Summer Lawn Care Tips
Josh Gray

Summer is just around the corner, and your lawn could probably
use a little maintenance before the summer season of backyard
BBQs and swimming in the pool. So what are you doing now to get
your lawn ready? Lawn care is often feared as a difficult and
time intensive process, but with a few guidelines and tips, you
can easily have a healthy green lawn in time for the first
backyard party of the season.

First of all, if you can spare a minute of your time, don't hire
a lawn care "specialist" or professional landscaper. Buying your
own lawn care products is cheap and easy, with hundreds of
vendors offering products online and in Do-It-Yourself stores. A
wide variety of products such as weed controllers to fertilizers
can be found online, and usually can be found at reasonable
prices, especially when you do a little online coupon searching.

Starting off on the right foot is important to reviving your lawn
after winter. Fertilizer is the key to ensuring strong healthy
growth of the grass in your yard. Fertilizing the grass does more
than just make it green. Of course it will make it grow too, but
lots of things happen when you fertilize. Fertilizer makes the
seed germinate faster, and get started out of the ground. After
the grass has a good start fertilizer will make the grass get
thicker and send off beneficial chemicals like Rhizomes, Stolons,
and Tillers all making the grass thicker and healthier.

What most people want to know about fertilizing is - how much and
when? Typically, you want to fertilize 4 times each season,
spread 60 days apart. Start in early spring approximately 30 days
before the growing season begins in your area, continuing through
the growing season until fall. Spring fertilizing gets the grass
off to a fast start giving you that rich green color everyone
wants. A word of warning though, don't use too much fertilizer,
follow the listed guidelines on the bag.

Mowing is the most misunderstood part of lawn care, and the most
often incorrectly performed part of lawn care. Far too many
people will set their mowers too low or "scalp" the lawn. How
many times have you spent time mowing your grass in hopes of a
beautiful result only to end up with brown spots? Cutting too
much off the top leads to thinned out grass, and shallow root
systems.

Now once you have achieved the perfect lawn, you must do regular
maintenance to prevent it from going back to being a pasture.
Spend a little time and money and keep it watered and you will
keep the lush grass you spent your hard-earned money and time on.
The ideal way to water your lawn is with an Automatic Underground
Sprinkler System. This way the watering is done every day that it
needs it, you don't have to drag hoses, you don't waste water
from over watering, and you get all of the lawn watered, not just
where you happen to set the sprinkler. If you implement this type
of sprinkler system, make sure to water shrubbery and annuals
separate from the lawn. If you applied the same amount of water
on your landscape as gets put on the lawn you would surely kill
some plants from over watering.

Now that you're ready to care for your lawn, you'll need to get
your supplies. Lawn care products can be found at many local
gardening centers, or through many online merchants. Buying
gardening supplies online is growing in popularity, and made even
more economical by online coupons and discounts. For coupons on
everything from fertilizers to lawn tools and equipment, check
out CouponChief.com and easily save yourself some big bucks.
Spend the extra cash on your first big BBQ of the summer and
invite all your neighbors over to drool over your well manicured,
lush green lawn.

Copyright © 2005 Josh Gray
Josh Gray, President of UC San Diego's Gardens Club, is a
consultant to www.CouponChief.com  This online coupon website
provides free coupons and discount codes to many favorite
gardening websites on their home and garden coupons page.


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