It’s about understanding the key factors
Does turf care resulting in a lawn worth showing off require miracle chemicals or obscure tactics? Not at all. What it primarily comes down to is understanding factors at play with regards to climate, seasonality, and the needs of your grass as part of its own larger ecosystem.
Your top turf care best practices to achieve a healthy lawn
Healthy turf must be watered well - not necessarily often
As with most things in life, quality typically trumps quantity. This is certainly the case when it comes to watering your lawn.
Instead of setting out a sprinkler every couple of days for a light watering, give your grass and the soil below a good soaking, say, every three or four days. Deep watering less frequently helps to foster root growth, allowing healthy turf to tap into subsurface water supplies. You’re encouraging your lawn to function more efficiently with the water it’s provided with at any given time. For places such as Florida, with hot and humid climates, water delivery can make all the difference in not just your turf’s health, but overall cost and long-term investment.
As a rule of thumb, The Family Handyman recommends watering soil so that it’s moist four to five inches below the surface. Once that top one to two inches dries out, water again in order to develop healthy roots.
To gauge how long a sprinkler system will take to produce the amount of water needed, you could follow makeshift “cake pan” methods. But, depending upon the size of area in need of coverage, DIY methods can lack accuracy. Instead, this type of information can be tracked and automated through real-time water pumping dashboard systems – it's called "smart irrigation".
When are you watering?
While some may encourage watering later in the evening, others don’t. Why? Because it can leave lawns more susceptible to mold; and you don’t want that. Instead, consider watering early in the mornings, to avoid quick evaporation and to give turf the chance to dry out during the day.
Be conscious of how you mow
Mowing is so much more than merely putting on a sun hat, revving up your machine’s engine, and happily chopping away. For starters, healthy turf requires a healthy mower. When dull, blades will leave rough and ragged edges behind and impact upon your lawn’s overall appearance; so, always keep your blades sharp and in good condition.
In addition, a high-functioning blade will help you to more accurately mow your grass at the desired length. Cut it to the tallest height possible; your turf’s roots will then grow deeper into the ground, to compensate for higher growth on the surface. Taller grass will help shade the ground below, reducing — and sometimes entirely preventing — weed growth. When paired with the deeper roots and grass clippings left behind, this also aids in building healthy turf that’s both nutrient-dense and disease-resistant.
Fertilize - and zap weeds at first sight!
Achieving a healthy lawn means being proactive in your turf care. Develop the ecosystem in a way that allows it to absorb and retain nutrients efficiently. Feed it nutrients it may otherwise be deficient in, especially when climate factors may be working to its detriment.
Fertilizer should be distributed throughout your turf’s growing season. Depending upon your geographic location and weather patterns, you may need to pay extra attention to timing
Attack weeds both pre-emptively and at first sight. The use of weed killers aside, a thick, healthy turf will take care of some of this proactive prevention on its own. As aforementioned, tall grass can block potential weed growth at soil level from receiving the sunlight and space needed to grow. But, be vigilant. At the first sign of sprouted weeds, take action! In cases of widespread growth, use eco-friendly weed control products. Otherwise, remove weeds by hand.
Keep seasonality in mind
With turf care, climate and seasonality will, naturally, play a major part when it comes to timing. In colder climates, where grass may lay dormant for longer periods, fertilize in early spring, jumpstarting root growth as they begin to come back to life. Repeating this task a couple times throughout the fall will also help in repairing damage experienced during summer months, while simultaneously preparing roots for winter
The height at which you cut your grass prior to a first snow (and/or freeze) is also important: too long and you’ll leave it susceptible to retaining moisture, too short and your turf is more likely to be affected by dry winds and the sun.
Invest in a reliable pump station and be smart with your budget
Many of the best practices necessary to achieve a healthy turf are easy to manage if you live in a climate-controlled bubble; however, climate unpredictability, and other natural factors can easily infiltrate below the surface, proving costly to eliminate when dealt with too late. A reliable pump station is at the heart of a healthy landscape. Investing in the best you possibly can will result in better use of budgets, wiser use of water and reduce hours spent managing and maintaining outdated and failing older systems.
Installing a pump system can be an effective tool for maintaining overall landscape health and appearance, in addition to forestalling potential problems. Even better, the kind of consistent water delivery that today's smart irrigation offers — combined with historical insight from lawn development — helps to lower irrigation efforts over time (as well as better controlling pests). It also ensures that your landscape budget is being put to its best possible use.
Care about what's above and below the surface!
In summary, then, developing and maintaining healthy turf that stands the test of time requires a level of commitment to what’s both above and below the surface. Making the effort to foster and care for the growth of both will unquestionably pay off.
