3 Steps to Naturally Heal Your Lawn
Whether you’ve just moved into your home or need to preserve your lawn during extremely cold or warm weather, you’ll need to know how specifically nurture your grass. Here are a few practical tips for ensuring that the soil is healthy and the lawn is lush and green.
Take Away Weeds and Thatches
It’s best to remove thatches and weeds from your lawn during the spring and fall seasons, when your lawn is most fertile. Thatch is comprised of roots and stems that have decomposed and rest near the surface of your soil.
To determine whether you have a weed or thatch problem, dig up a tiny section of turf that reaches a few inches deep into your lawn. If the soil’s spongy lawyer is about an inch thick when compressed, it means you need to de-thatch your lawn.
To de-thatch, you’ll need to expose the soil between your old grass and get rid of weed colonies with a grubbing hoe for effective results.
If this process is too demanding then you may choose to seek out the help of Vancouver lawn installation specialists, like those at Western Turf Farms Ltd, to get professional help with your lawn.
Adjust Your Soils pH
To restore your lawn, you’ll have to readjust the pH balance of the soil. A professional soil testing service will need to come out to your home to test your soil. If the pH balance is low, it’s best to add more lime to the soil. If you test the soil yourself, be sure to adhere to the test table so you’ll know exactly how much lime to apply. To prevent further damage to the grass, don’t apply lime and fertilizer that has been mixed in the same spreader. The chemical interaction will cause the nitrogen that your grass needs to grow to be released in the air.
If you need to raise the pH of your soil, it may be necessary to amend the lime content in the soil. You can do this by adding natural items like ground oyster shells to the soil. Agricultural ground limestone is also safe to use on a lawn that needs a pH balance. Both dolomitic and calcitic are options for your lawn. Both of these varieties contain calcium carbonate, which provides nutrition for your grass and neutralizes soil that is too acidic.
Increase Microbes and Organic Matter
Applying fertilizer to your lawn won’t be very effective if the soil doesn’t have a substantial microbe population. Billions of microbes per each handful of soil is ideal. In order for your soil to thrive, your soil should have 2 to 5 percent of organic materials, according to YardCare.com. These microscopic organisms digest clippings of grass, as well as dead roots and stems that are withering or old. Microbes also deliver nutrients to living blades of grass.
To further revitalize your yard, apply a top dressing made of compost and topsoil. Aerating the lawn after application will incorporate microbes into your soil without interrupting the growth of your grass.