Lawn and Mower Articles

On this page you will find an always growing list of articles, tips and ideas for your yard, landscaping, lawn and lawn mowers. We'll add important and meaningful information as the growing season and the needs of your lawn and your interests change. Keep coming back to get the latest information and to use the older articles as a reference library.

How Much Lawn Fertilizer Does My Yard Need?

The good news is you can measure the width and depth of your lawn, multiply the width by the depth, subtract the square footage of your house and driveway and you have the approximate size of your yard. Armed with this information you are ready to go shopping for what is known as turf fertilizer or lawn care fertilizer.

Don't sweat the details. Fertilizing and grass fertilizer are not rocket science. You just need an approximate size of your lawn. As an example, your yard is about 110 feet deep and 150 feet wide. Multiply those numbers (110X150) and you get 16,500 square feet. If you house is about 1800 square feet and your driveway is about 1700 square feet you have 3500 square feet (1800+1700) not in grass. Subtract the 3500 from the 16,500 and you have approximately 13,000 square feet in grass.

When you go shopping for fertilizer, don't get confused about green fertilizer or organic lawn fertilizer or organic grass fertilizer or organic liquid fertilizer. You will probably end up with Scotts lawn fertilizer or Lowes lawn fertilizer or Home Depot lawn fertilizer or the brand from your local lawn and garden store. You will find it comes in bags that treat 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 square feet. Since you have 13,000 square feet in grass, get enough fertilizer to treat 15,000 square feet. It is better to have a little extra (put it on your yard - it won't hurt it) than to run out and have part of your lawn looking nice and the other part untreated and ugly.

If you are a perfectionist, you can call your local university extension office and send them a soil sample and they will tell you what nutrients your lawn needs. This is probably not necessary. Buy the bags Scotts or your local lawn and garden supply store recommends and put it on. Years and years of experience on millions of lawns says you'll be just fine.

Do My Lawn Mower Blades Need To Be Sharpened?

Keep in mind a lawn mower blade is suppose to cut your grass, not beat it into submission. A sharp blade is critical for the appearance of your yard and the performance of your lawn mower. Sharpness really affects the performance of a mulching lawn mower blade.

If you're a mulcher, take a look at a gator lawn mower blade. They have a unique design that allows the grass to stay trapped in the mowing deck longer and therefore get cut multiple times. The result is superior mulching and therefore a lawn with fewer noticeable clippings sitting on top of your yard. You can get a gator lawn mower blade that is an exact replacement for your John Deere lawn mower blade, your Toro lawn mower blade, etc.

Our Buy Lawn Mower Parts link is designed to help you find replacement lawn mower blades and other lawn mower parts. We suggest you have 2 sets of blades so one can be on your lawn mower while the other gets sharpened.

Make Your Grass Thicker

The good news is grass that is well fed and watered and cut will get thicker, even filling in bare spots in your lawn.

The bad news is weeds fill in bare spots faster than grass.

So there are 3 important steps in making your grass thicker. The first thing to do is get those weeds out of your yard. You can apply weed killer separately or as part of a fertilizer treatment. You can apply it as a dry granular powder or as a liquid.

Liquid is best. Why? Because the weed killing mechanism is for the weed killer to be absorbed thru the leaves into the plant and down into the roots. The result is a weed, dead all the way thru and it will not regrow. A dry weed killer must be applied to a wet weed. Forget it – it’s too much work, hit and miss with less than satisfactory results. Use the liquid weed killer.

Now that you have the weeds out of the way, there is a place for the grass to grow. This is the place for step 2 – feed, water and cut your grass to make it healthy. Healthy grass will spread and fill in the bare spots. If the bare spots are too large, speed up the process and go to step 3 by planting grass seed.

You are probably wondering… what is the perfect patch grass seed? It depends on your area and its climate. If you’re in the hot south, zoysia grass seed is good. If you are in a dry area and you are not a waterer, buy drought resistant grass seed. You can get advice on buying grass seed specific to your area by looking for grass seed online (try our Google search below) or by checking at your local lawn and garden supply store. The local store will have lawn grass seeds (such as Scott grass seed) formulated for your area. The package will have information and be able to answer all your questions such as grass seed rate, grass seed when, grass seed how to, etc.

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