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Lawn Maintenance Tips Part 2

Part two of our series on lawn maintenance explores how often you should water as well as how often you should mow.

How Often Should I Mow My Lawn?

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One of the best lawn maintenance tips we can offer regarding how often you should mow your lawn is to mow your lawn to the height you want, while at the same time, being aware of the requirements of your neighborhood. As a rule three inches high is a good, healthy height for grass. University studies seem to agree with this assessment. However, if you live in a HOA, check what their requirements are for the height of your grass.

You also want to make sure that you don’t cut your grass too short, or you’ll injure the plants. How often you should mow your lawn also depends on whether it’s summer or not.  Summer is the season your grass grows, so you want to give it a bit of time to grow.  Once every ten days is a good time frame for mowing your grass.  But to keep your lawn healthy, it isn’t just about mowing, it’s about watering as well.

How Much Should I Water My Lawn?

Ok, while it is still spring, you can water your lawn once every week and you should be fine.  However, keep an eye on the temperature.  Once it starts getting really warm, you want to water your lawn every two to three days.  Make sure that when you water your lawn, you do it after sunset or at least two hours before sunrise, or you are wasting water.  If you water in the evening or very early morning,

So remember, everything has a time frame, even mowing and watering.  Our next article about lawn maintenance tips explores some general lawn care.

This concludes part one of our series.  For more information on lawn maintenance tips, be sure to read part one and part three as well.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
http://www.greenservpro.com

Lawn Maintenance Tips Part 1

Part one of a series on lawn maintenance explores some tips for summer.

Lawn Maintenance Tips for Summer

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Get Lawn Maintenance | (928) 356-8167

In a lot of parts of the US, it is spring.  Arizona, however, operates under different rules.  One of the complaints that people have from other parts of the US is that Arizona lacks seasons, which isn’t true.  Arizona has seasons, however, they’re super-compressed seasons.  Arizona’s spring is pretty much from February to March.  Then our summer starts. So it is a good idea to know some lawn maintenance tips for summer.

First off, it is time to weed and feed.  Your grass isn’t the only thing growing in your lawn, weeds are growing as well.  Some species of weeds, particularly the woody variety are extremely hard to get rid of.  One of the best lawn maintenance tips we can offer you where weeds are concerned is to not pull them.  You want to spot spray them to kill them off.  The only time you can really pull weeds successfully is if your ground is thoroughly soaked.  Otherwise, when you pull weeds, you’re more than likely just pulling the top part off.  The reasons weeds thrive so well is that they can survive even if all of the above ground structures are gone.  They just need a small amount of roots and then they grow. In addition to weeding, you want to start to fertilize your lawn before it gets too hot.

Don’t Burn Your Lawn: Fertilize Now

If you want to avoid burning your lawn, you want to apply your fertilizer now while it is still temperate.  Otherwise, you are basically causing a chemical burn that will essentially kill your lawn off.

So remember, this is the time of year you want to fertilize your lawn and get rid of the weeds.  Our next article on lawn maintenance will cover when to mow and water your lawn.

This concludes part one of our series.  For more information on lawn maintenance tips, be sure to read part two and part three as well.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
http://www.greenservpro.com

Lawn Care and Fertilizing Your Lawn

Fertilizing your lawn is one key component of lawn care.  The right type of fertilizer can work wonders.  The wrong type can burn your lawn.  How can you tell which is which?

High Percentage Nitrogen Fertilizer:   Good Lawn Maintenance?

Lawn Care in Prescott, AZ | (928) 356-8167
Lawn Care in Prescott, AZ | (928) 356-8167

A lot of people jump to the conclusion that it is better to use a lawn fertilizer with a 10-10-10 ratio as part of good lawn maintenance. Nitrogen fertilizer with a high percentage isn’t a bad idea in and of itself, however.  It is how much you use, and how much you put down.

Assuming the amount you put down on the lawn is adjusted accordingly, the  higher the nitrogen percentage , the less you’ll need. In addition, with controlled-release fertilizer, even though the percentage nitrogen in the product may be high, the risk of burning the lawn is low.  Fast release nitrogen fertilizers, on the other hand often contain high levels of salt and can easily burn your lawn.  Maintaining your lawn properly is all about following instructions or calling a professional lawn care service in.    And what about organic fertilizer?

