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Six Tips On How To Prepare Your Garden Lawn For Spring

Why do you need to prepare your garden lawn for spring? For one, it reduces the amount of time, energy and money that you spend on your yard in the coming months. Secondly, you get to enjoy a beautiful lawn for a considerable period without the need for maintenance. Thus, if you have been wondering how to prepare your garden lawn for spring, here are some tips that are sure to come in handy.

Let’s start with the good news. You may find that there is little you need to do when it comes to preparation, owing to the excellent state of your lawn. In this case, you are sure to have to have an easy time. Also, you may find that you can delay some of the listed processes without damaging your lawn. For this reason, be sure to keep an open mind as you decide what you need.

Raking

It seems like something you can do without, but that could not be further from the truth. A good lawn is heavily dependent on maintenance practices such as raking and in preparation for spring; this is the one process that you must take into account. No matter how much time you put into raking during the fall, now is another time to get those leaves off the lawn. Some people think that raking is all about leaves and that no harm can come from letting them lie on the grass. However, thatch too builds up over periods of no raking taking place.

Thatch in small amounts is not all that bad. However, once your lawn has thatch levels that are above half an inch, it is time to take raking seriously. As you get rid of excess leaves during the fall, it is essential to ensure that you rake deep as this will help in reducing the amount of thatch in the lawn. But doing this does not mean that you won’t rake before spring. It only means that you’ll have an easy time when doing so.

Other than getting rid of thatch, leaves and dead grass blades, raking is also crucial in fixing matting. Snow mold causes the sticking together of grass blades which makes it hard for new grass to grow. Raking allows the grass blades to come apart, thereby creating space for new grass germination, thus resulting in a healthy lawn.

Ensure that you start raking after the snow season comes to an end and not before so that you can get the best results.

Over-Seeding

Is your lawn bare? Well, this situation calls for over-seeding where you plant grass seed in readiness for the spring. You need to start by using a nitrogen fertilizer that will slowly release nutrients when planting the seeds. Once the grass germinates, you can use a faster fertilizer to boost the process.

If your lawn does not have that many bare patches, you may want to consider carrying out this process in the Fall. The upside to the delay is that you will not encounter crabgrass during germination and this will reduce the competition for nutrients. However, if you cannot wait that long; you can get started on the over-seeding without the grass suffering any adverse effects.

Compaction Checks

A lawn that is not subject to a lot of activities throughout the year is unlikely to have any compaction. However, if you have kids, pets and other sources of traffic on your lawn, the chances are high that your yard will suffer compaction. This condition comes from the hardening of soil, and you can tell that there is a problem when you start spotting moss on your lawn. While you can always get rid of the moss in preparation for the warmer months, the best way to treat this condition is through aeration.

You can get a lawn aerator in the neighborhood with ease. However, the chances that they postpone the process till Fall are quite high. This delay should not be a problem as not much harm can come to your lawn before then. All you need to do is to take note of the need for aeration, and once the time comes, you can get the procedure done.

Monitoring Ph Levels

Grass does well in neutral conditions, and you should look into the acidity or lack thereof of the soil. If you have moss growing in the lawn, this is a sign that there are high levels of acidity and you need to fix this if you wish to enjoy a healthy lawn. One way to do this is through the use of liming. Though it takes time to see the effects of liming, it works in regulating the pH of the soil.

However, before you decide on whether to use lime or not, you should ensure that you are right about the soil conditions. Engaging an extension officer should not only help you gauge the acidity of your soil, but it will also help you in deciding how much lime you need to get the desired results. A soil sample should help the officer to determine all this.

Here is another place where people go wrong: liming often and without cause. If your soil does not have any signs of acidity, do not use lime as this will make your soil alkaline. These conditions will make the land unsuitable for grass growth and will, in turn, lead to an unhealthy lawn.

Fertilization

There are two ways in which you can add nutrients to the soil: through organic manure and by chemical fertilizers. The thing that you need to keep in mind is that you need to apply minimal fertilizers to the earth and where you can avoid the use of manure, do so.

If you used manure towards late Fall, the chances that there are fertilizers in the soil are quite high, and thus any addition would be too much. If you must use manure, remember that a little goes a long way.

Weeding

This last step is crucial as it determines how well your grass grows. The presence of weeds results in competition between unwanted plants and grass for the nutrients present in the soil and your lawn could end up on the losing end. You can opt to pull out the weeds by hand, or you can use herbicides, based on what you find to work best at the time. A sure way of preventing the growth of more weeds is by pulling the plants out of the soil by their roots.

With these steps out of the way, you are sure to have an easy time maintaining your lawn during spring and the coming seasons. Plus, having a well-kept lawn adds to the aesthetic effect of your garden cabin.

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