| |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Summer Lawn Care Tips
Summer is just around the corner, and your lawn could probably use a little maintenance before the summer season of backyard BBQs and swimming in the pool. So what are you doing now to get your lawn ready? Lawn care is often feared as a difficult and time intensive process, but with a few guidelines and tips, you can easily have a healthy green lawn in time for the first backyard party of the season. First of all, if you can spare a minute of your time, don't hire a lawn care "specialist" or professional landscaper. Buying your own lawn care products is cheap and easy, with hundreds of vendors offering products online and in Do-It-Yourself stores. A wide variety of products such as weed controllers to fertilizers can be found online, and usually can be found at reasonable prices, especially when you do a little online coupon searching. Starting off on the right foot is important to reviving your lawn after winter. Fertilizer is the key to ensuring strong healthy growth of the grass in your yard. Fertilizing the grass does more than just make it green. Of course it will make it grow too, but lot's of things happen when you fertilize. Fertilizer makes the seed germinate faster, and get started out of the ground. After the grass has a good start fertilizer will make the grass get thicker and send off beneficial chemicals like Rhizomes, Stolons, and Tillers all making the grass thicker and healthier. What most people want to know about fertilizing is - how much and when? Typically, you want to fertilize 4 times each season, spread 60 days apart. Start in early spring approximately 30 days before the growing season begins in your area, continuing through the growing season until fall. Spring fertilizing gets the grass off to a fast start giving you that rich green color everyone wants. A word of warning though, don't use too much fertilizer, follow the listed guidelines on the bag. Mowing is the most misunderstood part of lawn care, and the most often incorrectly performed part of lawn care. Far too many people will set their mowers too low or "scalp" the lawn. How many times have you spent time mowing your grass in hopes of a beautiful result only to end up with brown spots? Cutting too much off the top leads to thinned out grass, and shallow root systems. Now once you have achieved the perfect lawn, you must do regular maintenance to prevent it from going back to being a pasture. Spend a little time and money and keep it watered and you will keep the lush grass you spent your hard earned money and time on. The ideal way to water your lawn is with an Automatic Underground Sprinkler System. This way the watering is done every day that it needs it, you don't have to drag hoses, you don't waste water from over watering, and you get all of the lawn watered, not just where you happen to set the sprinkler. If you implement this type of sprinkler system, make sure to water shrubbery and annuals separate from the lawn. If you applied the same amount of water on your landscape as gets put on the lawn you would surely kill some plants from over watering. Now that you're ready to care for your lawn, you'll need to get your supplies. Lawn care products can be found at many local gardening centers, or through many online merchants. Buying gardening supplies online is growing in popularity, and made even more economical by online coupons and discounts. For coupons on everything from fertilizers to lawn tools and equipment, check out www.CouponChief.com and easily save yourself some big bucks. Spend the extra cash on your first big BBQ of the summer and invite all your neighbors over to drool over your well manicured, lush green lawn. Josh Gray, President of UC San Diego's Gardens Club, is a consultant to CouponChief.com. This online coupon website provides free coupons and discount codes to many favorite gardening websites on their home and garden coupons page.
MORE RESOURCES:
landscaping gardening - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
10 Tips to Care for Your Antique Ceramics To care for your antique ceramics you need a gentle touch and they'll last you a long time. This month we'll give you some useful tips to help you care for them. Iris Flowers Remind Me Of Mom! Iris flowers always bring memories of mom to mind. Let me share with you three reasons why. Get your Garden Cooking with Friable Soil Oh sure, fried green tomatoes are ok; but I'll take an extra helping of friable soil any day! This is the desire of any gardener who attempts to sink a shovel into the clay found in our area. Clay just does not make a great sandwich. Grow Organic Vegetables There are more reasons than ever why anybody with access to a few square feet of the outdoors should grow their own organic vegetables.You may be shocked at how much of the produce at your local supermarket has been genetically modified. Add Rich Color To Your Garden With Blue Perennial Flowers Blue flowers are some of the most striking plants around and can add a rich splash of color to any garden. Plant them in a cluster of all blue or mix them in with other flowers for a rainbow of color. Choosing the Right Roses for your Garden There are literally hundreds of types of roses that you can grow in your garden. With such a selection to choose from, it can be extremely difficult to choose the rose that's right for you. Rock Gardens - A Different Kind of Garden Planting a Rock Garden is a great alternative to the normal flower and vegetable garden.Where Should This Garden Go:Typically an ideal spot for a rock garden is on a slope or naturally terraced area with rock formations already in place. Feed the Birds Elaborate and decorative or simple and functional, birdhouses and birdfeeders are lovingly coveted by many people (and birds)!The collector seeking a new piece for the den or study need only consider personal taste and aesthetics- many who enjoy the careful art and craftsmanship of a beautiful birdhouse or feeder would never think of placing their precious gift outside in the rain and other elements.The serious or novice birder, on the other hand, has just a bit more to consider. How To Grow Luscious Tomatoes The tomato is the most commonly grown vegetable in the States. Here are some tips on how to grow your own bountiful crop of tomatoes. Slugging It Out In The Trenches In an effort to introduce a shaft of sunlight into a particularly gloomy conversation, I recently asked a gardening acquaintance of mine to explain the difference between a slug and a snail.For the next twelve minutes and seven seconds, this horticultural monomaniac held forth on the most minute and inconsequential differences between gastropod molluscs with rudimentary or no shells and gastropod molluscs with well developed spiral or whorled shells. What is Compost Tea? Organic gardeners all know compost is fantastic stuff. But now, there's something even better and that's compost tea. The Swallowtail -- A Beautiful Butterfly Swallowtail butterflies are some of the most beautiful butterflies found anywhere. The North American species are large, brightly colored butterflies with tailed, rear wings. Are There Really Black Roses? Throughout the course of time, black roses have conjured up a variety of symbolic meanings. From unnatural worlds to death, vengeance, farewell or rebirth, the black rose has come to be viewed in a number of different ways depending on the occasion. Five Tips For Garden Sanctuaries The design of your garden has an amazing affect on your family's health and well-being. Here is how you can create harmony in your garden-which is considered a living entity-and bring peace and happiness within your home. How to Grow Apples The first thing you need to grow apples is a long-term commitment. Growing apples takes considerable time and quite a bit of work. Fertilizers - What you Need to Feed Your Lawn Just like humans need food, water and shelter to survive, lawns depend on certain elements to live, sixteen to be exact. Most of these elements are already found naturally in the environment, but several others need to be added to your lawn. Basic Lawn Care - Mowing, Scarifiers, Aeration, and Watering Tips The arrival of summer heralds a time of increased wear and tear for the average garden lawn. Children's yard games, barbecue parties, outdoor sports and generally more activity in the garden means your lawn is set to come in for something of a beating and without a little TLC is likely to start showing more than a little worse for wear. Using Push Reel Mowers If you're not familiar with push reel mowers or if you haven't used one since "back in the day", there are a few points you should be aware of before using a push reel mower:Don't expect to cut tall weeds or dandelions. You notice how your gas-powered mowers get a little "overwhelmed" when cutting weeds or very tall grass? Those issues are a bit worse with reel mowers because they become harder to push and they are limited in the height of what they can cut. Wild Flower Garden - Yours to Design and Plan To design a wild flower garden, you do not need to be a specialist or an artist, you just need to be observant and let your creative juices flow. Look around you, what is unique about your surroundings? Do you wish to enhance or compliment these things. Planting Bare Root Roses Before planting, the plants must be prepared. The following suggestions will help insure that your roses grow into healthy bushes, trees, etc.
|
