Everybody loves having a lush, vibrant yard to enjoy, it can provide a space for family fun and makes for a beautiful backdrop enhancing your home, but did you know that having a healthy lawn also benefits our environment? Having a healthy lawn is an important part of both preserving and protecting soil, air and water.
Importance Of Having A Healthy Lawn
A healthy lawn that is full of grass provides the most effective groundcover to prevent erosion, and it increases the infiltration of water into the soil. A dense lawn significantly slows down runoff, this reduces the capacity to carry sediment or other soil matter, reducing the erosive effect of fast moving water.
Turf grass has a root system that is high in soil microorganism activity. When soil contaminants come in contact with this root system, these contaminants are readily degraded and broken down, therefore there is less opportunity for these materials to reach and affect groundwater.
Benefits Of Shade-Filled Areas
Having a yard with a healthy lawn, trees and shrubs can also help regulate summer air temperatures. Shading and evapotranspiration can reduce air temps from 7-14 degrees which can directly result in lowering your air conditioning costs.
3 Important Steps to Create a Healthy Lawn
1. Don’t Water Too Much – This may seem counterintuitive, but watering your lawn too frequently or for too long at a time can be detrimental to its health. Grass only needs about 1″ of water per week to thrive. Watering your lawn once to twice per week is usually sufficient but this can be weather-dependent. During a hot summer drought, you may need to water more often. But if it’s a rainy spring, there may be weeks where you don’t need to water at all.
2. Use Fertilizer Correctly – Not only is it easy to overwater your lawn, it’s also easy to apply too much fertilizer. To create a lush green lawn in Minnesota, it’s best to add fertilizer four times per year. Fertilize your lawn early in spring and again later in spring to help it recover from the cold winter. Fertilize for a third time in summer to help your grass endure through drought. Then, fertilize one last time in early fall, after the first frost, to give your lawn the strength it needs to survive in dormancy during winter.
3. Mow at the Right Height – The ideal height for a well-tended lawn in Minnesota is 3 inches tall. At this height, grass can root deeply and get the nutrients it needs without being so tall as to become ungainly. When mowing your lawn, a good rule of thumb is to cut off no more than ⅓ of your grass blades. Chopping off more than that can harm the health of your lawn and make it easier for weeds to grow. Because of this, you should wait until your grass is about 4.5″ tall before mowing.
Twin Cities Trusted Lawn Care Services
Here in Minnesota we value our summer months since we know that the time will pass by way too fast. However, this season is a great time to get outside and enjoy the beauty that nature has to offer. Maintaining a healthy yard at your home offers more than a beautiful place to relax, but also help make the world a better place to live!
If you’re wanting to start your spring on the right step by learning more about how to create a healthy and sustainable lawn and landscaping area, contact the professionals at Alex’s Lawn & Turf today! Our lawn care experts will help you develop the perfect yard that you’re looking for.