As our lawns begin to green up, the quest begins to have this year's lawn be more of a credit to our homes than last year's. After all, the cultural ideal is the perfect green carpet surrounding our homes. There is no part of working with our landscapes that is more confused by myth and hype than lawn care. If you take the Lawn Care industry quite literally, this is the litany of things you will have to do: feed, weed, water and mow. If your grass isn't as perfect as you've been programmed to expect you must seed, sod or renovate, whichever you can stand to tackle or afford to have done. If the choice is to renovate (seemingly the easiest) the chore may include the need to dethatch and aerate. If you aren't already exhausted from reading this, you've a stronger constitution than I. There are roughly 20,000,000 acres of home lawns in America. In 1991 the National Gardening Association estimated that retail sales of residential lawn care supplies and equipment was $6.9 billion dollars, while the Lawn Care Institute estimates that lawn and turf maintenance altogether is a $25 billion a year industry. With these numbers you can easily see why so much advertising and "helpful" advice is available from the industry. It is much to their benefit for us to crave an ever better lawn. I like the look of an evenly cut green open space too, but I don't believe that most of the recommended practices are necessary or even reasonable in some cases. If you did everything that is recommended, you would have to make a career of lawn care. Here's my take on managing a lawn as if it were for your enjoyment not your enslavement.
It is all a matter of timing and choices. Make the right choices, choose the right times and you can use your saved hours doing things that are more fun. There are two basic types of lawn, those that are blends of grass species and those that are a single species. In our climate that single species is usually bluegrass. Choosing to have a low-maintenance mixed grass lawn instead of a high-maintenance bluegrass one is the single best time saving move in lawn care.
If you have to establish that lawn either by over-seeding and renovation or starting from scratch with seed or sod, the best time to do it is in the fall not the spring. Choose spring, and you will be the lawn's slave all summer. You must not let it dry out and you will have to fight the weeds by hand. In fall, the cooling weather favors the germinating grass and the weeds are beginning their fall decline. Cooler weather makes keeping the new grass watered easier too.
