How do I keep my grass looking green and healthy is a question every landscape gardener gets asked. A lot. Whether you are a home-owner maintaining a small private garden or a business keeping a large commercial property's landscape maintained, a thick lush lawn can make all the difference.
5 Steps To Keeping Your Lawn Looking Green
1. Knowledge
Overcoming any problem starts with knowledge. So before you do anything to your grass, it is important to get a good understanding about it. Grass is actually made up from lots and lots of individual plants. They all have leaves and roots. And just like all plants, to be healthly Grass needs food, water and sunlight. So start by getting a good idea of the type of grass you're dealing with.
2. Seeding
Once you know what type of grass you're working with, the next step is seeding or re-seeding. Every year you should be seeding your lawn with new grass seeds. This helps thicken up your lawn. Adding more grass plants also increases the number of root systems in your lawn and helps prevent weeds from establishing themselves.
Your new grass seeds will need plenty of water and sunlight. In the right conditions, you should start seeing more grass within a couple of weeks.
3. Feeding
As mentioned early, grass is just like any other plant, it needs food and nutrients to grow. Normally, grass gets the nutrients it needs from the soil. If your soil doesn't contain enough nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, your grass may not be getting all the goodness it needs to grow healthy. Adding a fertiliser to your soil is how to solve this.
Make sure your soil is moist so it can absorb and mix with the fertiliser.
4. Weeding
Weeds can ruin your grass in two ways: the first way is aesthetically. Weeds can be coarse and spikey and unattractive. They stick out of a lawn like a sore thumb. The second way they ruin your grass is their roots compete with your grass' roots and deprive them of the nutrients they need. Regular weeding and weed control should be undertaken to prevent weeds establishing and expanding.
5. Mowing
Mowing your grass actually requires a bit more thought than most people afford it. Mowing and cutting grass helps concentrate food, water and sunlight on a smaller plant, which means it has plenty of everything it needs to grow.
But you can cut your lawn too short.
If your lawn is too short, it can expose the grass' roots to the sun, which can burn them. Or if you aren't able to regularly water the grass, it may not be able to get enough water to grow so it is best to keep your grass a little longer.
As you can tell, getting and keeping thick green grass is more difficult and time consuming than you might have thought. And this is why most businesses use a professional landscaping company to take care of their grass for them.