How to Make Your Grass Greener

Your outdoor landscape always looks its best when it’s lush and green. However, accomplishing this beautiful greenery can be a challenge in itself. If you’ve ever tried to maintain your own lawn without professional assistance, you probably know what we mean. Luckily, we have the right experience with tending to outdoor landscapes. It should be noted that the major key to getting the most color out of your grass is keeping it healthy and performing proper maintenance. Below, we’ve compiled a few tricks that might help you improve the color of grass that you can grow. So without ado, let us get on with our list of tips for growing greener grass.

Know Your Grass Type

The first thing that you should know is that growing grass is much like tending to a child. As a living organism, your lawn requires consistent maintenance throughout the active growing season. Educating yourself about these different kinds of grass is exactly what you need if you want to ensure that you get good grass growth. In fact, different grass types require different maintenance practices. Following the proper maintenance practices will significantly impact how green and lush your lawn gets.

Sometimes, we have to maintain a lawn we didn’t install or plant. If you are maintaining a lawn that was planted before you moved into a new home, there’s a possibility that your grass could be a combination of two or more grasses growing together. Be sure to identify the various types before performing maintenance practices. On the other hand, if you want to replace the current grass outside, educate yourself about the different grass types.

Understand Grass’s Climatic Division

The different grasses are divided according to their best climates. For instance, the grass growing in the United States is divided into two basic kinds. Grass that grows in a warmer climate is found in areas like Texas or Florida. Others grow best in milder temperatures and are found mostly in the northern regions of the country. Some grasses, like Innovation® Zoysia, Latitude 36® Bermudagrass and NorthBridge® Bermudagrass are bred to perform well in the transition zone.

Centipede, St. Augustine, zoysia and bermuda grass are some of the most common warm season grasses that you might come across. Each of these grasses requires a different kind of soil and methods to cater to them. Whereas cool season grass types like bentgrass, ryegrass, Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue grow best in the northern regions of the United States. That being said, certain breeds of zoysia, for example, may not perform as well in the transition zone or higher compared to Kentucky bluegrass. In summary, make sure you access your grass type and maintain it properly. Learn more about the differences between warm season and cool season grass types here.

Maintain Healthy Soil

It’s important to be observant when maintaining a lawn as this will play a major role in your home landscape’s overall aesthetic appeal. Keeping a close eye on your lawn for heat spots, insect damage, disease damage or other external stressors will likely help you better control issues before they get too serious. There are a few factors that may go unnoticed though—especially at the soil level.

Keep a Balanced pH Level

The first factor to consider is the pH of the soil or the grass. Healthy soil plays a huge factor in the color and vibrance of your grass because you’ve created an ideal environment for it to grow in. A healthy pH balance allows the grass to access important nutrients for growth and vibrance. When pH levels are too high or too low, plant’s can absorb nutrients. The more nutrients it can absorb, the less time, effort and energy for you to spend applying fertilizer. Soil pH is usually affected by external factors like rainfall, acid rain and salinity. There are tons of solutions like changing the soil, adding fertilizers and others to solve this issue. Collect and submit a soil analysis to find out what your soil’s current pH is and learn more in our Soil Management for Lawns and Gardens blog.

Understand Your Lawn’s Nutrient Requirements

Again, this is an important task that can be done simply by collecting and submitting a soil analysis. Fertility is something that affects the quality of the grass the most. You won’t be able to grow the right quality of grass if your soil isn’t fertile enough. There are tons of remedies and products that you can add to the grass to make it fertile but be careful because it can backfire as well. You don’t want to oversaturate your lawn with fertilizer.

A common mistake homeowners make is the over application of nitrogen fertilizers. Although nitrogen is an important macronutrient for plants, maintaining a proper carbon-nitrogen ratio promotes healthy soil. We typically recommend the Lawnifi® Fertilizer Program as there are various product options that fit your lawn’s needs. Learn more in Why Use Lawnifi Fertilizer? or check out the products below.

Keep a Balanced Soil Moisture Level

Some level of soil moisture is important, although too much can have negative affects on the grass. Too much soil moisture is not good for grass growth much like salinity isn’t. It’s important to maintain a balanced moisture level so that the grass gets the right amount of nourishment without requiring much effort. Keep an eye on your soil moisture levels with some of the listed meters below or conduct an irrigation audit.

Watch Out for Other Environmental Stressors

Lastly, environmental stress matters a lot when it comes to growing your grass. Something as simple as people walking over grass repeatedly can hinder and damage its growth. Other common environmental stressors like insect damage, disease damage or shade can cause patches of brown grass or bare spots. Therefore, we suggest minimizing these factors for optimal grass growth. Check out some of the top-performing control products for some of these problems below.

Provide the Right Amount of Sunlight

This might sound like something very basic but it is still important to consider. The location of your lawn/garden will also determine the kind of grass that grows here. Grass requires 4-6 hours of sunlight on average, so we suggest building it in a place where you can provide the soil with this sunlight. The sunlight aids grass growth and improves the all-over look of the garden to make its growth look greener and lush.

Certain varieties of turfgrass don’t require as much sunlight as others. If you have a shady yard, grasses like fescue and St. Augustine grow really well with reduced sunlight. Palmetto® St. Augustine and CitraBlue® St. Augustine are some of the top competitors for shade tolerance. Learn more about grasses that tolerate shade here.

Fill in Bare Spots with Grass Plugs or Seed

Lastly, if your grass is damaged or if there are bare spots located throughout, enhance your lawn’s green color by filling in those spots with grass plugs or seed. Use a similar type of grass plug or seed that matches the grass you currently have installed for a more uniform appearance. Using bermuda grass plugs in a St. Augustine lawn, for example, can create a patchy looking lawn. Learn more in How Do I Fix Bare or Brown Spots in My Lawn?.

As you can see, there are tons of tricks to make your lawn greener. We hope that this guide makes your makes your gardens/lawns more amazing. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to also check out How to Thicken Your Lawn.