra grass cutting for you.

Use a low-nitrogen fertilizer, following the instructions on the fertilizer and take care to disperse the fertilizer evenly. Too much fertilizer can cause your grass to turn brown.

Let Clippings Feed the Lawn

Leave grass clippings on your lawn to fertilize the grass and return nutrients to the soil. Some lawn mowers are designed to cut grass and leave tiny clippings on the lawn. If you have this type of lawnmower, the job will be done for you. If you don’t have this type of mower, scatter clippings on your lawn after mowing.

Get Your Lawn Off to the Right Start

Some lawns are just too damaged to repair. If your lawn is more weed than grass, or if your grass is too unhealthy to resuscitate, laying new sod is the fastest, easiest way to improve the appearance of your lawn and get your grass off to the right start.

You can resod your lawn throughout the year, but the best time to resod is in early fall, when the temperatures are starting to cool. Another good time to resod is in mid-spring. If you’re trying to resod at a challenging time of year, work closely with a landscape contractor to get the work done. Having guidance from a professional will help ensure the success of your sod.

If you do choose to plant new sod on your property, choose the right grass for your lawn. Some grass performs well in shade, while many other types of grass need bright sunshine to thrive. Plant the grass that will thrive in the conditions on your existing lawn. Working with a professional makes this easier, so if you’re not sure what type of grass is best for your property, talk to a pro.

Hire a Professional

The best way to ensure that your grass will look its best throughout the growing season is to hire a professional landscaping company. Work with a pro to resod your lawn, pull your weeds, and maintain your grass. Healthy grass looks good and can improve the value of your home!

Want to know more? Talk to Hidden Creek Landscaping. We can help you redesign your lawn or maintain your outdoor spaces. Through regular maintenance, you can keep your property looking its best throughout the growing season. Call today!

When to Stop Mowing for Fall

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Hidden Creek Landscaping

As the warm weather winds down and the cooler temperatures take over, it’s time to start getting your lawn and garden ready for the winter. At some point, you’ll want to give your lawn one last mow for the year. Keep these fall lawn care tips in mind as you prepare for the months ahead:

Clean Your Lawn

You’ll want to wait until most of the leaves are done falling from the trees before doing the final mow of the season. Be sure to clean up your lawn by raking and bagging up piles leaves. Once the lawn is clear, you can cut the grass.

Use a Mulching Mower

A lawn mower with mulching blades is especially helpful in the fall. It will help to take care of whatever last leaves have settled on the lawn. Consider using this type of mower for the best results throughout the year.

The Right Length

You don’t want to cut your grass too short, but you don’t want to leave it too long, either. When left long, the grass can become diseased over the winter. The moisture, snow, and low temperatures during the winter months could kill grass that’s too long. However, you don’t want to trim it down too much. Once you see that it’s stopped growing, usually at the end of October or in November, you’ll want to mow it to a low height. Just be careful not to leave it bald in any areas.

These fall tips are important to know when preparing your lawn and garden for the winter. Your landscape design for the spring will be much easier to execute when you have a good starting point. By mowing your grass properly at the end of the fall, you’ll ensure that you have a healthy lawn to work with next spring.

Lawn Care Tips For New Homeowners

Posted on May 19, 2017May 2, 2017 by Hidden Creek Landscaping

You’ve recently purchased a new home. The property valuer says it’s worth a lot more than it looks on the ground, however, it needs a bit of work. A fresh coat of paint, maybe a few flower beds strewn along the pavement leading to the main entrance, or perhaps even a patio. So as wave after wave of ideas sets off sweet sensations down your spine, you look around the yard momentarily and you realise that something is missing. Both of your neighbors yards have lush green lawn whilst yours appears as if it was uprooted from a disaster hit Texas ranch and dropped right where it rests now. A properly maintained lawn not only gives your home a lively appeal and raise it’s value overnight. It gives you a sense of belonging, which is every home owner’s truest desire. However, without lawn care tips you might find yourself struggling to keep up.

Fertilizer vs Garden Manure

A rather familiar coin toss between two equally effective options. Organic fertilizers are fast acting and produce noticeable results in record time. Their application -in granular or liquefied form- is fairly easy and requires very little manpower. However, the cost of industrial fertilizers increases in proportion to the land area to be covered.

