Lawn Brown Spots
They look like brown stains on your nice green grass. Unsightly or downright ugly. They can be caused by a few things, and prevented to a degree too. There are a couple of lawn maintenance tricks for this.
If your yard faces the pavement or borders a public right of way then a common cause is dog urine. Dogs and their owners seem to think peeing on your lawn is okay. Prolonged exposure to urine will cause your grass to go brown and die off. The easiest way to prevent this is to fence the area off with a low fence or catch the dog and owner in the act. Politely remind them that a bill for lawn repairs can be expensive to dog owners…
Obstructions just underneath the soil can prevent your lawn developing proper roots. The easiest way to diagnose this kind of problem is to push through the grass with a long screwdriver and see if you it anything. If there is something under there then you have to dig it out and replant the turf.
Over feeding and over watering also causes brown spots on your lawn. Just like us if we eat or drink too much it affects our health, grass suffers the same fate. Too much nitrogen or water can cause the grass to discolor. Too much water can also be a problem if drainage is an issue. Clay soils suffer from this a lot, where water just sits on the surface as the soil underneath is too compacted to allow it to soak through.
Lawn Strategy
Would you believe there is such a thing as a Lawn Strategy? Well there is when you run a lawn service.
It’s based on the planning ahead of your lawn care to ensure it is ready for heavier use in good weather.
For instance, all plants balance their root mass with their shoot mass. Meaning if you cut your grass too short then the roots will only grow to the same length. This will decrease the plants ability to reach water underground.
Ideally for the hotter weather like here on Space Coast you need between 1″ and 3″ to maintain a healthy plant or lawn. If you want your lawn to be short enough to practice your golf on then you will need to water it regularly. The best time to do this is at dusk. Then the water doesn’t get evaporated and has the opportunity to sink into the ground before the next day.
You also need to consider your fertilizer. An iron rich one will give you a nice deep green, while being rich in nitrogen will allow you to avoid a too lush top growth. Magnesium forms part of the chlorophyll which allows the plant to turn sunlight into energy. There are also organic fertilizers which will achieve the same aim.
Fertilizing your lawn little and often will make my job of cutting much easier and give you a much better end result. Once the fertilizer runs out then the plant dies back a little. Doing it little and often will minimize this effect, giving you a much better result.
So the site is up and ready for Spring
I got the site up and everything is pretty much ready to go for this spring. It’s pretty slow at the moment, not many yards need attention in the middle of Winter…I guess it’s technically just the start of Winter but whatever.
I’m thinking about expanding some of my services next year beyond trimming, mowing, and fertilizing. Tree trimming would be nice except I would probably need to get some kind of special insurance for that, I doubt my current insurance covers anything that extreame. Depending on how many leads this site generates for me I may get into that.