Best Drought Tolerant Lawn Types

The drought tolerance of lawns refers to a lawn types ability to stay alive and remain green for the longest period of time while under heavy water restrictions, or when receiving no water at all during the Summer.

Equally as important when considering the drought tolerance of a lawn variety is the ability of a lawn to recover itself once it has finally browned off. Meaning that once the lawn looks like it has died off from lack of water, will the lawn recover and become green again once the turf begins receiving water again.

For simplicity, we’ll look at the 3 best grass types for drought tolerance and recovery.

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Leafhoppers On Lawns

Leafhoppers

Leafhoppers are a small flying insect which are often never seen, any damage caused is so minimal that it is generally unnoticeable, and overall there is hardly never any need to control them.

The size of the Leafhopper is the reason why they are so rarely seen, in fact a person needs to get down on hands and knees to closely look at the grass leaf very carefully in order to diagnose they are even there, although they can sometimes be seen hopping when they are disturbed from lawn mowing.

Leafhoppers feed on the leaf blades of grass, but consume so little, and their numbers never seem to ever reach problem proportions that there never appears to be any damage whatsoever to the sod itself.

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How Much Sunlight Does My Lawn Need

Sunlight Requirements For Lawns

All grasses require sunlight in order to live and thrive as the lawns we want them to be. It’s a simple non-negotiable fact that without sunlight, our lawns would simply waste away and die, however, the different lawn types all have different minimum requirements for sunlight, and each will tolerate some shade at certain levels.

So when choosing a new grass type, or trying to determine why a lawn is not thriving in some areas, it’s important to look at the shade tolerance and sunlight requirements of each lawn type to determine which may be best for our yard.

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Scalped Lawns

Lawns or areas of lawns become scalped when either high points are severed off when mowing an uneven lawn, or when too much leaf material has been removed in a single service.

Uneven lawns can often occur with newly laid roll on lawns where the lawn rolls are never the same thickness. In many cases the problem can self-rectify with a regular lawn mowing regime matched to the lawn variety. This allows the soft soil and new turf to settle and even out. The high points will continue to be cut back until the correct height is achieved and the area is repaired. Any sunken points should thicken up its thatch layer to become even, If this doesn’t happen, light top dressing should be considered to repair the problem.

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Bluegrass Seed Heads

Bluegrass sends out masses of seed heads usually around May and June each year. Bluegrass seed heads have a tough green stalk topped by a red set of the seeds themselves.

Many people who see these masses of seeds suddenly appearing in their lawns believe that they may be a new infestation of weedy grasses. This usually isn’t true and the difference between weedy grasses and the Kentucky Bluegrass re-seeding itself is easily spotted.

The obvious and best way to spot Kentucky Bluegrass seeds is by the way they look, the red tipped seed stalks are a dead giveaway. The next best way to determine that the lawn is re-seeding is by looking at the sheer numbers of the seed heads themselves. A lawn which is re-seeding itself will do so in abundance – there will literally be thousands or millions of seed stalks across the entire lawn’s surface, whereas if the stalks were of a weedy grass type – the seed heads would be more sporadic in how they are spread over the lawn.

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What Is Lawn Aeration and What Does It Do?

Lawn aeration is a technique that most people will use at some time or another to keep their lawn looking fresh and healthy year after year. However, at the same time, there are also a lot of people are who are still left wondering what lawn aeration is and what it actually does. This is especially true for people who have looking into a lawn maintenance service for the first time. So what is lawn aeration and what does it do? Here is a quick overview of the entire process and why is could help your lawn.

What is Lawn Aeration?

There are several different common techniques that are used to aerate your lawn, they all do essentially same thing. Essentially, portions of your soil is removed in small pieces. While it can be done manually, the most common option is a mechanical aerator of one kind or another. Or example, a core aerator will take a 1/2 inch cores of soil and leave them on your lawn. Normally, these holes are several inches, up to 6 inches apart. In its most basic terms, aeration is a way to give your lawn more air. It is commonly used in situations where the lawn is heavily compacted or heavily used.

