Tips For Achieving A Great Looking Lawn, Without Being Fake Grass
A lawn looks best when it is trimmed and well maintained. Maintaining your lawn is not just trimming. Over cutting or undercutting of the grass of your lawn can affect the growth rate of the grass and the overall health of the lawn.
The Ideal Length Of Grass Is Related To Grass Species
- There are many varieties of lawn grass. Some of them are:
| Kentucky bluegrass (Poa Pratensis): It has Fine to medium texture. It works best in well drained, fertile soil, pH 6.0 to 7.0. Used in Lawns, athletic fields, general purpose turf. The mowing height is around 1.5 to 2.5 inches |
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| Red Fescue (Festuca rubra L. subsp. rubra): It has fine texture. It can be used in Well-drained to dry soils pH 5.5 to 6.5, 0.5. It has no tolerance to wet soils. It can grow in hostile soil such as infertile, dry, acid soils. The mowing height is around 2 to 2.5 inches |
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Tall Fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb): It has fine texture. It can grow in moist fertile soil with pH 4.7 to 8.5. It has higher tolerance to all soils. It is used in lawn transition areas, slopes and banks, near waterways. The mowing height is around 2 to 3 inches |
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Care Of Lawns And Trimming
A well-developed lawn has to be nicely maintained to make it look good. Depending upon the lawn grass, the blade height has to be maintained. A 2” lawn blade looks better but effort required to keep it short is enormous. Lawnmowers help home gardener to reduce the efforts of keeping the lawn trim.
When you are thinking of mowing your lawns, you can keep the following in your mind.
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Do not give a marine crew cut to your lawns. If you do that, there is reduced surface for photosynthesis. It is the factory for making food for the lawn. By reducing the lawn to a marine cut, you will have less workers in the food factory and even when the raw material (sunlight) is available for making food, there will be no food and hence the growth of lawn will be restricted. The crew cut grass will definitely not survive harsh winter.Therefore, mow high at least before the winter.
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The general rule is to cut a third of the blade. If you have a 3” long blade, cut only a 1” portion in a single pass. If you wish to cut it further arrange one more pass. Cutting in a single pass more than the third pf blade has an effect of pulling the blade instead of cutting it,
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Allow the cut grass in place when you cut a third of blade. By doing so, you help the grass in fixing nitrogen to the soil. This acts like fertilizer to the grass
- As the cut grass decomposes, enough nitrogen is generated to fulfill half the requirement of the growing grass. Your fertilizer requirement goes down by that ratio. The cut grass left in place also stimulates the biological activity. The increased organic matter will increase the growth rate of grass and it acts as water retention mass.
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Why You Should Not Cut Grass Too Low
The depth of lawn grass tends to be shallow. If you cut the grass close to ground, you reduce the chances of its survival. Close cut grass might require more water for growth and if you give more water, the blades of grass might not spring back from ground and thus, there is a tendency for the grass to die out once you cut it close to the ground. Therefore, never cut the grass close to the ground. In addition, remember that grass should be never, repeat never, be cut close to ground particularly before winter. The harsh winter following a close cut is death knell for the grass.
What To Do To The Cut Leaves
As has been said already, leave the cut leaves in place, if you have cut a third of its length. It will promote organic activity and will act as fertilizer. If the grass had grown too much and you have a fair amount of grass left, rake it up and take it to a compost pit. Allow it to be made into manure and then when it becomes a brown powder, take it out and apply to your lawn just as you would apply the fertilizer. Broadcasting (throwing by hand a small portion at a time) is the best method of applying fertilizer.
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