Is this your first time living in a house with a lawn or maybe, you’re not used to taking care of a lawn in this climate?
It can be challenging to maintain a lawn due to our Florida sun and warm weather. Suddenly, you’ll find that your turf has turned yellow or brown instead of green. It even becomes more difficult to make it look lush during the scorching summer.
You might be thinking that you should hire someone to make your lawn look green again. But you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to maintain your lawn. It doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult if you know what to do and products to use.
Before calling for help, here are some ways you can keep your lawn green.
The key is proper irrigation
The best time to water is in the early morning or late evening. If you water during the late morning until afternoon, you would just be losing water to evaporation. But in the summer, we can conserve water by taking advantage of afternoon showers. You can use a rain barrel to capture rainwater to use for your lawn and garden.
This product can hold 50 gallons of water. It has an aluminum screen to keep out insects and debris. It comes with a spigot where you can hook up a hose to make watering your lawn easier.
For those who have sprinklers, make sure it is strategically placed that it reaches most of your lawn. It should be watering your grass and plants, not your driveway or sidewalk.
You should also check your local watering ordinances, if any, before setting up your irrigation system.
Be careful not to overwater
Cut back on the water during rainy months to avoid turf disease or insect infestation. Your lawn is more susceptible to infections when it is overwatered.
Don't follow a strict watering program so you don’t overwater your turf. You’ll find out if your lawn is thirsty in its leaf blades. If it’s folded in half, it’s trying to conserve water – which means it’s time to quench its thirst. If it wilts, turns a bluish-gray color, or your footprints remain visible on the grass, then you need to start watering it.
Some turfs turn light green at the end of the day because it’s dry after being under the Florida sun for too long. As long as it’s not brown or dead, then your grass will look better after it gets watered.
Use a turf builder
In addition to watering, use a turf builder to keep your lawn green and healthy.
This product can do three jobs – kill, prevent, and feed. It can kill weeds and other plants such as dandelions, clover, chickweed, and other broadleaf weeds. It will also prevent crabgrass for 16 weeks. Use this to make your lawn look green and thick. This turf builder works on different types of grasses such as Bermuda grass, Zoysia grass, Bahia grass, Centipede grass and more.
If you want to learn more about these grasses, here are the common types of grass found in Florida.
Place topsoil on dry areas
For barren areas in your lawn, put some topsoil on it so that the grass can grow back.
If there are sandy or dry spots on your lawn, cover it with topsoil. This is used as a top dressing to fill holes in lawns. It will loosen heavy clay soil and help retain moisture in light soils.
Don’t forget to fertilize
Fertilizers are important to provide nutrients to your lawn. Aside from feeding your lawn, it will also help your grass fight off some common lawn pests.
This product is a dry mix fertilizer that you can add to water. Use a hose to apply it all over your lawn. The whole bag can cover one acre and since it comes in a resealable foil-lined bag, you can simply seal it after use.
Make sure not to over-fertilize since salt will build up in the soil and make your grass look yellow or brown. You will also need to check if there are any ordinance guidelines for fertilizing your lawn.
Handpick weeds before it spreads
Before you use weed control, handpick the first weeds that you see on your lawn. If it has spread already, you can use a weed killer to easily remove the weed.
You can also add mulch to reduce the growth of weeds. At the same time, it will also make your soil moist. When spreading mulch, make sure not to pile it on tree trunks or plant stems to avoid rotting.
Mow your lawn properly
Let your grass grow higher to develop a more durable root system which makes your lawn more resistant to drought. Mow your grass properly since if it is too short, it will use its energy to grow new leaf blades instead of crowding out weeds.
During the summer, keep an eye on your grass since it tends to grow faster because of the rainy afternoons. You should let your grass grow but not too high. You still need to keep it under control and trim it at the right height so that lawn pests won’t find a place to hide.
Hit it with a pesticide
It’s annoying to find pests in your lawn after your hard work. There are various pests that would come back to feast on your lawn. You can look for pesticides to kill a specific insect or find a product that can kill different species.
Here’s a pesticide that can be used on a chinch bug, billbug, sod webworm, cutworm, grub, ant, cricket, earwig, flea, roach, tick, and more. The great thing about this product is that it kills insects above and below the surface of your lawn.