Keeping up with your yard is hard work! But with a few simple tips and tricks your life can be a lot easier. After years of experience we've compiled a few. Here are some simple steps to helping ensure all the hard work we put into our yards/lawns doesn’t go to waste.

1. Feeding our lawn grasses is a very important step to keeping the root system healthy and the grass blades looking green and great. Most people do a “four-step” approach to lawn feeding/weed control. Step 1, the pre-emergent, can last up to three months, but with a growing season of about 7-8 months, then what? My simple solution is to add another “step 1” bag around Father’s Day. It ironically makes dad a great gift, a beautiful big bag of fertilizer! Typically this will be done after step 2/weed and feed, and is pretty effective.

2. After the weeds are gone, it’s time to mulch that grass from the mower. It is best to wait to have a clean (weed-free) lawn before mulching so I’m not spreading more seeds around. The thatch layer that becomes your mulch helps to retain moisture, and slowly breaks down into a useable nutrient for the growing grass. Anything over 3/4” deep probably should get cleaned out a bit!

3. Aerate! That nice, thick carpet of grass needs to breathe, and aerating created many little holes that the soil fills in and loosens compacted soil, especially around high-traffic areas. This is also a great time to get compost and humates into the soil to also help loosen things up. It is usually recommended to aerate in conjunction with one of the fertilizer steps to help get it down in better.

4. Really simple one here: keep that mower blade sharp. Cut the blades of grass rather than tear them. They will heal much faster.

5. Water less often with many small increments to make the most of that precious H2O. If a zone requires 30 minutes of water twice a week, break that into three 10 minute increments with a 30 minute gap in between each. This is called a cycle/soak method.

6. Make sure sprinklers have matched precipitation. As in, all the heads put out the same flow rate in proportion with each other. Then there are no dry spots and no mushy wet spots.

7. Test the soil under trouble spots first before assuming a sprinkler needs adjustments or thinking you may have grubs. If it’s a soil that is too rocky or sandy, it may h

ave a hard time retaining water and dries out quicker than areas around it.

8. Do all you can to encourage earthworms in your lawn. This is an indicator of good soil having a high organic content.

Do these things and your yard will stay healthy and green all season long!