Overview
Lawn & Landscaping
Lawn & Landscaping includes: grass; shrubbery; trees; gardens; and other planted areas in your yard.
If you have Automatic Sprinklers, a Barbecue Grill, Decking, Outdoor Lighting, Outside Water Faucets, or Patio Furniture, then you should put checkmarks as appropriate to include these as part of your home features in your Home Wizard app.
Maintaining a healthy and attractive lawn requires proper maintenance during each season of the year.
Routine Care
Spring clean-up
Cleans out debris that has accumulated over the winter.
Mulch helps prevent weeds, and helps keeps moisture around your trees and shrubs.
Timing: April (yearly)
Early spring fertilizer and crab grass control
This task helps grass to grow thicker and greener, and helps reduce outbreaks of crab grass.
Timing: April (yearly)
Late spring fertilizer and weed control
This task helps grass grow thicker and greener, and helps to control outbreaks of weeds.
Timing: June (yearly)
Summer fertilizer and insect control
This task helps your grass thrive in hot weather, and helps control insects that can damage your lawn.
Timing: July (yearly)
Early autumn fertilizer treatment
This task helps grass to stay green longer, and green up earlier next spring.
Timing: September (yearly)
Autumn pruning and clean-up
This task improves the health and appearance of shrubs and lawn.
Timing: November (yearly)
How To
Remove dead or damaged branches from shrubs and other lawn plants. Fallen leaves should be raked. Raked leaves can be shredded to reduce the number of bags that must be disposed, or the leaves can be mulched to a dust with a mulching mower and left on the lawn.
You need to be careful pruning your shrubs and trees in the fall, since the wounds may not have time to adequately heal before the cold weather arrives. Also, pruning can stimulate growth which won’t have time to develop properly before it gets cold.
Here are the general guidelines for routine pruning:
Prune evergreens in winter and early spring.
Prune leaf-bearing trees, including fruit trees, in late winter.
Prune late-flowering shrubs (those that bloom in mid to late summer) in late winter or early spring.
Prune late-flowering shrubs (those that bloom in mid to late summer) in late winter or early spring.
During the fall, its alright to remove diseased, dead or broken branches. Allowing diseased parts to linger on a tree over the winter can cause more problems in the spring. You may want to prune heavy bleeders like birches and maples in the fall if their sap would fall on sidewalks and patios. Also, you should remove branches that could, if laden with snow or ice, interfere with power lines or structures.
Benefits
Appearance
Maintaining Value
The benefits of this task are the health and appearance of your lawn.
Costs
The cost of this task is moderately high, depending on the size of your yard and the number and types of trees on it.
Lawn Mowing Tips for Nice Lawns & Personal Safety
Done wrong, lawn mowing can damage your lawn, making it more susceptible to diseases. And lawn mowing also poses quite a few safety risks that you definitely want to avoid. This article and video gives lawn mowing tips that will help you to:
1) protect the health of your lawn; and
2) protect the personal safety of you and your children.
LAWN HEALTH
For the health of your lawn, when you mow you will only want to cut down about one-third of the total height of your grass at any one time. The reason is that if you cut more off than this, it puts too much strain on the grass, since it is the green part of the grass plant that provides the energy for it to grow.
You should also sharpen your mower blades after every 10 hours of mowing. Mowing dulls the blade, and when the blade is dull, rather than cut the grass, it instead tears it. And tearing the grass damages it, and makes it more susceptible to diseases.
Also, you should use a mulching mower to cut your grass, or if you don’t have a mulching mower, then you should install a mulching blade kit on your mower. There are several reasons to mulch when you mow. First, mulching cuts up the clippings into finer pieces which are returned to the lawn as nutrients; and secondly, it reduces the work of mowing, as you don’t have to keep stopping to empty the bag.
And finally, you should mow your lawn only when it is dry. If your lawn is wet, the mower blades can’t cut the grass cleanly and this creates the opportunity for diseases. And mowing a wet lawn also causes grass clippings to clump and decompose slower. Plus going over a wet lawn can also compact the soil and create ruts. And with a wet lawn, you are more likely to slip and fall while mowing.
PERSONAL SAFETY
Lawn mowing, unfortunately, is the cause of too many accidents and injuries. But here are some steps you can take to improve personal safety while mowing your lawn.
First, inspect your mower before starting. Look for anything that has come loose on your mower, and especially be sure that all of the safety guards are in place. Inspect your mower blade to be certain that it is tight and not damaged, but NEVER touch your blade unless you are sure that the power is completely disengaged.
Next, check for any foreign objects in your lawn. When your lawn mower hits objects in your lawn, it can shatter them and send them flying at very high speeds. Look over your lawn before you get started, and be sure to carefully watch at all times while you are mowing.
Keep children away while you are mowing, and let them know to stay away (since you may not hear them coming while the mower is running). If you have a rider mower, never give them rides on it, as this can encourage them to try to hop on when you are mowing.
You should drink plenty of water when you are mowing on hot days. Becoming dehydrated can make you dizzy which can lead to slips and falls, but also, becoming dehydrated can impair your judgment, which can have you taking risks that can lead to injuries.
Be sure to wear proper shoes that give you good traction while you are pushing your mower. And be especially careful of your toes when you are pulling backward on your mower. Also, because objects can come flying out from underneath your mower, it is best to wear closed-toe shoes when you are mowing.
And finally, you should always wear ear & eye protection when you are mowing. And if you have allergies or asthma, then it will help you to wear a respirator too.
OTHER TIPS
Here are a few other tips for you to consider while you are mowing.
You should use your weed whacker before you mow, then your mower can chop up the clippings that you have cut up.
Also, you will want to mow in straight lines and overlap your wheel marks. And you will want to vary your cutting patterns . . . if you cut north to south one time, then cut east to west the next time, then northeast to southeast the next, and so on. This keeps your lawn from getting matted down in one direction.
And lastly, you should clean your mower after each use.
SUMMARY
Hopefully, this article and video has given you some helpful tips on how to mow your lawn to protect both your lawn’s health and the safety of both you and your family.
Originally posted at http://www.petermuehlbronner.home-wizard.com/articleDet/art_lawn_mowing