The Best Lawn With The Least Work

Take back that weedy lawn!

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Unless you’ve got extra time on your hands, you would love a lush green lawn with minimal effort. This article by Greenview provided some great advice on how to turn your yard around. I want to focus on the easy tips that have the most return for your time and money. I’ll summarize and add to the article with a couple points.

Weeds are always at war with your lawn, and it’s a battle of momentum. As weeds gain coverage and growth, they spread quicker. Likewise, a lush lawn is an ongoing defense to weeds. Thick and numerous blades of a lush lawn leave no sunlight for seeds of weeds to germinate.

Easy Tips that Bring the Biggest Results: 

1. Use Crab Grass pre-emergent in the early spring as soon as seedlings begin to sprout (or a little before).
   This plant is an annual. Seeds all over will remain dormant until the soil warms up in the spring months, but can sprout later in the summer as well. If you missed the spring deadline, it will still help control growth to apply any time of the year. Just make sure you haven’t recently seeded your lawn!
2. Don’t cut more than 1/3 of your grass blade when you mow.
   As this can be tricky to measure, I recommend measuring your grass with a ruler, cut that section with the mower on a tall blade setting, and measure again. *If you don’t do anything else from this article, remember and apply this one!*
   Why is this? Multiple reasons. Short cut blades stress your lawn out. Most importantly, however, a short-cut lawn leaves more soil exposed to the sun, and you guessed it, leaves the lawn vulnerable to weed access and growth!
3. If you water your lawn, think in terms of long watering sessions fewer and farther between.
   An hour once a week perhaps. Also remember to mow in the early morning before the hot sun comes to evaporate your irrigation! Night time is cooler, but water sitting all night on the grass blades can make them vulnerable to fungus.
4. You’ll need to fertilize at least once a year, but it only takes 20 minutes.
   Scott’s Weed & Feed is the classic one, but there are many options to challenge the weeds and empower your lawn. It should be noted here that you can have your soil tested to know what nutrients are needed the most, but a plain ol’ fertilizer will do most of the job needed. You can buy a hand-spreader for the fertilizer for only $10 or so. Don’t try to spread with your hands.

Here’s an idea of a possible timeline for progressive results in your lawn:

1. Early spring, crab-grass pre-emergent.
2. Late Spring, fertilizer
3. Early Fall:
   1. “spot treat” patches of weedy areas with breadleaf herbicide, wait 1 – 2 weeks, and
   2. Overseed entire lawn and immediately:
   3. Dust a compost soil treatment over the lawn to feed it with nutrients.
   4. Water deeply (wait to mow until grass grows to at least an inch)
4. Take a nap on the porch or deck and wake up to a lush lawn.

Take before and after pictures and post it here! What worked best for you?

Best of luck out there!