Why Your Lawn Needs a Spring Checkup
Majestic Lawn and Landscape Serving Rockland County, NY & Bergen County, NJ
Spring has sprung and it’s already time to mow your lawn. What is the state of your yard grass right now? Do you have bare patches? Are there more weeds than grass popping up?
Now’s the time to get your yard evaluated in order to draw up a lawn care & maintenance program that will produce green, dense grass this season.
At Majestic Lawn Care & Landscape, we take a more holistic approach to lawn care especially if you choose to do it organically. Indeed, it has been shown that healthy soil means a healthy lawn. Rather than killing off weeds and insects with traditional herbicides and pesticides, we can take a more systematic approach by correcting the soil which creates a healthy lawn. When we assess your Rockland County, NY or Bergen County, NJ lawn, we will:
- Test your soil. We’ll take different plugs of soil from your property to test it for nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous levels as well as the soil’s pH. From there, we’ll draw up a plan to bring your soil back to health so it can support a full, thick yard.
- Apply natural, organic products to get your soil back to health. We use 100% natural, organic top dressing and fertilizers to rehabilitate your soil. We want to feed your soil what it needs to be at the peak of health for a vibrant lawn.
- Use good cultural practices. Believe it or not, mowing height, irrigation times, thatch levels, grass clippings, compacted soil and the pH level of your soil affects how strong and healthy your turf grass grows.
Lawn Care Maintenance
At Majestic Lawn Care & Landscape, we employ these cultural controls – also known as lawn maintenance – so your yard can grow the thickest turf possible. You’ll achieve healthy, thick turf, not only by soil testing and feeding the soil with natural products, but by the methods you employ to care for your yard.
Here are seven lawn care & maintenance techniques that we use to develop a beautiful lawn:
- Thatch control – Most every lawn in America has some thatch. It consists of dead grass, roots and other debris that lives between the soil and live grass lines. While a healthy lawn may have some thatch, if it gets thicker than a half an inch, it’s time to get rid of it. Too much thatch deprives your grass of air, water and light.
- Mowing – When we mow your lawn, our mowers always have sharp blades. And we only take off the top third of the grass blade when we mow. Your yard’s turf will be able to grow thick and crowd out weeds when it’s allowed to grow a little taller.
- Grass clippings – We recommend that you allow us to leave your grass clippings on your lawn. Grass clippings don’t cause thatch. Instead, they’re 90% water and will dissolve right back into the soil—giving it up to a 25% boost of nitrogen.
- Aeration – Your soil’s health is negatively affected by compact soil because it can’t breathe, get enough water or sustain grass roots. We use aerators to relieve compaction so it can breathe as well as receive adequate water, light and nutrition.
- Irrigation – We recommend either retrofitting your old irrigation system or having a new one installed. While it’s a big investment to consider, you may notice a decrease in your water bills after a few years. Also, when an irrigation system is properly installed and fitted, it will deliver water only to your lawn—not to your driveway or the sidewalk for the neighborhood kids to play in. Thus, you conserve water. Plus, today’s systems have timers, as well as moisture- and weather-sensors to better control when your water turns on as well as how long it stays on—including stopping it when it starts to rain or after the soil has enough moisture.
- Gypsum – If your soil is too acidic to maintain a lawn, we’ll apply gypsum to make it more balanced to sustain plant life.
- Soil Conditioner – We can add granular hamates to raise the organic activity in your soil which increases the availability and uptake of nutrients. It also increases soil aeration and is a food source for soil microbes.
So if you live in Bergen County, NJ or Rockland County, NY and you want a systematic, 100% organic lawn care program or our conventional lawn care program that produces a lush and thick lawn, call us at (845) 708-2988 or fill out our contact form.
Sources:
Osborne, Chip, “The Creation and Maintenance of Naturally Sustaining Turf,” blog.
Ibid. “History of Conventional Turfgrass Management.”
Tukey, Pat, “Organic Lawn Care Tips,” Popular Mechanics blog.