Your Ultimate Guide to Maintaining a Healthy Lawn

Most house-proud homeowners aspire to have a healthy lawn their family can enjoy. A lawn free of prickles, brown spots, weeds, and unsightly lumps and bumps. It might not seem achievable, but it can be.

Take note of these tips for maintaining a healthy green lawn below. You may then be better positioned to achieve that bowling green-like grass you always wanted.

Focus on Soil Health

Just as a house is only as sound as its foundation, grass is only as healthy as the soil it grows in. Before you do anything else, purchase a soil test to find out about your soil’s health and whether there’s anything you need to do to improve it.

If your soil’s pH level is less than 7.0, it’s acidic. If it’s more than 7.0, it’s alkaline. When soil is too acidic, you can add lime to neutralise it. If it’s too alkaline, peat moss, compost, or sulphur may solve that problem and give you a healthy foundation to work from.

Establish a Healthy Watering Routine

Watering can be a crucial requirement, whether you have new lawns or insufficient rainfall to keep your grass in tip-top shape. However, there is a right and wrong way to go about this process that you may like to keep in mind.

Always water early in the morning when the sun rises. This gives your lawn enough time to absorb the water before the heat of the day evaporates it. Water too late, and the leaf blades may not dry out enough before night falls.

How much water you apply may also make a difference to lawn health. If you’re only watering enough to moisten the grass itself, your lawn will develop shallow root systems that put it at risk of dying if you’re not there to water it. The more water you apply, the deeper the roots and the more self-sufficient it can be.

Achieve the Right Mowing Height

Mowing the lawns is not everyone’s favourite pastime, which is why many New Zealanders leave this job to the experts. However, if you intend to do it yourself, it’s essential to heed the following advice.

Never remove any more than a third of the lawn’s height during any cut. Your grass can become stressed with too much loss of its leaf blade, leading to damage that can be challenging to undo.

Mow your lawns frequently and consistently to achieve a height of around two centimetres in spring and three centimetres in summer. If you mow your lawns too short, your grass may develop short roots, which promote weed growth.

Fertilise Your Lawn

A healthy, lush, green lawn doesn’t happen by chance. It happens when you prioritise your lawn health and feed it fertiliser as part of your maintenance schedule. Fertiliser can encourage healthy grass growth year-round, and it’s something you only have to do twice-yearly in autumn and spring. 

Use a chemical or organic lawn fertiliser product and spread it evenly over your lawn with a lawn spreader. You can then water it to help it sink in. Alternatively, you can purchase a liquid fertiliser that attaches to your hose for easy watering.

Aerate Your Soil

Once again, your grass is only as healthy as your soil. If you don’t believe your soil is helping with grass growth, consider aeration. Small holes in your lawn may make it easier for the roots to access water, air, and fertiliser – all the necessities for growth.

Control the Weeds

Weeds generally have a chance to take hold of your lawn when it’s too thin or weak. Once you have healthy, lush lawns, they are unlikely to be a problem.

Once you identify the type of weed you have in your lawn, you can purchase specific products for those weed types. For example, if you’re trying to combat thistles, you can apply a herbicide product to individual cut stems about two centimetres above the soil.

At first, weed control can be time-consuming, but that’s unlikely to be the case once your lawn health has improved.

Give Pests Their Marching Orders

Lawn pests can be just as destructive as weeds, with beetles, crickets, grass grubs, and caterpillars all loving your lawn as much as you do. Fortunately, you aren’t stuck with them.

Identify the pests you’re struggling with and apply a product that’s designed to target those specific insects. The pesticide product you use and application instructions can depend on the insect in question.

Maintaining a Healthy Lawn Doesn’t Have to Be Hard

There’s no denying that lawn care can be daunting when you’re unfamiliar with what’s involved, but it can be easy to manage once you know the most important maintenance tasks. Watering, mowing, soil health, and weed/pest control can be straightforward, single-step tasks that contribute to an overall picture-perfect lawn your entire family can enjoy.