First Impressions

A Great Landscape Plan Begins with a Healthy Lawn

My real estate friends all tell me how critical a good lawn is when it comes to selling a home. I am not surprised. After all, it's the first thing people see when they come to your house. You only have one chance to make a great first impression, and your lawn is that first impression. Let's take a look at what goes into creating a healthy lawn and making it blend in with the landscape around it so you can assure others get a nice first impression of your home.

Think of you lawn as the uniform backdrop that both blends and accents the rest of your landscape and home. The term uniform is the key here. You want your lawn to look good all over, uniform in color, cut, etc. You also want a uniform surface to hold up to work and play - a lawn that resists traffic as well as looks good.

When establishing a lawn, the first key is choosing a grass species that will be appropriate for the situation. It needs to be able to survive perennially (come back year after year) and be relatively easy to manage. In short, it should not stick out in the neighborhood - certainly not in a bad way. If you are installing your first lawn or rejuvenating an old one, the easiest way to get the right grass is to go a local nursery or landscaper and find out what they are using. They will tell you what they use in your area and why, providing good direction for what you should do.

The next key is to follow the right procedures to establish grass so that it grows in quickly and efficiently. The keys here are timing, persistence, and the ability to follow directions. Don't try to start a lawn at an inappropriate time as your frustration level will be at an all time high (sodding your lawn is an exception here). If you are establishing a lawn in the North with a cool season grass, the best time is the fall, second best is the spring (and the spring is a lot easier if you have a way to consistently irrigate the lawn). In the South, circle up the lawn establishment wagons for late spring to early summer. Your goal is to have a fairly mature plant before the onset of winter.

Establishing the lawn is like following the steps for making a pot of coffee. Leave out a step or put them in reverse order and you will not have a pot of coffee (nor will you have a lawn). Check out the Yard Doctor's ten steps for establishing a healthy lawn. Follow these steps religiously and you will be successful.

Finally, once you have a lawn, you now have to perform the cultural practices to keep the lawn in good shape. There are five cultural practices: mowing, fertilizing, irrigation, aeration and pest management. The first three of these take center stage. If you mow, fertilize and water correctly, you will have a wonderful lawn that looks great and can resist most problems. You will turn to aeration when you need to manage soil issues that may arise, and pest management is a large encompassing term used to describe managing (living within balance) pests in your lawn like weeds, insects, and diseases.

You can keep your lawn healthy by taking the big three cultural practices to heart. Mow, water and fertilize a lawn that was established correctly with the right grass and this will provide a dense, healthy lawn largely free of pests (or at least they will be relatively easy to manage.) When mowing, never mow more than a third of the leaf blade in a single mowing, mow with a sharp mower blade, and alternate your mowing patterns. This will keep the plant healthy as scalping and tearing will be eliminated, as well as any compaction issues from mowing in the same continual pattern.

With fertilizing, timing and amount are the most critical elements. There are lots of fertilizers to choose from (your garden store can recommend a good one), with the key being to apply fertilizer in the right amount (never apply more than 1 lb Nitrogen/1000 ft2) and always applying the fertilizer during periods of active growth. These two steps will go a long ways in providing the food for the plant to grow strong and resist periods of stress and even attacks from insects and diseases.

Watering your lawn correctly is important, as nothing good comes from an over watered lawn, an all too common mistake. Again, amount and timing are key, as you should shoot for about one inch of water per week on your lawn during spring and summer (a little less during the beginning and end of the season), remembering to count all sources of moisture, e.g. rainfall. When to water is critical as well. Early morning is best as it goes on the lawn without fighting the wind and the leaves will dry as soon as the sun comes up, minimizing any chance for disease.

So there you have it. Mowing, watering, and fertilizing at proper times and amounts will go miles in terms of providing a healthy lawn.