When you sign up for something or pay for a subscription, you usually know what you’re getting for your money. Years ago, a subscription meant getting a magazine. Now, the word covers a lot more, including music services like Spotify and XM Radio and TV services like Hulu and Netflix. These companies do a great job of letting you know exactly what you’ll get for your monthly payment.
Your home’s lawn is a big part of your day, just like what you listen to and watch. When people look at your house, the first thing they notice is the green space around it. It can be hard to find the time and tools to grow and maintain a lush, green lawn, though. This is where a “subscription” with a professional mowing service and landscaping company can be very helpful. But what services do and should your lawn care company offer?
How to Cut Grass Right
Cutting the grass too short and mowing it too often are two of the easiest and most common ways to kill your lawn. Grass takes time to grow into a healthy and strong state, but a few bad mowing sessions can ruin its health. Taller grass is healthier grass, and it helps keep weeds from growing by “smothering” anything else that tries to grow in the turf. As a rule of thumb in gardening, the taller the grass blades get, the deeper the roots have to grow to support them.
Also, mowing, in the same way, can sometimes cause more damage than good. Even if you use a push mower, mowing in the same direction will pack down the grass. This makes it harder for the soil to breathe and move nutrients to the roots so they can grow. When most people walk through grassy areas in public places, is there often more dirt or more grass? Professionals use one of the easiest ways to make sure a lawn is healthy: they change where and how a mower goes over a yard.
Lawn Trimming & Edging
When done wrong, too much edging can hurt your lawn, even though it looks nice around concrete, asphalt, and other things. Weeds grow well in places where your desired turf has been removed and the soil is exposed to the sun. Aggressive hedging practices, like using a string trimmer to edge or profile a gap between a bed and turf or along a transition from concrete or hardscape, provide both of these conditions.
Over-edging can not only cause weeds to grow where they shouldn’t, but it can also cause a lot of erosion in places where water is always falling. Most of the time, these areas can’t just “grow back in.” Instead, the exposed damage must be fixed with soil and new sod. Even though the edges of your driveway, deck, sidewalk, patio, and landscaping barriers need to be taken care of, they need to be done so in a way that helps your whole lawn. We use and recommend a fixed-blade edger for all hard-edge surfaces and bed the edges of turfed areas once a month or less often.
How to Get Rid of Weeds & Feed Your Lawn
No matter how well you take care of your lawn, weeds will always find a way to grow there. Louisiana has a subtropical climate, which means that the parishes along the coast are great places to grow crops and weeds from all over the northern hemisphere. Treatments for weeds take time to work and require patience while the “seed to plant” growth cycle of the weed is broken. You should also expect seasonal lawn care through a good fertilizing program that gives the grass nutrients at different times of the year.
Other ways to protect and ensure long-term health care to overseed with rye grass during the winter to protect the grass and give it a green look in an otherwise brown market, to core aerate the soil to break it up and allow oxygen and nutrients to reach deeper into the soil layers, and to water the grass properly with an irrigation system or sprinklers to make sure you have a lush, healthy lawn all year long. All of these things are covered by programs for expert care.
Pest & Mold Problems in the Lawn
A homeowner might find it hard to learn about and understand all the different problems that can happen to their lawn, let alone figure out which of the hundreds of chemicals on the market is best for their problem and their type of grass. Expert lawn care services should have people who are trained to spot even the smallest signs of Brown Patch fungus or Take All fungus, which can damage and kill large sections of your grass if not treated or stopped. In addition to fungal problems, insects can either help or hurt.
Sod webworms have become a summertime nightmare for most people in the Baton Rouge area. They can destroy a lawn completely in just a couple of weeks. In less than a week, armyworms can do the same thing. Crews who know how to spot the first signs of an infestation help make sure that the yard is treated quickly. Follow-ups can make sure that all the hard work and effort you put into your lawn doesn’t go to waste for the smallest of reasons.
Types of Grass
In the turf market of today, there are many kinds of turf to choose from. Expert analysis should be done during mowing service to make sure that the type of grass being serviced is right for the area where it is located. Some grasses do well in places with a lot of shade, while others can’t stand it for more than a few hours. Other grasses do well in areas with a lot of foot traffic or where kids and pets are always playing on the grass. Professional mowing services should keep an eye on and take care of these things to make sure a turf type on a property does as well as possible.
If you want to take your yard to the next level, you can hire a professional lawn and landscaping company to do it. Baton Rouge Landscaping, LLC has been helping home and business owners in the Baton Rouge area keep their lawns healthy and green for over a decade, giving their clients peace of mind that their investment in their lawn and landscape is being cared for in a reliable and expert way!