Ways to Reinvigorate Your Lawn
Having a lawn is pretty much a staple for many homeowners in Victoria BC. However, maintaining your lawn and garden can be costly if you hire a landscaper or gardener. Here are some things that you can easily do yourself from a professional landscaper.
Dethatching
Thatch is a layer or dead and living organic matter that often looks like yellowish grass. It’s found above the soil and below your green blades of grass. As a layer, it forms a protective barrier that helps regulate temperature changes as well as retain water in the soil. However, when too much of it forms it can encourage disease in your lawn as well as suffocate the soil and roots below. To deal with this, one needs to dethatch their lawn. Signs of too much thatch include feeling your lawn mower sinking into the ground a bit more than usual or anytime the thatch is 1” or thicker. A simple garden rake is often enough though there are more specialized rakes available specifically for dethatching. This really needs to be done once a year and can be done during the fall when you’re raking leaves. As it goes it’s not particularly difficult to carry out as you don’t need special tools and once a year is not bad. Remember, you are not trying to remove all the thatch. You want to leave about half an inch of thatch as some thatch is good for the grass.
Aeration
Plants like animals need oxygen and other gas exchanges to live. This rule extends to the structures above and below the soil. Roots that cannot breathe will die and rot, causing the entire plant to fail. As a result, it’s important to keep soils aerated sufficiently so that this does not happen. A healthy lawn is well aerated and allows the grass roots to be healthy from adequate gas exchanges. Aerating a lawn once a year then is recommended in order to keep your turf happy and healthy. A machine can be rented from local rentals that will essentially create 3-4” holes in your lawn. The best time to do this is sometime in Spring as it allows the grass to quickly recover during its growing season. What these holes will do of course is to allow a lot of surface area where the soil can exchange gases with the air. The tubes of soil, also known as cores, should be left on the lawn, where they will quickly break down and rejoin the lawn soil and keep it healthy.
Fertilizer
While many landscaping services will offer fertilizing services, we actually do not recommend this as there is some evidence to suggest that the chemical leeching can have adverse effects on the surrounding ecosystems. Since not all the fertilizer are used by the lawn, much of it ends up in the ground water, in the local streams and lakes, and of course the surrounding ocean. They can cause issues such as algae blooming due to introducing abnormally high amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous to bodies of water. A recommendation we have is to leave cut clippings of grass on your lawn rather than taking them away. This allows much of the nutrients in that plant matter to return to your lawn rather than leaving your property.
Final Word
These are three of the most common and main services landscaping companies in Victoria will offer as part of their lawn and garden services. In fact, they are easy to do yourself and won’t break the bank. As they are mostly once a year types of activities, there is no need to have a subscription service nor be a painful addition to your lawn maintenance schedule. However, doing these things will have a very positive effect on the health of your lawn and is well worth it.