Improve your lawn this summer with these 4 EASY tips

Maybe you've resisted the urge to turn your lawn into a veggie garden and are thinking that this is the year you'll finally get a perfectly manicured lawn. The key to a healthy lawn is its rootzone material. Unlike golf courses, many urban lawns are planted on fill, and poor or compacted soil can make it difficult to achieve a luscious, green lawn. Rootzones can be amended with aeration followed by topdressing with a sandy soil then over seeding.

Tip One: Mowing

Lawns should be mown frequently with a sharp mower blade, assuring that the mowing height removes no more than 1/3 of the grass leaf at a time. Different turf species tolerate different mowing heights, but you are likely safe at about 2-3” as long as you obey the 1/3 rule.

Tip Two: Watering

Deep and infrequent watering promotes a healthy root system that resists disease, prevents weed infiltration and withstands drought. There's no good rule of thumb for watering, as factors like weather, grass species and cultivar, thatch, mowing height, foot traffic, canopy, and infiltration or evapotranspiration rates determine the specific needs for each lawn. Use an empty tuna can or rain gauge to measure and aim for 1/2” of water every-other-day. This will allow the water to penetrate at least 3” into the soil for deeper and healthier roots. Signs of drought-stress include a change in colour (turning dark-green in Kentucky bluegrass) and the leaf blade wilting.

Tip Three: Grass Clippings

Always return your grass clippings to the turfgrass sward rather than bagging them with the mover. Removing grass clippings deprives your lawn of a valuable source of nitrogen, necessitating the costly addition of chemical fertilizers.

Tip Four: Don’t Over Fertilize

Don't overfertilize your lawn. Too much fertilizer can burn your lawn and pollute groundwater. Early-spring nitrogen fertilization promotes excessive shoot growth and can weaken the overall stand. In late-summer and early fall, turf is recovering from drought and putting on new growth. This is the time to give it a boost of nitrogen. New lawns require phosphorous for root growth, but in an established lawn, unless a soil test shows a deficiency in phosphorus or potassium, don't apply these to your lawn. Note that nitrogen is highly mobile in the soil, whereas phosphorous and potassium bind to soil particles. This means that soil tests can't tell you when to apply nitrogen but they are crucial for letting you know if phosphorous and potassium are needed.