What it takes to have a beautiful lawn or at least one that doesn’t get you in trouble with the HOA board. Regardless of your grass type, the way to keep the HOA happy is to keep your grass mowed FRONT and BACK, weed eat, and edge the walkways, driveways, sidewalk, and curb. Firstly, let’s just let it be known that most typical mowers can suffice to keep your yard mowed to satisfy the HOA. The width of mow and whether or not it is self-propelled is up to you and the hills you face in your lawn. Next up, the options to maintain trimming and edging.
STOP!
Let’s not kid ourselves. Some of us own plenty of mowers and weed trimmers, but rarely use them. If you know in hour heart you are not going to keep this up, you need to reach out for help and hire someone to do it for you and pay them to do it right. If you know this is you, then find a service or contact us at www.ransomplacehoa.com use the Contact button and we will guide you to some help so you don’t find yourself looking at a lawn maintenance fine plus an emergency mow fee. A service is less costly. Now let’s continue.
RYOBI Expand-It is my “go to” for edging, blowing, and weed trimming. I use the battery operated version with multiple attachments available to handle most any job.
If your shrubs, hedges, and bushes need to be trimmed back, this is another attachment you can use to get the job done. When you are done with all that yard work and want to clear the cut grass or trimmings away to show your beautiful work, then you might want to blow or sweep the area. Do not blow this into your neighbors yard or into the street. That litters up the neighborhood and we are trying to keep the value of our homes at maximum value.
How do the experts do it? In order to get some answers to achieve the most beautiful lawn, we interviewed some Ransom PL residents with beautiful lawns to see what their secret sauce is. First you need to understand there are two main types of grass: warm season and cool season. The main difference between the two is the temperature that they excel in. The cool season grass, as the name implies, likes cooler temperatures like the Spring and Fall. The warm season grass prefers the warmer June, July, and August temperatures. They both grow fine in the Nashville area. Typical examples of cool season used in our area are fescue and bluegrass with fescue being the hardiest and most common for our area. Fescue will stay green the longest of any grass I’ve seen in our area. For the warm season grass, zoysia and bermuda top the list. The downside to fescue is it doesn’t self-repair so it needs reseeding for the weak spots once a year. Ransom Place has several beautiful zoysia grass lawns that will outperform most others during June, July, and August when the sun is sucking every drop of moisture out of the leaves of everything green. Zoysia might only need to be watered every 3rd day during the 95 degree days of Summer. The downside to bermuda and zoysia is it turns light brown around the first of November and doesn’t return in a strong way until May.
According to John Rollins on Mock Orange, you should keep the fescue mowed near the highest level on a typical mower. When you cut fescue down low like a golf course, it makes the grass weak and susceptible to weeds, heat stress, and accelerated water evaporation especially during the hottest months. John goes on to say these things:
- Kill your weeds
- Over seed yearly in the Fall
- Winterize and put down lime
- Fertilize and water
- Don’t be afraid to use a service like Trugreen or Weed Man
Now John doesn’t water as much as you might think, but during the hot months he puts more attention to the grass’s water needs especially fescue.
This is exactly what John Dorse believes is the best choice. I have had zoysia grass myself and love the way it plows right through the blistering hot days of Summer.
John Dorse advice for zoysia is:
- Apply Scotts TurfBuilder around July 1st
- Cut it on the higher side of your mower settings
Mr. Dorse explains that the zoysia is so thick it will choke out the weeds, so he never uses weed killer. He also likes it because it will self-repair if any part dies off for any reason, removing the need for reseeding/over seeding in the Spring or Fall. Now you might notice Mr. Dorse has a much shorter list of things to do. That’s because zoysia requires less attention. This is the type of grass that I have as well. It grows slower than fescue so you mow about half as often. It doesn’t ask for much water. You don’t really have to fertilize it, but you will love the way it looks if you do. Remember the times to fertilize any grass is when it is coming on strong. That means, zoysia wants fertilizer in June, July, and August. Fescue will want fertilizer in March, April, May, September, and October. Too much fertilizer at the wrong time can burn up either grass. You can treat zoysia and bermuda similarly. They can be mowed very low if you choose, but they will need more water if so due to more evaporation during the hotter months. I have found that Home Depot Vigoro lawn fertilizer applied at the standard rate really works on my zoysia. I apply it June, July, and August and water regularly every 1 to 3 days during those hot months.
You might want to hire a service to kill weeds and over seed your lawn in the fall while you do the mowing and trimming. Or you might not want to spend all this time and effort because you are simply too busy or hate lawn work. If that’s the case, just hire a mowing and trimming company to take care of the cutting, edging, and a weed trimming and a fertilizer/weed killer company like Trugreen or LawnMan for the rest.
Well, that about wraps up the tips for a beautiful lawn. Good luck and don’t forget to contact the office if you have questions or need further guidance.