Source: Flickr
Keeping your lawn in good shape is the secret to maintaining a great garden. When you look outside, and there’s a nice patch of green grass that looks healthy, then it just makes the whole garden come together and look much better.
In general, lawn maintenance is pretty simple. However, many of us are perhaps a bit guilty of forgetting to do things or doing other things that we shouldn’t. As a result, you can end up with a lawn that’s got many issues and just doesn’t look as healthy as it should.
So, what do you do when you have an unhealthy and ugly lawn? To begin, you need to figure out what’s causing your lawn issues. If you carry on reading, you’ll find a few common things that often cause problems for lawns:
Scalping is a common cause of many lawn issues, but what exactly is it? For those that don’t know, it’s when you cut your lawn way too low down. Essentially, you scalp the surface and end up cutting up the soil. This happens when you set the cutting blade too low on your mower, which a lot of people do as they think the shorter a lawn is, the easier it is to maintain. There is some truth to this – it will be long before you need to cut your grass if it’s very short. However, you damage it too much by cutting it too short, and it usually leaves the lawn looking very muddy and brown. This is how you get patches in your lawn where some grass just won’t grow. To avoid it, make sure you give your grass more of a trim than a full-on buzz cut. Just set the cutting blades higher, so it isn’t an issue.
Your Mower A lot of the time, you might not be doing anything wrong, and it’s more a case of your equipment letting you down. If you use a lawnmower to cut your grass, then there are a few problems you could start seeing. The main one is that some parts could be broken, which results in a less than desirable performance. For example, if the cutting blade is bust, then it might not work, and you end up with a lawn that’s cut haphazardly and at different heights. So, the best thing to do is get your mower serviced, and order any genuine OEM parts if there are issues that need to be fixed. Hopefully, this is what’s causing your lawn problems, and you can sort them out right away. On a similar note, you may just be using a very bad lawnmower that can’t do the job properly! If this is the case, get yourself a new one – think of it as an investment in your garden.
Source: libreshot
Hidden Objects Again, this is something that’s not caused by any fault of your own. Sometimes, you can get rocks or other hidden objects growing just underneath the surface of your lawn. If this happens, then the roots around the object will begin to dry up and die. The consequence of this is that you get lots of ugly dead spots in your lawn where there’s no grass at all. It can really ruin the way your garden looks, which is very annoying considering you have no control over it. Sadly, the only way around this issue is to physically remove the hidden objects. Hopefully, this isn’t going to be too difficult, and it’s just a case of digging up a small rock or two with some gardening tools. Then, give your lawn the nutrients and conditions it needs to be reborn and grow back better.
Pets If you have pets, then they may be the ones that are causing your lawn issues. Especially if you pretty much let them run wild and do whatever they want in your garden. This can cause them to dip up your lawn, which will leave you with loads of holes. Who knows, you might get lucky and they could dig up from stones or rocks that were causing the issues mentioned earlier! But, the chances are they’ll wreck your lawn, so try and discourage this behavior. More importantly, make sure you train them to not go to the toilet on your lawn. This will cause significant problems as the area around it will die out.
Fungus Spores of fungus can quickly grow in your lawn if you’re unfortunate. There’s not a lot you can do to prevent this from happening, it all depends on the climate. But, one thing that will help is not watering your lawn in the evenings. All this does is make your garden perfect for fungus to grow and completely ruin your gorgeous grassy area. The problem with fungus is that it can sometimes create rings in your lawn, and it also makes mushrooms grow too. Neither of these things are wanted by anyone – if you want to grow mushrooms, then you should start a vegetable patch! The only good news is that you can deal with this problem quite quickly, all that’s required is some fungicide to treat the fungus. Make sure you apply it directly to all the affected areas and don’t get it on healthy parts of your lawn as it could just cause more damage there.
Lack Of Water Perhaps the most common cause of lawn issues is a lack of water. If you’re not watering your lawn regularly – and all over – then it will soon dry out. This problem gets worse in the hot months where there’s minimal rainfall, and you have to double your watering efforts to keep up. Otherwise, you just end up with a garden that looks like it’s full of straw.
While lawn issues can be annoying, they’re never permanent. Most problems are caused by the things mentioned above, but if you still can’t seem to fix your lawn, then don’t worry! The beauty of it is that you can always dig it up and start again if it’s damaged beyond repair.