Organic Fertilizer and Lawn Care

Regardless of whether a fertilizer is organic or chemical based it must be able to be converted into a form that the grass can use.  Organic fertilizers lower the chance of burning grass. However,  many organic nitrogen fertilizers have a low nitrogen percentage, meaning you’ll need to use more.   Some materials, like compost, are not fertilizers as such, they’re soil conditioners.

Both organic and some synthetic fertilizer sources require microbes in the soil to break them down.   So if it is too cold outside, the fertilizers will not work effectively.  Inversely, if it is too hot you could burn your lawn.  As you see there is a lot to consider when you do lawn care.

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600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
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Lawn Maintenance: Getting the Right Company

Getting lawn maintenance is important, and with summer coming up, its a good idea to  look into hiring a service.  This article explores the reason why you want to hire someone to take care of your lawn.

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Lawn maintenance isn’t bad from the fall to the spring.  Grass has a slower growth rate because of the cooler weather, and the weather is much more temperate.  However, summer is not that far away and Phoenix is infamous for it’s heat as this article excerpt from Wikipedia shows:

Get a Lawn Maintenance Company to Beat the Heat

Phoenix has a subtropical desert climate (Köppen: BWh), typical of the Sonoran Desert in which it lies. Phoenix has extremely hot summers and warm winters. The average summer high temperatures are some of the hottest of any major city in the United States, and approach those of cities such as Riyadh and Baghdad. The temperature reaches and exceeds 100°F (38°C), on average for 110 days of the year,[27] including most days from late May through to early September. Highs top 110 °F (43 °C) an average of 18 days during the year. On June 26, 1990, the temperature reached an all-time recorded high of 122 °F (50 °C).[28]  To read more about Phoenix, please [CLICK HERE], otherwise, keep reading about lawn maintenance.

Lawn Maintenance:  When You Do It is Key

Doing anything outside in Arizona during the summer is hot work, so hiring a service is your best bet.  As a rule, any form of  lawn care is handled in the early morning in Arizona.  Even the pros know that.

Hiring the right company is important.  You want a company that has experience.  While the neighbor kid may have a lawnmower, if you can’t trust him to show up when you need him to, it won’t do you a lot of good.   You want to get a professional in, and the best one is a lawn maintenance company.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
greenservpro.com

Lawn Maintenance for Commercial Properties

It isn’t just homeowners that can benefit from lawn maintenance, sometimes business owners can benefit from lawn maintenance too.

When to Get Lawn Maintenance for Your Business

Lawn Maintenance for Your Commercial Property
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Make no mistake.  Not every business will need lawn maintenance.  if you have an office space that you are renting from a landlord, and you’re in a high rise, obviously, you don’t even have a lawn to take care of.  But what about if you own a business park?

You will definitely need lawn maintenance then.  Why?  Well, it is a matter of applied economics.  If your business park or plaza appears unkempt, unintentional or no, it presents an image of being unprofessional.  If your tenants think that the plaza is unprofessional when it is time for them to renew their lease, they will most likely gallop to another business plaza that does take care of their lawn.

Lawn Maintenance:  It’s All About Image

If an unkempt lawn says ‘unprofessional,’ what does a neatly trimmed lawn say?  Think about it.  When you go somewhere that is pleasant including something like a lawn that is cared for with proper lawn maintenance, your subconscious remembers, and you will want to go back there again.

You think we’re making this up?  It’s actually proven at least from a real estate perspective.  The visual appearance of the exterior of a house is called ‘curb appeal.”  The same principle that works for houses also holds true for businesses as well.  People are more likely to do business with companies that give off an appearance of professionalism.  One of the best ways to convey an image of professionalism is by how your business looks.  And one of the best and least expensive ways of improving how your business looks is with proper lawn care and maintenance.

Green Servpro is a Prescott based lawn maintenance company.  Call us today and let us show you how we can help you and your business.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
http://www.greenservpro.com

Lawn Care: Seed or Sod?

