Creating a landscape you love can require significant resources, both in time and money. Once you make the leap, it makes sense to practice good maintenance techniques to ensure your investment lasts a good long while. Below we offer some advice on maintaining your landscape to keep it looking its best.
Lawn Maintenance Tips
Here in Indiana, grass tends to dominate most residential landscapes. Therefore, keeping it healthy and looking great is central to your home’s aesthetic. We suggest avoiding cutting your grass too short; 2 – 2 ½ inches is a good height. Maintaining a longer blade allow it to send more energy to growing better roots, leading to healthier and happier grass. Scalping your lawn provides room for pests, weeds and disease to move in, especially in the summer months when the short roots have a hard time retaining moisture. We also advise keeping a sharp blade on your mower. All plants get stressed when pruned and grass is not an exception. A cleaner cut is a healthier cut. If you are seeing little brown tips on your grass, you might need to sharpen your blade. They can also mean you have been mowing in very hot conditions. While you will want to avoid mowing grass during the peak heat of the day if you can, it is also wise to avoid mowing in really wet conditions. Big clumps of grass will smother your lawn. Rather than bagging your clippings (unless your grass is REALLY long, then rake them up), get a mulching blade and recycle them into your lawn to add back their natural nutrients. Whatever you do, don’t blow your clippings onto your landscape beds! Grass will end up growing in them, which is not the point.
Over-seed or reseeding can help thicken your lawn, though we suggest picking a cool season variety of grass since they do not turn brown in the winter. Fertilizing throughout the year will help keep your lawn healthy and lush as well. If you are looking for a pristine, golf-course-like lawn, you will want to apply fertilizer once a month during the growing season. It is also a good idea to aerate your lawn every 2-3 years. Finally, sprinkler systems are great for easy watering, but you must pay attention to what they are doing. Avoid watering when the sun is most intense; you could end up burning your grass. Early morning or late evening is good. Your lawn needs about 1” of rain per week so if we had a lot of rain, turn your irrigation system off. Too much water ends up hurting the roots and weakening your lawn.
Plant Maintenance Tips
The keys to maintaining plants in your landscape are proper selection for your climate, placement in locations that allow them to flourish, and using varieties you are confident you can maintain. Either invest in plants you can keep up with or are willing to pay someone else to help. Each plant will have its own needs for water, pruning, and fertilizing; one size does not fit all in the plant world. However, one rule of thumb that applies is to avoid extremes like drought or flooding. Keeping up on pruning will make your plants healthier and look great. Remove spent flowers to encourage more abundant blooming. Also, removing dead branches and opening up space within a plant will allow air flow, keeping diseases and molds from becoming problematic. We suggest pruning your plants to their natural look, which may take a bit of research. While some plants like Boxwood or Yews will tolerate trimming tools, we usually suggest hand-pruning your landscape. Fertilizing once a month will also keep your plants looking extra lush, but you can get a way with a granular fertilizer in the spring and just let them ride on that if necessary. The best advice we can give you, however, is to keep an eye on your landscape! It is much better to notice if something is looking sick before a big infestation happens.
Landscape Bed Maintenance
The easiest way to keep your landscape beds looking great is to stay up on your mulching. This extra layer of natural material keeps plants insulated during winter, retains moisture in summer, and keeps weeds away. We suggest maintaining a 2” layer of mulch at all times and replenishing it yearly for best results, especially in a wet area where it breaks down faster. You will want to weed your beds on a regular basis too. Removing pest plants before they go to seed will make a big difference in the look of your landscape. You can pull or spray them, but make sure you read the label of your herbicide to make sure you are using it properly. Finally, we suggest keeping a clean edge on your beds throughout the season to keep grass from encroaching and maintaining crisp and clean look.
Hardscape Maintenance
Building your hardscape with quality products and installation methods sets the basis for easy maintenance. After 15+ years in this business, we have found the old adage of “you get what you pay for” proving itself over and over again. Like it or not, poorly made or installed products will deteriorate more quickly. For this reason, we always recommend Reading Rock pavers because they are durable. Once you have your quality hardscape in, keep it looking nice by power washing it once a year. If you do not mind a bit of a glossy look, you can also consider sealing the material when it is installed. If you have a lighter hardscape material you will want to make sure to clean the leaves off the surface in the fall because they will stain. This fact is true for any hardscape material, but especially for the lighter colors. Cleaning up in the fall also gives you less of a mess to deal with in the spring. During the winter months, do not heavily salt any kind of concrete and only use a landscape variety. Rock salt and the like will eat your concrete. Be sure to check labels before you apply.
Our final advice is to keep your landscape evolving. Adding features as time goes on to keeps it looking fresh and interesting. Lighting, a specimen tree, or interesting varieties added a little at a time gives you something big in the end. Let us know if you have any questions about the best way to maintain your home landscape. We’d be happy to help. Ask us about our weekly maintenance packages or regular 8 week visits. Even just having us out for spring or fall maintenance will help keep your landscape looking its best. Send us an email or give us a call at (317) 997-4803.
