Category: free lawn care help

Make Summer Gear Last

Basic preventative measures keep lawn tools working longer

Nothing can give you the summer blues like a flat tire when you want to take a family bike ride or having to replace patio furniture in midseason because it’s falling apart.

Here are a few basic preventative measures that could help your gear last longer – and help you avoid mishaps.

Lawn and Garden
The lawnmower, a staple of summer, greatly benefits from maintenance, said home dpot operations manager jesse elizondo.

After each use, let your mower cool down and then rinse off grass and other debris that could oxidize on the blades. If it’s a gas mower and it will sit for more than a few weeks, also drain its fuel. The same goes for any gas-powered yard equipment.

Also change the spark plugs once a season and keep the blades sharp to protect the grass and avoid making motor working harder than necessary.

Hands tools need care too. Some people swear by vaseline to keep blades in smooth operation, while others store hand tools in a mix of sand and vegetable oil.

Article originally by Sarah Skidmore, the Associate Press.

Test Your Lawns pH Level

Dandelions love a pH of about 7.5. Grass loves a pH of about 6.5. So if your pH is 7.5 or higher, your grass will probably never beat out the dandelion. Lower the pH to 6.5 and your grass has the advantage!

Be sure to have your pH tested professionally. The kits that you can buy in the store will often give you the wrong information. I once spent $18 on a pH meter that told me that my lawn pH was 6.0 when it was really 7.8. So I should have added gardeners sulfur, but instead I added lime!.

If you’re going to buy a pH tester, be prepared to spend around $85 for the tester and the calibration solutions. A long time ago I bought the Oakton pHTestr 2 plus 4.0 and 7.0 solutions. I think most folks will wanna keep their $85 and just pack some soil samples to the local extension office.

A little side note: a dusting of lime on the soil surface has been shown, in most cases, to nearly double earthworm reproduction.

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10 Steps to Become CrabGrass Free

  1. Like all weeds, the number one crabgrass prevention is maintaining a healthy lawn. Make sure that your beautiful grass is thick enough to cover your yard. Without sunlight reaching the soil, crabgrass can’t take root.
  2. Don’t mow your grass too low as crabgrass will take advantage of the increased sunlight at dirt-level. Two and a half to three inches should be about right.
  3. Try to remove crabgrass as soon as you see it. Crabgrass is so fertile that an innocuous appearance can quickly turn into a full-blown grass patch.
  4. Mulch the soil after removing crabgrass. This helps ensure that whatever roots remain don’t take seed and ruin your lawn grass later.
  5. Heavily water the area you are weeding before removing the crabgrass. The dampness will loosen up the dirt and make removal easier.
  6. Make sure you get the entire root. Crabgrass is a tenacious weed. In the right conditions, its roots will grow wherever they touch soil.
  7. Only use chemicals as a last resort. A herbicide that only kills crabgrass doesn’t exist, so other plants will always be vulnerable to chemical treatment.
  8. Pre-emergent chemicals do exist, but it is hard to decide when is best to apply these preventive chemicals. If you apply them too early, their effects will fade, and the crabgrass might take hold later. If you apply the chemicals too late, the crabgrass may already be there.
  9. Always use gloves to protect your hands when gardening, especially when using chemicals,
  10.  Be reasonable. Crabgrass is difficult to ever completely root out, but you can get most of it and enjoy a beautiful grass lawn

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Lawn Grubs, They Eat Your Lawns Roots

Diagnose the Problem
First, you have to make sure you actually have lawn grubs. If you have moles, it’s pretty much a guarantee you have grubs. If you don’t have moles, but patches of your lawn are dying and easily pulled up (thanks to severely damaged roots) that’s a definite sign too. To make sure, dig into your soil a little. If you see small white creatures that look like larvae, you have grubs.

Treat at the Right Time
You may want to treat lawn grubs immediately, but if you go after them too early in the spring, you’ll spend a lot of time and money without killing many grubs. Around June, lawn grubs hit the stage where they go to town on your lawn, but also where they’re most susceptible to insecticide. That’s the time to treat your lawn.

Go Deep
Lawn grubs can be tenacious little creatures. To really kill them, you have to make sure the insecticide gets down to where they’re hiding out. If you treat your lawn and aerate it, the poison will penetrate down to the levels it needs to. Wearing spike shoes will do the trick too (although you should avoid the spike shoes if you already have compacted soil).

You may have to repeat your insecticide application, but once you’ve taken care of the lawn grub problem, you’ll be both grub- and mole-free.

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The Perfect Garden Tool for Small Jobs

Often when gardening you can find yourself transplanting very small seedlings, or trying to plant in small pots or tight containers.

When this happens, a regular garden trowel is just too large, and makes too big a hole.

Well if you haven’t tried one, use a bulb trowel, also called a transplant trowel.

It’s the perfect tool for making small, narrow holes in areas with little space and it makes just the right sized holes for small seedlings.

This type of trowel has a longer and narrower blade than an ordinary garden trowel and it holds a sharp edge, which makes it very easy to use.

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