Lawn care is all about choices. Do you use a sun mix of grass seed, or a sun/shade mix?  Should you use a ground covering?  Should you skip the seed completely and just put down sod?

Sod:  One Type of Lawn Care

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Sod is one option you have when you’re looking at lawn care.  Here are some tips from This Old House about how to lay down sod:

When it comes to getting a thick, healthy lawn, nothing beats sod for instant gratification. Sure, it costs a bit more: about $400 to cover a 1,000-square-foot backyard (double that installed). But lay it right and in a couple of weeks you’ve got a dense, well-established lawn that’s naturally resistant to weeds, diseases, and pest infestations.

“You’re basically buying time,” says This Old House landscape contractor Roger Cook. “You’re paying for turf that someone else has coddled for 14 to 18 months.”

You’re also buying convenience. Sod can be installed spring through fall (and even in winter in mild climates). In areas of the country that favor cool-season grasses, like the Northeast, it avoids the problem of sprouting a nice crop of weeds when seeding a lawn in spring. And in southern states, which favor warm-season grasses like Bermuda grass, zoysia grass, and centipede grass, sod is the best way to cover the yard at any time of year, since these turf types cannot be grown from seed.  [READ MORE]

Seed is another option to consider as part of a lawn maintenance regimen.  There are several types of grass seed that grow well in Arizona.  Each of these seed types work in different levels of light and have different watering requirements.  Call in a lawn maintenance company to help you decided which type of seed you should use for your property.

If you want to use seed, plant in mid-late spring, which in Arizona is Feb-Mar.  Also make sure that you put down ground covering to keep birds from eating the grass seed.  After all, you want a lawn, not a buffet.  When in doubt, call in a lawn maintenance service to help you seed bare spots, or care for your lawn appropriately.

Green Servpro is an Arizona based lawn maintenance company serving the greater Phoenix area.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
greenservpro.com

Lawn Maintenance Tips Part 3

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Lawn maintenance is more than just seeding and fertilizing, there is also watering.  Part three of a three part article series explores how much water  you’re going to need and how often you’re going to need.  Part one of this series explored seeding your lawn, and part two explored fertilizing.

Lawn Maintenance and Watering

First off, how much water will your lawn need?  Well, according to the University of Illinois:

How much water does a lawn need? In general, cool-season grasses need about one to 1.5 inches of water per week to maintain green color and active growth, and naturally slow down in growth and may go dormant in hot weather. Factors such as the soil, weather, and management practices all have a role in water needs of lawns. Here are a few general rules to follow:

Decide before summer to either water lawns consistently as needed throughout the season, or let lawns go dormant as conditions turn warm and dry. Do not rotate back and forth. In other words, don’t let the grass turn totally brown, apply enough water to green it up, and then let the grass go dormant again, as breaking dormancy actually drains large amounts of food reserves from the plant.

To read the source article, please click here.

Know How Much Water is Needed for Proper Lawn Care

With good lawn maintenance, you want a balance between over watering and not watering enough.  The amount of water that each type of grass needs varies significantly between species.   Warm weather and drought tolerant grass doesn’t need as much water as water from a cooler and moister climate.  Make sure that your watering method is in good working order.  Check your hose for kinks or breaks, and if you have a built in sprinkler system, make sure that you don’t need a sprinkler repair job done.

Lawns are fairly easy to take care of.  It is about putting down the right type of seed, and fertilizing the grass properly, and making sure that you put down the right amount of water.  With all of these skills down, you will find that lawn maintenance isn’t as hard as you may think.

Read Part 1 of this series
Read Part 2 of this series
Read Part 3 of this series

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
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Lawn Maintenance Tips Part 2

Fertilizing your lawn is the next stage of lawn maintenance. In part two of our series, we’ll cover fertilization of your lawn.  Fertilizer fits into two categories:  organic and chemical fertilizer. First off, what is fertilizer? According to this Wikipedia excerpt:  Fertilizer (or fertiliser) is any organic or inorganic material of natural or synthetic origin (other than liming materials) that is added to a soil to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants.  Fertilizers typically provide, in varying proportions: Six macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulfur (S);
eight micronutrients: boron (B), chlorine (Cl), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), zinc (Zn) and nickel (Ni) (1987).

