Lawn Care And Lawn Pest Control

Lawn Care And Lawn Pest Control

Proper lawn care and lawn pest control go hand in hand. In fact, if your handle your lawn care properly, most of your lawn pest control problems will be gone.

Lawn care and lawn pest control

In this, like most other activities, balance is the key. Balancing your lawns water and fertilizer needs with your mowing schedule, and balancing the right mowing height between too long and too short, will give your lawn the best look, and the best health. The best defense against insects, disease, fungus, and weeds is a healthy lawn. Like a healthy body, a healthy lawn will ward off attacks by invaders. Proper lawn care will give you a healthy lawn, which will in turn, give you, the best lawn pest control.

The list below gives a few details about lawn care, as it relates to lawn pest control.

• Scalping your lawn, weakens the scalped area’s turf, and allows weed invaders to take the place of the weakened grass.
• Not mowing the grass at a low enough level, leaves cover for insects and allows some low growing weeds to reproduce seed under the mowing height.
• Thatch hides insects, and should be removed or cultivated, and not allowed to build up. Good mowing practices will stop it from building.
• Waiting too long between mowings, can allow weeds time to reach seed head maturity, and plant themselves in your nice green lawn. Too much growth also provides cover for insects.
• When you have waited too long to mow, change your mowing height, so that you take off less leaf blade, and then mow again in a few days at a lower cutting height. Do this in increments until you reach your desired cutting height.
• You should never remove more than one third of the top at a time. Taking too much off at once will leave your lawn in a weakened condition, inviting more bugs and weeds to take over.
• Avoid mowing weedy outside areas before you mow your lawn. If you have to do this for some reason, stop and thoroughly clean your mower between the two areas.
• Mow away from your landscape beds and toward your lawn. Care should be taken to avoid throwing grass, weed clippings, and seed into them.
• Don’t “over water” your lawn and landscape beds. Many weedy lawn pests, and bug pests enjoy excess water, and may decide to take up residence in the new sea side resort in your landscape. Over watering fuels fungus, and bacteria as well.
• Over fertilization leads to most of the same lawn care problems as over watering.
• Don’t fertilize your lawn too late in the year. If you do, you may be fertilizing winter weeds instead of grass. This will have a bad effect on your lawn pest control efforts in the spring.
• Avoid aerifying late in the fall. Aerifying at that time, will plant the weed seeds that would have otherwise rotted on top of the ground.
• Avoid lawn compaction. Areas with heavy foot traffic, are likely to have poor quality turf, and are subject to invasion by weeds that like compacted areas. If you have compaction, loosen it by aerifying.
• If the problem is human pests, and an area is getting so much traffic because it is convenient to walk in that direction, a good lawn care tactic might be to add a paved foot path through the area, or you could plant or build a traffic barrier to make it less convenient.

Good lawn care is great lawn pest control. See more on lawn care and lawn pest control on our lawn management pages.

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