On top of proper fertilization, good mowing practices and basic care – cleaning, watering, monitoring changes, etc – you can optimize your green space by giving it a little extra that’s extremely beneficial, and in some cases essential.
Here are some tips to help your lawn be healthy, year after year.
Core aeration
Core aeration is a mechanical soil treatment whose goal is to loosen the compacted soil beneath your lawn. By making holes in the soil, we allow water, oxygen, and other essential nutrients to penetrate more easily and nourish the lawn deep down.
Core aeration is done during spring and/or fall, annually or every other year, according to what the soil needs. Your lawn needs ventilating if:
- The soil is compact and is hard to penetrate with the tip of a pencil or screwdriver;
- Rain water remains on the surface for a long time;
- The lawn is sparse and doesn’t seem to grow, despite the good care it receives.
There are various ways of loosening the soil, but core ventilation is undoubtedly the best. The equipment used removes chunks of soil, known as cores, leaving holes without further compacting the soil. The cores should remain on the lawn. After a few days, they will be completely gone – they can be removed with a leaf broom to speed up the process.
Lime application
To be healthy and respond well to the good care it receives, your lawn must have a pH between 6.5 and 7. It is not uncommon for Quebec soils to be too acidic, and to need the pH to be lowered to meet the lawn’s needs.
Spreading lime on your lawn reduces the soil acidity and helps restore the nutritive balance necessary to a good nutrition. It is an easy way to have a lawn in better health.
To know your soil’s acidity level, there needs to be a soil analysis done. The information in your soil analysis will indicate the dose of lime needed for your lawn. A complete soil analysis is absolutely necessary for liming to work properly.
By correcting your soil’s pH through the application of lime, you will be helping to assimilate fertilizers, as well as encouraging the development of beneficial microorganisms that will improve the density and colour of your lawn.
Aero seeds
One of the keys to a healthy, sustainable lawn is undoubtedly its density. The denser the lawn, the harder it is for undesirable plants’ seeds to come into contact with the soil and germinate. Same goes for pests eggs : with no soil contact, they cannot hatch and cause an infestation. As such, the denser the lawn, the better are its chances to stay healthy and pretty.
A simple way to densify your lawn is to annually add grass seeds to the entire lawn surface, to fill in gaps between the existing blades of grass. This is overseeding. Many different ways are possible, such as aero seeding, which involves adding seeds mechanically, on the fly, without mixing it with water.
Sowing can be done in spring or fall. It can even be right before frost to optimize recovery the following spring. Find out everything about dormant sowing here.
Optimize your green space to maximize its benefits on your health and the environment by offering it a little PLUS. See how Nutrite Experts can help you with its PLUS Services offer, if you don’t want to do it yourself.
