12 Year-Round Lawn Care Tips

Getting a lush, green lawn means takes some dedication to a regular lawn maintenance schedule. Knowing the type of grass you have is a great first step. Then learning the best way to mow your grass, how to feed it and even how to help it recover from long days of family play are all important.

We're here to help with the following lawn care tips that will get you on your way to growing a beautiful carpet of green that you've always wanted.

Warm-season grasses, including Bahia, Bermuda, centipede, St. Augustine and zoysia spread by runners, above and/or below ground. This enables them to create a thick mat of turf that, when maintained properly, crowds out weeds with ease. The runners also mean that these warm-season grasses make great choices for erosion control.

Runner-type grasses grow easily as sod, because the running stems hold the sod pieces together. With Bermuda grass, the runners spread aggressively, and you may see grass shoots appearing in flower beds and other non-lawn areas of your yard. To corral this grass, install a barrier edging that extends into soil to halt the spread of runners.

Cool-season grasses, like the fescues and ryegrass, are bunch grasses. A lawn of fescue is actually a host of individual grass plants that, as they grow, form bunches. These bunch grasses are most often sown from seed. Bunch grasses don’t naturally hold together in the form of sod, unless the sod grower uses a biodegradable net at planting time. The net holds the bunches together, enabling the grass to be harvested, rolled and installed as sod. One cool-season grass, Kentucky bluegrass, is not a bunch grass but spreads by runners.

Mowing is probably the most time consuming activity of lawn maintenance. No matter what type of grass you tend, it’s vitally important to maintain a sharp mower blade, so that you’re cutting grass blades cleanly and not tearing them, which creates openings for pests and diseases to enter. It’s also equally key to know the proper mowing height for your turf type. For warm-season grasses, turf height varies by grass type, covering a range from 1 to 4 inches. Research the type of grass you have, and maintain it at the ideal height.