The Benefits of Fertilizing Your Lawn & How To Keep it Green

If you’re not fertilizing your lawn yet, you will be after reading these awesome benefits from doing so to keep your lawn beautifully green.

As a homeowner, you want to do everything within reason to create a beautiful-looking home that you’re proud of. When it comes to the exterior of your home, your lawn is a big component. 

The Benefits of Regularly Fertilizing Your Lawn

Provides Essential Nutrients

Just as farmers will add fertilizer to their fields to ensure crop growth, homeowners need to be adding fertilizer to ensure healthy grass growth.

Over time, the nutrients in your soil become depleted. The three main nutrients include nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium. Whenever any of these nutrient levels are low in your soil, it can lead to unhealthy grass rooting and bare spots.

Prevents Future Weed Growth

On your journey to getting a perfectly green lawn, there’s one annoying problem that just doesn’t seem to want to go away. These are weeds, and they can destroy your lawn in just a very short amount of time.

When you opt for fertilizing your lawn, you can protect against weeds in two ways. First, most fertilizers have ingredients to prevent weeds from taking root in your lawn. Second, as the fertilizer promotes healthier soil and grass, the thicker and stronger grass can make it extremely difficult for weeds to grow.

Read our article on making your backyard more attractive with these landscaping ideas.

Reduces Risk of Disease and Pest Damage

It’s vital that you think of your lawn as a living substance. Just as people develop healthier immune systems when they get regular exercise and sleep, your lawn develops more resistance to things like disease when it’s strong and healthy. Fertilizer is a way to provide necessary nutrients for your grass so that it has the essential elements it needs to grow strong. Strong grass is more resistant to disease and pest damage than unhealthy grass.

Reduces Soil Runoff

Fertilizing your lawn on a consistent basis can be a great way to help combat any soil runoff that you’re currently experiencing. As your grass enjoys the nutrients from your fertilizer, it grows stronger and sturdier roots in the soil. These roots help to keep soil in its place when runoff situations happen, such as a large rainstorm. When grass is unhealthy, the roots aren’t strong enough to hold much of the soil in place. This can result in lots of soil runoff during adverse weather conditions.

Facilitates Less Drought and Heat Damage

As you’ve discovered so far, fertilizing your lawn results in stronger and healthier grass. When grass is healthy, it’s less prone to heat damage. If you’re going through a drought, your grass is more likely to survive if it’s been properly fertilized. Grass that isn’t fertilized is typically less healthy than grass that is fertilized. Less healthy grass is more susceptible to damage from heat and drought-like conditions.

Grows Green and Healthy Grass

Probably the biggest benefit that homeowners enjoy from fertilizing their lawns is having green and healthy grass. When your grass gets all the food it needs via the nutrients delivered in fertilizer, it can grow strong and turn a vibrant green. Finally, you’ll enjoy grass that not only looks good but feels good to walk around on in your bare feet.

Finally, getting some green and healthy grass can seem like a big achievement if you’ve never had some before. While fertilizing is an essential step on your journey to vibrant green grass, there are other practices that you’ll need to undertake to ensure that your grass stays healthy and strong.

Water Strategically

Watering is one of the first chores that many homeowners think of in regards to their lawn. While watering is important, you need to be strategic with how you do it. Opt for only watering in the AM hours to avoid quick evaporation of the water. Make sure that the sun is out so that your plants can endure their natural process of photosynthesis.

Be Mindful of Mower Blade Depth

While mowing your lawn is essential to keeping it looking great and manageable for your family, it can also be damaging if done incorrectly. It’s crucial to realize that the longer your grass blades are, the more time they’ll be allowed to establish longer roots.

When your grass has longer roots, it’s better able to get to the moisture in the soil during adverse weather conditions. Consider mowing your grass to a minimum height of three to three and one-half inches.

Take Care of Weeds Quickly

Weeds are not something that you want to allow to grow in your lawn for any length of time. Any time that you notice a weed or two in your lawn remove it. Be sure to use a weeding fork or carefully pull out the entire weed plant along with its root.

If you notice a larger area of weeds developing in your lawn, use weed killer to paint the entire area.

Consider Aerating Your Lawn

While aerating may seem like a big process, it’s really not. Aerating is simply comprised of creating small holes in your lawn. These holes essentially allow your lawn to breathe. This makes it better able to absorb water and nutrients into the soil while reducing the effect of runoff. You can aerate manually with a garden fork, or you can opt for renting an aerator from your local garden center.

Getting a Plush, Vibrant Lawn is Easy

Getting a plush, vibrant green lawn isn’t overly hard to do when you have the right information. By following the strategies that we went over above, you’ll be well on your way to achieving great-looking grass and maintaining it for years to come.