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How Does Lawn Iron Benefit Your Yard?

Lawns need certain macro and micro nutrients to grow and thrive. The macro nutrients they need include nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous. Iron is one of the micro nutrients that makes the lawn green. In most parts of the country it is very good to have iron for lawns. Because of the greening effect it has on most lawn it aides in the photosynthesis process. A low that is severely iron deficient will be a pale green or even a yellow color. When you add iron to your lawn it can turn dark green.

Another reason to add iron to your lawn is that it kills moss. In the pacific Northwest, moss can be a really bad problem particularly over the winter. Adding iron to your lawn once in the fall and once in the winter can prevent moss from becoming a major issue. Another thing that can help is to over seed the mossy parts of you lawn with shade seed. Often moss grow the fastest in damp areas of your lawn the receive little to no sunlight. Shade seed can be more resistant to moss infestations particularly during the winter months.

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Mow That Lawn and Kill Those Weeds

Few people realize it, but lawn mowing does much more than just trim the grass. There are many more benefits to lawn mowing than just this simple cause and effect meaning we apply to lawn mowing. Meaning: the lawn grows (cause) – and then we mow it (effect).

Lawn mowing also reduces the effects of many weed types. When the lawn is mowed regularly, we are also removing many weed seeds which would have later developed into even more weeds. But because we mow the lawn regularly, we remove these seeds before they can fully mature and implant into the soil to create more weeds in the future. While lawn mowing does not kill the existing weeds themselves, the practice does stop the future ongoing effects of excessive weeds.

Another great factor when it comes to lawn mowing is that it reduces thatch, while thatch is good and natural for lawns, it does become a problem over time when it becomes too thick and spongy. So mow the lawn regularly and thatch will be reduced, as well as reducing the need to vertimow the lawn as often as would otherwise be necessary.

Lastly, regular lawn mowing will keep the lawn looking green. This happens when the lawn is encouraged to re-grow more green leaf after it has been mowed. When this happens, and you love your lawn, the lawn will not use its energy to spread further into garden beds, but will instead encourage a thick, lush green lawn.

More Lawn Green lawn care information can be found at one of our favorite lawn care sites, Lawn Care Tips and Advice http://www.lawncareadvice.com.au/lawn-care/109-lawn-health-controls-weeds-pests-diseases.html

Get ready for Spring – Part 1

Well folks, Spring is just 1 day away for those of us living in Australia, so it’s time to prepare our lawns for Spring when they will begin growing and thriving once more. So this post is about preparing our lawns for Spring, and another tip to make our lawn green.

Wetting Agents

Wetting agents are put down onto the lawn in the same way fertiliser is applied, feel free to use as often as needed because they can do no damage to your lawn. The purpose of  wetting agents is to allow water to flow more freely throughout the soil profile and to allow the soil to hold onto water for longer periods of time.

Fertiliser

When putting dow lawn fertiliser there are a few important points to remember. These are to only use a good quality lawn fertiliser, put down every 2 months, and never over fertilise because it has the potential to harm your lawn as well as not actually doing anything whatsoever to help the lawn.

Time To Prune Trees

Pruning trees which surround lawns is very important, lawns need as much direct sunlight as they can get, and will become sick or even die if they are subjected to too much shade. prepare for this in advance and put aside a day on the weekend to do some heavy pruning of trees and bushes that surround you lawn.

End of Part 1

That was part one of preparing lawns for Spring, we’ll update with part 2 of this article very soon.

Lawn Update

As I was looking around the web recently – I came across a new website that was very useful, and full of top lawn care advice in our own ever ongoing desire to make our lawn green.

Well to be honest, there is not just one lawn website that I found and would like to share, but several, but not to overload everybody with a bunch of links to other websites, I thought I would share just one today.

It’s an Australian website, but don’t be put off, it’s full of excellent information, and well worth a look, so todays post is just a link and a recommendation. Hey, I’ll even put it into my blogroll.

http://thelawnguide.com.au