As many of us know, spring is a time for re-birth, renewal, new growth, the Masters golf tournament, and high school graduations! Or, if you’re either academic or fancy – “commencements.”
One of the great traditions is the hosting of the high school graduation party at one’s home. Each year we get a number of calls, emails, and texts from parents asking how they can prep their lawn so it looks great when hosting a party. While we love getting these questions and requests, unfortunately, many parents ask too late for us to be able to do much or provide an impactful difference. If you have a graduating senior in the spring, I want to let you in on a little secret:
Prepping for a spring graduation starts in the preceding fall.
Our website has several references on how to get a great lawn. It’s way more than just running a sprinkler system or putting down some fertilizer. Great, thick, healthy lawns require multiple steps. This article will focus on a few short-term tricks to get maximum impact.
First, the single best time of the year to fertilize is in the fall. Your grass is starting to wind down its growth and starting to store reserves to survive our brutal winters. A treatment of fertilizer around Labor Day will do just that. So if you’re not already signed up for the fall treatment, call us today.
Second, you’ll want a healthy root system and to thicken up your grass. We can accomplish this with an aeration and overseeding. Aerating loosens up our compacted, clay-based soil so water and other nutrients can get direct contact with our lawns’ root systems. Looser soil also allow the roots to expand to become more robust. Then, when we overseed, we’ll fill in some thin spots with new grass. We’d do this about a week or so after the fertilizing treatment. Those will be the services we need to do the fall before the graduation party.
Third, the spring of the graduation we’ll want to power rake right away in the spring, which will remove any excess thatch your lawn has, or any winter kill/mold/debris. We’ll be able to get at least one fertilizing treatment in the spring, which will yield a wonderfully thick, healthy, green lawn just in time.
Call us today to discuss this plan and to get pricing for your specific lawn. And if you’ve been doing many of these services for the past few years, we can either decide to continue the program or tweak it as necessary.
Happy Graduation!