Beautiful Turf Made Simple
If you implement the basics, a gorgeous lawn is right around the corner. Use this page as a reference for your lawn or contact us if you can’t find the answer!
Mowing Basics
Mow High
In a transition zone like Central Virginia Fescue needs every advantage possible to survive the heat of the summer. This means mowing at least 4 inches to help promote an extensive root zone, increase photosynthesis, and smother out potential weeds.
Keep Blades Sharp
Sharp blades not only lead to a better looking lawn but also a healthier, more disease resistant lawn. If you see small tears on top of the turf beginning to appear a few days after mowing it’s time to sharpen blades.
Don’t bag Clippings
There’s no need to bag clippings under normal conditions. Clippings break down quickly and return organic matter, nitrogen, and moisture into the soil.
Abide by the 1/3 Rule
Always aim to cut no more than 1/3 of the leaf tip when you mow. Cutting more than 1/3 can lead to excess thatch build up and discoloration to the lawn due to turf stress. This usually means mowing weekly through the Spring and Fall and biweekly during the hottest parts of the summer.
Keep Mower Decks Clean
This helps your mower utilize the vacuum effect it was engineered for to pull grass up as it cuts. This is how you end up with a uniform mow with less clumping.
The easiest way to insure proper mowing habits is just to have us take care of it for you! Mowing availability still remaining for 2025.
Sunlight and Water
New Seed Watering
After aeration and Seeding it’s crucial to keep soil moist at all times for 2 weeks or until successful germination. This usually requires at minimum watering twice per day, running your zones for 5 minutes each watering. You can then dial back your watering frequency but increase zone duration until watering normally again.
Make your lawn stand out
It all begins with sunlight and water. These two essentials are often overlooked. While a soil test and PH balancing is crucial to your lawns success, without enough sunlight your lawn will remain thin and without ample watering through the summer the lawn will take heavy damage and require renovation in the fall to recover.
6 Hours of Sunlight
While Tall Fescue is more shade tolerant than many grasses it simply cannot thrive with less than 6 Hours of sunlight. Fescue can certainly survive with as little as 4 hours but it will not be thick and full, continue to thin nearby trees or remove them all together until every portion of the lawn is receiving 6 hours of sun daily. You can always create mulch beds in areas that are too heavily shaded.
Spring and Summer Water Requirements
Watering deep and infrequently is a great habit in the Spring to establish an extensive root system to help weather the Summer. One inch of water once a week in the spring is a great rule of thumb, this normally comes from running each zone of your irrigation for one hour but be careful of not over watering which can lead to ruts when mowing as well as disease pressure. When Summer comes watering should shift to a half inch every other day or roughly 1.5 inches per week, this typically means running each zone for 30 minutes but it is important to always read and react to your own individual lawns needs.
Aeration and Seeding
While we understand it’s a costly and back breaking endeavor, yearly Aeration and Seeding is vital to Fescue success in Virginia and will keep your lawn the envy of the neighborhood. At the bare minimum some heat damage is inevitable to your lawn through our tough summers. Your lawn is also taking weekly mowing stress, pet traffic, human traffic, while dry spells torment it and the scorching sun beats on it all summer. Aeration is our chance to replenish the turf with new seedlings, relieved compaction, and new nutrients deep into the soil layer while also helping the lawn to take up more moisture to better thrive in the future. There are many benefits to Aeration and Seeding and it is highly rare that a lawn will not greatly benefit from the service.
