Year-round lawn care at the dacha

Neat green lawns are a great decoration of the site, a bright background for ornamental crops, floweringgo garden and cozy home. But only regular competent care of a lawn is capable to turn overgrown grass territory into a subject of pride of the owner.

Many inexperienced gardeners believe that having equipped a lawn on a site can save efforts, quickly transform the surrounding space, and for a few years do not remember about self-growing cereals. But in fact, the lawn requires constant attention. The first access to the lawn should be done as soon as the snow melts, and the lawn care is completed in the fall, a couple of weeks before the snow cover is established. And yet, you should not be afraid of difficulties.

If regular care is arranged for the grass, and all the planned procedures are performed on time, then the lawn really pleases the eye for many years, and taking care of it brings only pleasure.

How to care for a lawn in the country? What are the features of work on the lawn in different seasons of the year, and how to distribute the effort?

Features of lawn care after winter

The first spring days, when active snow melting begins, but at night the open spaces on the site are covered with a thick crust of ice, this is the time when the lawn owner should get out on the grass for the first time in a year. How to care for the lawn after winter, if part of the grass is still hidden under the winter cover?

The fact is that the spring and ice condensing in the spring interfere with the penetration of air to the waking up grass. Moisture may build up under the ice crust. As a result, the plant root system suffers, the remaining leaves may rot. The gardener's task is to gently break the ice, remove clusters of packed snow.

Cleaning and cleaning the lawn

When the snow melts and the ground dries out a little, the grass should be cleaned from the remnants of last year's grass. The blades of grass that have died away in autumn and winter under snow fall to the ground and are compressed, forming a kind of gray-brown felt. If such plant debris is not removed, it is:

• will make it harder for young grass to germinate;
• stimulates the development of putrefactive processes and the resettlement of pests;
• will reduce the density of grass, and the lawn will eventually lose a steady green color.

You can comb the lawn with a fan rake, which, thanks to the design, does not penetrate as deep into the ground as usual. Such care for the lawn in the spring will help clean the floor and from plant residues, and from random debris accumulated during the cold season.

The procedure is carried out in the longitudinal and then in the transverse direction so that the first stage of lawn care after the winter affects all its parts.

Aeration for lawn care in the spring and autumn

Therefore, in spring, when the soil is filled with water, grass growth is activated, it is important for plants to help and provide them with air. For this purpose, conduct aeration lawns. The lawn care procedure is to pierce the cover. Point punctures with a depth of 8 to 10 cm are made at a short distance from each other over the entire area of ​​the coating.

Such holes:

• helps oxygen penetrate deep into the soil;
• stimulates the activity of beneficial soil microorganisms;
• prevents the development of putrefactive fungi and bacteria;
• prevent substrate waterlogging;
• provides root respiration;
• accelerates grass cover after winter.

If the area under the grass is small, ordinary forks will help to cope with aeration.

With extensive lawn aeration after leaving after the winter requires mechanization. Here gasoline or electric aerators will be useful, which both speed up the work and simplify it many times over.

Re-aeration takes place closer to autumn. In summer, especially on hot days, such a lawn care procedure is not carried out.

Haircut: the main task of lawn care in the spring and summer

If the lawn is not cut, grass crops grow, and the surface loses its evenness. Therefore, haircut is the main lawn care measure. It is carried out, starting from spring and up to mid-autumn, when it is time to prepare the coating for “hibernation”.

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The main purpose of cutting as a stage of lawn care in spring and summer is to give a lawn a neat, attractive look. For any lawn area, its owner cannot do without a high-quality lawn mower or at least a trimmer, otherwise it is almost impossible to get even grass cover of the same height.

Grass cutting is preceded by lawn cleaning. This measure is needed not only to remove debris that could damage the mechanism of the lawn mower, but also to straighten the grass. Lawn mowed on sunny hot days. The grass must be dry, otherwise sticking of blades of grass to knives and damage to the means of mechanization cannot be avoided.

As part of regular lawn care in the summer, shearing is carried out as the leaf plates grow. The frequency depends on the weather conditions and the plant chosen for sowing.

Most often, the interval between mowings ranges from 2 to 4 weeks, but in order to delay the next procedure, some gardeners try to cut the grass lower. This is a dangerous mistake. Such a haircut greatly weakens the lawn, depriving the plants of an important feeding through photosynthesis. It is better if the grass cover maintains a height of 7–9 cm from the ground level.

Lawn mowing is carried out in two stages. At first, the area of ​​the grass-covered area runs in one direction. The second treatment is carried out perpendicular to the original.

Top dressing of the lawn in the spring and autumn as part of lawn care

Lawn care in the spring at the dacha is not limited to cutting, aeration and timely cleaning. Frequent haircuts that cause intensive grass growth will invariably lead to a weakening of the plants and to the depletion of the soil reserves of nutrients and microelements.

Therefore, top dressing is an essential part of lawn care in spring, summer and autumn. Fertilization is carried out after cutting and always accompanied by abundant watering of plants. The frequency of fertilization depends on the condition of the plants. The interval between supplements varies from 4 to 6 weeks, with the first procedure being carried out immediately after the complete disappearance of the snow, and the last - two weeks before the onset of cold weather.

Lawn care in the fall is different from the spring. If during the active growing season the grass needs more nitrogen, by winter it is limited in this element, replacing it with potassium and phosphorus. To simplify the care of the lawn in the country, experts recommend the use of complex compositions that fully meet the requirements of cereals at different times of the year.

Fertilizers are applied in dry form manually or using a special device or the plants are fed with liquid means, including them in the irrigation scheme.

In addition to fertilizing, in spring and summer they fight weeds and fungi, often populating green lawns. If sometimes it is possible to cope with weed shoots manually, then only herbicides and systemic fungicides produced specifically for use in the care of dacha lawn will help to remove the mycelium from the site.

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Watering the country lawn: leaving the warm season

The lawn needs moisture throughout the warm season, when the grass grows and gets its nourishment from the ground. In the middle lane, you can water the lawn 2-3 times a week, but sometimes the weather makes its own adjustments to the schedule:

• during the rainy period watering is reduced or stopped completely. In the dry season,
• increases the amount of irrigation water, but never conducts the procedure at midday hours when the sun is as active as possible.

Due to the danger of damaging the surface root system of grass, under no circumstances does the lawn hose.

It is much more efficient to use all kinds of irrigation systems involving the dissection of water flow or the use of the drip method. To meet the needs of the lawn, the depth of soil should be 15–20 cm, otherwise part of the root system will be in dry ground, and the grass will not receive adequate nutrition.

Mulching: part of lawn care in the fall

Spring lawn care determines its future growth and beauty. Measures taken in the fall, help maintain the health of the grass until the next season.

From September to mid-October, lawn owners begin preparing lawns for wintering. An important element of lawn care at this time is soil mulching. The procedure consists in uniform sprinkling of a mixture of peat, sand and humus on the site, which helps:

• to increase the thickness of the nutrient layer of the soil;
• to improve the growth and renewal of the root system;
• stimulate grass growth;
• to level the lawn next year.

Take care of the lawn all year round. Only such a systematic approach will ensure a consistently long quality of grass cover, its beauty and uniform density.

Video about spring lawn care