In comparison, organic garden manure is considerably cheaper. Nonetheless, applying it is labor intensive as you will require more manure than inorganic fertilizer per square inch. Otherwise, it stays much longer in the soil than inorganic fertilizers which, in the long
run, tend to damage your soil ph levels and lead to bleaching.

Weeds: A Perennial Solution To A Perennial Problem

Once asked what it took to get rid of weeds completely, one landscaping expert simply replied: “Time”. Apart from avoiding animal based manure -which introduces foreign weed seeds into your lawn- you ought to make sure that you get weed your lawn constantly whilst applying herbicides moderately over time.

Early Spring Lawn Care Tips

Posted on March 10, 2017March 20, 2017 by Hidden Creek Landscaping

As the warmer weather moves in, it’s time to start getting your grass ready for the months ahead. Homeowners can take simple steps to prepare the lawn and garden. Here are some important early spring lawn care tips:

Cleaning and raking. The first thing to do is to clean up the yard and give it a gentle raking. Collect all debris like branches and dead leaves, and then lightly rake over the grass. If your lawn is in poor condition, you can do a deeper raking. If the grass has held up fairly well and you won’t need to put down seeds, go easy on it. By raking, you can remove debris, thatch, and find the patches that may need to be rejuvenated with grass seed.

Fertilize and reseed. Many homeowners take the time to fertilize their lawn in the fall, but if you haven’t, spring is the time to do so. Put down a fresh layer of the right type of fertilizer for your grass. If you have bare patches that need to be filled in, add fresh soil and seed. It’s important to purchase the right type of grass seed for your lawn, and pay attention to the amount of light and shade that each patch receives throughout the day.

Tackle weeds. Weeds can be a recurring problem throughout the spring and summer, and they can ruin the look of any lawn. Tackle them early by using a weed killer that will eradicate them for good. There are many herbicides available, so choose the one that best suits your needs. There are even safe options available for homes with children and pets. Be sure to read the product labels carefully.

Even if you’ve prepped your lawn in the fall, it’s a good idea to take some time working on it in early spring. By doing so, you’ll have lush, lovely grass to enjoy all year.

Practical Lawn Care Tips For Spring

Posted on May 31, 2016June 2, 2016 by Hidden Creek Landscaping

Spring maintenance is an essential step in creating a healthy summer lawn. Soil pH can be altered by winter conditions and the soil could also become compacted. In addition, properly cleaning, fertilizing and mowing the yard early in the season is vital. This is so because winter conditions might have created conditions that are friendly to diseases and weeds.

Spring is about to turn into summer in just a few weeks. By now, problems such as invasive plants and bare spots would have been addressed. The broadcast spreader would have already played its role in filling in the spots left bare by the ravages of winter. You should have moved on to the stage of maintaining an attractive, healthy lawn that is both functional and aesthetically appealing.

Lawns are not just immaculately maintained patches of greenery. They play a valuable role in conserving soil, decreasing runoff, sequestering atmospheric carbon, helping to purify water, improving air quality and lowering urban heat loads.

Ideally, a lawn should not only look great, it should be able to take lots of pounding and maintain its visual appeal. Therefore, your approach to lawn care and landscaping in general should be practical and go beyond aesthetics. Below are some useful spring lawn care tips than can keep your yard looking remarkable all summer long:

Aerate. Now that the soil is dry and warm, use a scarifier to aerate a heavily-matted lawn. To promote healthy growth, a long-term fertilizer should be used during the months of spring. The best approach to achieving a thick lawn is mowing once a week. However, when there are periods of intense growth, the lawn can be cut 2 times a week.

Cut Cleverly. To ensure your grass is cut cleanly and not torn, newly sharpened blades should be used for the first cut of the year. To maintain a lush, healthy-growing lawn, only a maximum of 1/3 of the blade of grass should be cut.

Plant Entryway Flowers. The unpredictable weather of early spring should have passed by now and the sponginess of the soil should have disappeared. You can now plant some flowers at the entryway to give your home a more welcoming and pleasant look. Using annual flowers and perennials to adorn the entrance of you home will have an impressive impact on the overall look of the yard. Gertrude Jekyll roses, Lily-of-the-Nile and Petunias are great choices for the entryway.

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