Lawns usually consume more space than any other single material in a landscape. They also normally require more water and more care than any other feature in your yard.
What can you do to cut down on the time required to maintain your lawn? How can you use less water, less chemicals?
Consider these tips:
1. Reduce the size of your lawn by bringing in the margins. This can be done with flower beds, walkways, raised berms with shrubs and rocks as accents. Every square foot of lawn that you remove saves you water (as much as 10 gallons a week in some areas), saves you time mowing, saves time and money fertilizing.
2. Raise and Sharpen: Raise your mower to cut at the 3-4 inch level. It will make the lawn healthier. Taller grass promotes better root growth to help the lawn win the battle against weeds. It is also a cooler lawn and requires less water than a lawn that is mown short. Sharpen your mower blade often. A sharp blade cuts the grass while a dull one shreds it. The shredded blades of grass lose more moisture and require more watering. They also look worse than blades of grass with a clean cut. Remember when you sharpen a mower blade to take the same number of file strokes from each side of the blade. Too much sharpening of one side can cause the blade to be out of balance which will shorten the life of your mower.
3. Grasscycle: Leave your clippings on the lawn. They will return nourishment to the soil and will keep your lawn cooler, demanding less water.
4. Leave the Clover: Clover is one of the best nitrogen fixing agents you can get. If you leave clover in the lawn, it will promote stronger turf and will make your lawn greener and healthier.
5. Moderation in all things: Only use fertilizers when you need them. Many fertilizer producers promote schedules for fertilizers that are more appropriate to sell more fertilizer than to promote proper growth of your lawn. Too much fertilizer and too much water can cost you more than you need to spend. In many cases excess water and fertilizer will just run off and go into the drain and ultimately into our waterways causing pollution.
6. Time watering: If you water in the heat of the day, much of what you think is going on your garden is just evaporating. Water just before dark or at first light in the morning.
For more information, check out these websites:
www.gardening.cornell.edu/lawn
www.bewatersmart.net/conservationtips_yard.html
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