A Year-Round Plan for the Perfect Lawn


1 A Year-Round Plan for the Perfect Lawn

When asked to define a perfect lawn, Peter J. Landschoot, the director of the Center for Turfgrass Science at Penn State, sounds like a philosophy professor. "There is no perfect lawn," Landschoot says. "It depends on the user's expectations, the lawn's environment, and the owner's sense of aesthetics and lifestyle. It's personal."

Nonetheless, there remains a committed breed of homeowner eager to give perfection a try. Take David Cira, a 32-year-old paramedic with the New York City Fire Department. He grew up in a condo in Queens but spent countless happy weekends at his grandfather's home nearby, where the lawn was always just so. "Nothing thrilled me more than mowing the lawn and helping in the garden," Cira says. "I was good at it from an early age, and it was a passion I never got away from."

Today, Cira maintains his parents' pristine lawn in Mineola, N.Y. He has taught summer adult education classes on turf care, and he has consulted for a landscape designer. To his friends and neighbors, he's an oracle of lawn wisdom. "With a beautiful lawn, you get more out than you could ever put in," he says.

On the other hand, perhaps you've loved your grass but it hasn't loved you back. We understand. We've been there. Lawn enthusiasts like Cira and Landschoot know it's a year-round relationship, not just a summer fling. That's why we worked with them to develop a four-season guide to the perfect lawn.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

2 Spring

1. Test the Soil

For a healthy lawn, you've got to work your way up from the bottom. So start each spring with a soil test. Grass grows best in soil with a neutral pH (about 6.5 on the pH scale) and a region-appropriate amount of phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium salts, aka potash. "If your soil isn't the greatest from the get-go, you're going to have problems all year," Cira says. You're also going to waste money on fertilizer and other soil amendments that won't work properly because the soil is too acidic or too alkaline. "I know a lot of people who put down lime annually because they feel they should," Landschoot says. "If your soil has a good pH and adequate phosphorus and potassium, all you need to do is put down nitrogen fertilizer every once in a while, which is easy to do and relatively inexpensive." Home soil tests cost around $10, but some nurseries do the test for free.

2. Wake Up Your Lawn

There is no better way to jump-start your lawn than with a proper mowing and edging. That's a given. In the age-old debate about whether it's better to mow before trimming or trim before mowing, Cira puts himself firmly in the latter camp: "This way you mow your trimmings. It looks neater."

A very dense lawn could require a spring dethatching. "This will allow the soil to breathe and permit nitrogen exchange with the atmosphere to get the lawn started off in a really good place," Cira says. He recommends buying or renting a power dethatcher (power rake) instead of breaking your back with a manual rake.

3. Less is More

Cira starts his lawn-care year in April, when soil temperature supports growth but before weeds can get a foothold (it may be February in the southern U.S.). He begins work on a six-week lawn-chemical schedule, starting with a typical step 1 product (fertilizer with a pre-emergent herbicide). Next, instead of the normal step 2 (fertilizer with a weed preventer, or weed-and-feed), he uses a straight fertilizer with high nitrogen content and spot-sprays a separate, selective weed control as necessary. "Weed preventers don't prevent weeds—they kill preexisting weeds—and anytime you add chemicals to the lawn, you stress it," Cira says. "Treat weeds individually. The results are much better, and it's much less expensive."

Don't forget to clean up. Sweep or blow excess fertilizer off walks and driveways and onto the grass; otherwise the chemicals will wash into public waterways.

3 Become a Lawn Journalist

One of Cira's most effective tools to help him keep a lawn looking consistently pristine is a journal. Starting in the spring, he makes notations about weather and rainfall and takes digital images. He also chronicles the products he uses, and battles fought and won—or lost. You can forget a lot just a month later, and you're certainly likely to forget from one year to the next. For example, if you had a lawn problem and bought a product that didn't work, but two years later the same thing happens, you don't want to waste money on that product again. A journal may seem obsessive, but lawns respond best to obsessive behavior.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

5 Summer

1. Water Wisely

As temperatures increase, so does lawn stress. Under normal conditions, a lawn needs about an inch of water a week. But when conditions are hot and dry or, worse, hot and windy, you need to add water to replace what has evaporated. Depending on rainfall, you may need to go from watering intervals of every five or six days to every four or five days. Buy yourself a water gauge. It's especially important for homeowners served by municipal water systems, not wells. "A lot of towns have lower water pressure in the summer because of pools and carwashes," Cira says. "Just 5 psi less can equal 1/2 inch less water per session, so increase its time to compensate."

Water has to have a chance to soak in so it reaches the roots. Each watering session should provide 1 inch of water. Avoid brief watering sessions, which contribute to shallow rooting. For the gearhead there are all manner of toys to eliminate guesswork, such as temperature-sensing weather stations that connect wirelessly to your computer. Yet Cira is partial to simple devices, such as a cup-style rain collector. "The techie stuff can be helpful, but I still like the old-school stuff the best," he says.

2. Tweak Your Lawn Height

Top lawn scientists agree that when the temperature rises, so should your grass. Landschoot says a freshly mowed height of 2 to 2 1/2 inches is a reasonable goal. The old " rule" is still valid: You shouldn't cut more than one-third of the leaf tissue in one mowing. "Every time you mow too low, you're opening up the canopy. This increases weed infestation, since weeds need light to grow," he says. Think of the entire plant system. Tall grass has more plant tissue to hold water, produce chlorophyll, and shade the ground below, keeping it cool and reducing root stress. This also reduces water lost to evaporation, so more is available for the grass.

Cira uses the holidays as a guide to adjust his mower height—up a notch on Memorial Day and again on July 4, down a notch on Labor Day, and back to his starting point by the time Columbus Day rolls around.

3. Battle Bugs

Many homeowners buy a fertilizer with a broad-spectrum insecticide, but Cira isn't a fan. Nationally distributed products are formulated to kill a wide range of common pests, not always those specific to a region. Cira uses a simple organic, low-nitrogen fertilizer and a separate, granular pest control that targets certain bugs. This keeps his lawn healthy while using the least amount of chemicals necessary.

6 Solve Mystery Spots

Don't assume a brown spot is caused by a lack of water or the neighbor's gushing Great Dane. A fungus may be to blame, and this can be difficult or even impossible to treat without professional advice. First, take some high-resolution pictures of the blighted areas and share them with your nursery or a university cooperative extension office. Whatever you do, don't just waltz into a nursery carrying a hunk of diseased lawn. Fungal spores that break loose from it can spread. If the nursery says a sample is okay, it will also tell you how to contain it.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

8 Autumn

1. Snatch the Thatch



2. Go to Seed



3. Turn Over a Leaf



9 Pick Up Sticks

Autumn would be easier if leaves were all that fell, but it's also the season of seedpods, branches, nutshells, husks, and rotten, unpicked fruit that has fallen out of the trees. Careful tree pruning can reduce the problem but not eliminate it. You're going to need something more powerful than your handheld leaf blower to deal with this bulky, prickly mess. Backpack and walk-behind leaf blowers are far better than handheld blowers for moving difficult debris off the lawn or at least into piles that can be gathered. If you can afford it, consider a pro-quality lawn vacuum (typically $900 to $1500).

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below