Eco-Friendly Ways to Achieve a Healthy Lawn

Release date : 22. September 2020 Shana Yuri

The health and general appearance of your lawn can say a lot about your attitude towards homeowners. A lawn that looks healthy, lively and well cared for is often an indication that it has been well cared for, while a lawn that is discoloured, weedy or badly mowed gives the impression that it is lazy and careless.

However, a healthy lawn often requires considerable resources (both natural and financial) and not all homeowners agree with this approach to lawn care.

If you are looking for environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional lawn care, you will certainly appreciate the following guidelines.

1. Avoidance of tilting

An alarming percentage of residential lawns are regularly mowed. In order to reduce the time needed to care for the lawn, many homeowners regularly cut the grass as short as possible.

Although their logic is certainly understandable, excessive mowing can greatly reduce the resistance of a lawn. The shorter the blades of grass, for example, the less able they are to store and absorb moisture.

Grass that is too short usually needs much more water than grass of ideal length. Therefore, look at the recommended length of your grass and adjust your mower’s settings accordingly.

Although this may mean mowing your lawn a little more often than you would like, it will help to keep your lawn healthy and reduce your water consumption.

2. Rain advantage

Many grasses need water on a regular basis to stay in top condition. Although the exact amount varies per grass species, most lawns require 1 to 1 ½ inches of water per week, especially during the flowering period.

However, if you live in an area where it rains all the time, you only need to water manually once in a while. As over-watering can have a number of negative effects on the long-term wellbeing of your lawn, there is no point in wasting water if Mother Nature is already generous with it.

Conversely, if you cannot rely on rain to feed your grass, you can prevent water loss by investing in a reliable automatic irrigation system.

By setting the system to deliver a certain amount of water at a given time, you can ensure that your lawn does not overflow and that water consumption is kept to a minimum.

If you generally don’t like watering your lawn, consider replacing your existing lawn with a drought tolerant variety. Certain types of herbs are able to maintain a fresh and healthy appearance, even if they require little care.

Switching to drought-tolerant grass not only minimises the use of natural resources but also saves a lot of time.

3. Annual ventilation

Annual aeration can be a blessing for the long-term health of your lawn. For those of you who don’t know him: The aeration consists of perforating the soil with small holes to break the soil compaction.

This allows the soil to breathe efficiently and creates the conditions for growth. For the warm season it is best to air in early spring or summer, when the soil has thawed.

Cool seasonal grasses can also react better to fall aeration. Since waving is a specialised task, people who have no experience in this field should turn to professional choppers.

4. Use your clips

Instead of throwing away the clippings, why don’t you just do the work? Mowing a freshly mown lawn can be an effective way to promote shade, nutrients and healthy growth.

However, there are some reservations. First of all, you should never use wet clippings in this way, as this can lead to agglomeration. (Also, as a rule, you should not mow your lawn when it is wet.)

Secondly, if your lawn suffers from an illness, mowing it will almost certainly make the situation worse.

Keeping your lawn healthy and lively requires a lot of work and follow-up. However, this does not mean that caring for the lawn should exhaust your resources or deprive you of your leisure time.

In addition, homeowners who want to reduce their carbon footprint will be pleased to hear that sustainability can go hand in hand with responsible lawn care.

So if you want to grow a healthy lawn without harming the environment, make sure you use it properly.