The macronutrients are consumed in larger quantities and are present in plant tissue in quantities from 0.15% to 6.0% on a dry matter (0% moisture) basis (DM). Micronutrients are consumed in smaller quantities and are present in plant tissue on the order of parts per million (ppm), ranging from 0.15 to 400 ppm DM, or less than 0.04% DM.[5][6] Only three other macronutrients are required by all plants: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. These nutrients are supplied by water and carbon dioxide. To read more of this Wikipedia, please visit the source material here.  Fertilizer, as a part of a lawn maintenance schedule,  doesn’t just help your lawn to grow, it also helps it to thrive as well. But which should you choose and why?

Organic fertilizer is usually a combination of animal or plant material that is rendered for the nutrients.  It is slightly better for the environment than chemical fertilizer, Chemical fertilizer is usually nitrogen based, and while it can help plants to grow, it can also cause problems such as algal blooms in the ocean which can be lethal to various forms of life.    Living in Arizona, runoff from fertilizer isn’t as much of a problem as it is in coastal areas, or river mouths, however it is a good idea to consider what type of fertilizer  to apply when you are doing your lawn maintenance.   You also want to make sure to apply the fertilizer at the proper times each year.

You want to fertilize pretty much every season except winter, though in Arizona, winters are notoriously mild.  You pretty much want to fertilize your lawn in varying degrees from spring until fall.  When in doubt, make sure you do a bit of additional research or call in a company that specializes in lawn maintenance.

Read Part 1 of this series
Read Part 2 of this series
Read Part 3 of this series

Green ServPro is a lawn maintenance company based in Prescott, Arizona.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
http://www.greenservpro.com

Lawn Maintenance Tips Part 1

Lawn maintenance is made up of three procedures that interconnect:  seeding, fertilizing, and watering.  In this three part article series, we will explore seeding.

According to this article from Wikipedia:

Early autumn, spring, and early summer are the primary seasons to seed, lay sod, plant ‘liners’, or ‘sprig’ new lawns, when the soil is warmer and air cooler. Seeding is the least expensive, but takes longer for the lawn to establish; deeper rooting, though, can make for a more durable lawn. Aerating just before planting/seeding will promote deeper root growth and will help thicken turf. To read more of this article, please visit the source article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn.  Seeding is just the first step of lawn maintenance.

The first thing to do when selecting  grass seed for lawn maintenance is to pick the seed that works well in Arizona.  Grass is broken down into two main categories:  warm season and cool season. Cool season grasses do better in cooler climates, but they need a lot of water, or they’ll brown over in the summer.    Warm season grasses are  heat tolerant, however they brown over and go dormant in cooler temperatures.  There are six types of grass seed used for lawns:  Kentucky bluegrass, fescue, buffalo grass, perennial rye, Bermuda, and Zoysia.

Kentucky bluegrass does well in cooler seasons like Autumn and early spring, and is widely used in North America.  It’s used for homes as well as parks and playing fields.  Fescue is a category of grass seed, and there are usually three types: fine, tall, and turf type.  Native to North America, buffalo grass matures well and makes a lawn that is both uniform and has very impressive tolerances for heat, drought, and cold. Used in the Southwestern United States for overseeding during cooler winter months, perennial rye grass makes a durable lawn that lasts well. Bermuda grass requires low water and is an excellent choice for Southern US states because they it hasa high tolerance for traffic. Zoysia grass is fine textured and forms a thick mat after it establishes itself, however, because of its slow growth rates,  it can take up to three years for a zoysia lawn to be fully established.  A lawn maintenance company would be able to determine which type of grass seed to plant.

Read Part 1 of this series
Read Part 2 of this series
Read Part 3 of this series

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
http://www.greenservpro.com

Time for Lawn Maintenance?

So, be honest here.  It is time for lawn maintenance?

Time for lawn maintenance
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Looks like its time for lawn maintenance to us…

Green ServPro is a lawn maintenance company serving East Valley Cities like Gilbert, Tempe, Mesa, and Prescott.

Green ServPro LLC
600 W. Ray Rd. Suite B2
Prescott AZ 85225
(928) 356-8167
Lawn Care