The Perfect Lawn
Establishing a beautiful lawn is not easy. I will be the first person to tell you, weed free lawns take time and patients. When you look at the different lawns, you will notice the homeowners that understand, the homeowners that do not, and it might cross your mind that weeds are not shy. Weeds come up and do not go away. There are a couple of tricks to getting weeds to disappear, depending on the type. Dandelions are the biggest of the weed problems. You can see this first hand by driving down the street in early April or May, depending on where you live.
Now how do I get rid of them, the magic question asked? Once the weeds are in eye sight, spraying the weeds works the best. I use a special sprayer attachment called an “Ortho Sprayer”, for the garden hose. You can buy this sprayer at your local hardware store for twelve dollars. Fill this neat little sprayer up with Weed-B-Gon (Scotts product) weed killer. Make sure the dial on the sprayer is set to two or two and half, so it will just kill the Dandelions. Set incorrectly could hurt your grass or not kill the Dandelions at all. If Weed-B-Gon does not work, there is brush killer you can spray down. If your lawn is that badly consumed by weeds, brush killer does a great job at killing weeds.
Before seeding you are going to want to spread down some 10-10-10, 12-12-12, or 15-15-15 fertilizer. Test your soil (Testing kits can be bought at your local garden store) before using, so you can control the amount of phosphorus you are spreading down. Controlling phosphorus is especially important, if you are a lake community home owner. I found this out after talking with a lawn care specialist who stopped by my house, thank you for this advice. Phosphorus promotes algae and weed growth, and kills fish too. In the spring time, put down your straight hundred percent weed killer before the soil temperature reaches fifty degrees. Reason, to catch the soil temperature early, so no seed germination happens. After this step, wait a couple of weeks, test your soil, and put your 10-10-10, 12-12-12, or 15-15-15 straight fertilizer down on your lawn. Periodically test your soil throughout the season, and fertilize again if needed. GrubEx (Scotts product) grub control has worked fine for me for years. Correct time of GrubEx application depends on your area.
For seeding I recommend buying some hundred percent Fescue grass, and use a spreader to spread your grass seed onto your yard. Reason for Fescue, takes the least amount of water, and is very hardy to traffic. This is the grass used on football fields. After spreading, rake the seed to make soil seed contact, this step is very important. After raking, water daily, keep moist until grass is about two inches, and then cut with lawn mower.
Folks walking and driving by will gaze at the beauty of your yard for years to come.
