Maintaining your lawn is one of the best things you can do to give your home a boost in curb appeal.
And a polished and tidy lookl can boost your home’s value, attract buyers, or just make you feel more proud of your good looking property as you come home each day.
You want your lawn to look great; who wouldn’t? And as you give it the attention it needs, you might be wondering if it’s getting proper nutrients, if you’re managing weeds the best you can, or if it’s as thick and green as it can be.
You also might be wondering if you can reduce your lawn care costs and still get healthy, thriving, green grass in Northern Virginia.
Let’s discuss how to save money on lawn care so you can find ways to trim prices where you can and still benefit from the curb appeal boost of a nice lawn.
5 Ways to Reduce Lawn Care Costs in Northern Virginia
While it might seem like you can just let your lawn go in Northern Virginia and it’ll be fine on its own, that’s not really the case.
You can’t neglect your lawn. The constant foot traffic and overuse of it can add up, not to mention not mowing or watering it properly to ensure it gets the attention it needs.
It’s true, an amazing lawn in Northern Virginia will never just appear all by itself. It takes a bit of focused care to ensure healthy, vibrant grass.
Following a few simple steps every year can give you this envious lawn look that all your neighbors want. And the best part about it is that you get the bonus of reduced money spent on your lawn when you avoid costly problems.
These tips can help you stay within your lawn care budget.
1. Make Sure to Get a Soil Test
Wanting a green lawn certainly isn’t a crime.
But looking at the lawn alone isn’t the answer. You actually have to look beneath your lawn to understand how you can best obtain great, green, thick grass.
It’s true: Your soil is actually the foundation for your lawn’s health.
Your soil might be a big part of the problem if you’re seeing issues in your lawn, and unless you look at it, it won’t tell you there’s a problem.
Having a soil test done on your property by a professional lawn care company or doing one yourself and sending it into an extension service can help give you insight into what your soil is lacking and then guide you on the proper direction for your lawn’s needs.
A soil test reveals a lot. It shows you your lawn’s pH, which is important when it comes to your lawn being able to properly absorb nutrients. When your soil pH is too low, your fertilizer application might not get to your lawn’s roots. Essentially, this means you could be wasting fertilizer applications.
When you have a soil pH reading, you can help get your soil to the right levels. In some cases, this means something as easy as lime applications that can raise your pH to their proper levels. This enables your lawn to absorb nutrients again.
Basically, that soil test can save you a lot of wasted fertilizer and lawn issues because it gives you a specific path of guidance for how to make your lawn happy. And this keeps lawn care costs down because you don’t give your grass any unnecessary treatments or nutrients that it doesn’t need.
2. Water your Lawn Correctly
Water is a key part of a healthy, happy lawn in Northern Virginia. Without the right amount of water, your lawn may never be able to look its best.
The optimum watering frequency for your lawn is a couple of times each week for approximately one hour in each grass zone. This amount of watering ensures moisture gets down to your lawn’s roots, encouraging stronger growth from the bottom up.
Looking more specifically at the amount, your lawn only needs about 1 to 2 inches of water weekly. This includes rainfall. At certain times of the year, this requirement might be met through rain alone. During dry spells, you want to supplement rain by watering with an irrigation system or lawn sprinklers.
If you look at your lawn’s color and it seems dull green or yellow, then you know it’s not getting the right amount of water. It should be a nice, pleasant green.
To water properly, you want to get your water moist a few inches into the soil. This means about 45 to 60 minutes of watering per area or irrigation system zone.
This is a simple way to save money on lawn care because you’re not overwatering and causing turf disease problems that need fixed and you’re not lacking sufficient water to enable great-looking grass.
3. Mow Properly
Just like every other lawn care tip, there is a right and wrong way to go about mowing your lawn.
When you mow properly, your grass rewards you by growing thicker and looking healthier. If you mow poorly, you could damage your lawn.
You want to keep your lawn at a 3.5- to 4-inch height for optimum health and to ensure it can repel weeds.
Mowing weekly during the growing season should work to maintain this height. When you mow, it’s essential that you use sharp mower blades as well so you give your grass a precise cut and don’t rip your grass.
Mowing properly can save money on lawn care in Northern Virginia because it limits weeds and stress, giving your lawn its best chance to grow strong and healthy.
4. Aerate and Overseed Your Lawn Annually
Your lawn can get compacted over time just from regular foot traffic and rainfall. This limits its ability to breathe. It also makes it harder for your grass roots to get water and nutrients.
The solution is annual aeration. This process removes small soil plugs from your lawn, reducing compaction and boosting lawn health, reducing your lawn care costs. At Turf’s Up, serving Northern Virginia, we do a double-pass aeration to give our customers the best possible results.
Follow aeration up with annual overseeding, and you fill in any thin or bare areas to help keep your grass strong and able to resist weeds and other issues. When aeration creates open plugs in your lawn, they also become perfect spots for grass seed to germinate. And when you aerate in fall, overseeding at this time ensures your new, sensitive grass shoots will thrive.
Some lawn companies like Turf’s Up also do topdressing services at this time. This service adds a thin compost layer across your entire lawn that mixes with your clay soil creating a better layer of topsoil to improve your soil.
5. Hire a Lawn Care Professional
To provide all the benefits of clean air, cooler temperatures, reduced erosion, and better soil, your lawn requires some maintenance.
You have the option of trying do-it-yourself lawn care or hiring a professional to help you with your grass maintenance. As you compare the two, you might think the DIY option can save you on lawn care costs.
But as you walk through a home improvement store, trying to figure out your needs, you’ll start to notice the numbers add up. You have to purchase the right lawn care products, properly store them, and buy a good granular spreader and liquid sprayer to apply them. Additionally, you have to learn how to calibrate your equipment before each use as directed by the labels on the products you’re using. You also have to educate yourself on lawn care application best practices to understand how to properly time and apply lawn treatments.
While learning a new skill is always fun, DIY lawn care usually doesn’t save you dollars once you add everything up, especially when it comes to the time it takes you to do the work.
When you hire a professional lawn care company, however, you don’t need to buy expensive products or equipment or spend time learning about lawn care services. You can just hire a business you trust to take care of your grass for you so you can spend your quality time out there enjoying it the best you can.
Turf’s Up Can Help You Get a Great Lawn and Save Money
You want a lawn that looks good and boosts your curb appeal in Northern Virginia. We get that. We want that, too.
We hope these suggestions for saving lawn care costs help you get that lawn you want for a little less.
As you’re exploring your options and reviewing your lawn care budget, we want you to know Turf’s Up can help. We can assist you in calculating the numbers and present a lawn care program that’s perfect for you and your yard so you can feel confident in your results and save money at the same time.
Ready to learn why Turf’s Up could be your totally awesome choice for lawn care services in Northern Virginia? We’re stoked to learn more about you and help you have the best lawn on the block. Get started today with a free quote. Together, we can prepare a customized plan that is perfect for you and your lawn.
