DIY Lawn Care For Beginners

The following is an excerpt and summary of the Fundamentals of DIY Lawn Care as published over on Turf Mechanic Premium. Feel free to read this but if you’d like access to the full 5k word document complete with 10+ supplemental videos then you can purchase that access right here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Forward
  2. Making A Perfect Lawn Quickly Is Not The Right Goal
  3. The Un-Sexy Things You Should Know Up Front
  4. 1-Inch Of Water Per Weak Is A Weak Description
  5. Lawns Do Not Always Need Fungicides Or Insecticides
  6. The Four Tasks That Should Become Habitually Enjoyable
  7. What’s Next
Chapter 1

FORWARD

“In my opinion, the first step to improving a lawn yourself and maintaining it to the best of your abilities is to begin by setting the right expectations. Perfection is never achieved quickly.”

I teach the process of lawn care to both beginners and to more advanced lawn owners.

Although I have no degree in plant science I do have a substantial amount of knowledge and experience in lawn care and many people seek out my opinions and/or advice directly based upon my reputation in this space…so please take what say below with that basic understanding of me, your author.

The typical advice I give to lawn-owners is based on my own experiences and my own independent research.

I also read an enormous amount of university-published literature on turf grass, plant science, soil science, and related topics, all of which supports many of my thoughts.

I don’t typically cite my sources; because I’m not an academic, and because I graft together many sources of information to form my own opinions. If this is a problem for you then I apologize.

Anything I say on my YouTube channels, websites, or written guides should be understood to be my own opinion, because as we all know well, there are many ways to do this and to do that.

Chapter 2

Making A “Perfect” Lawn “Quickly” Is Not The Right Goal

Lawn care is a marathon, not a sprint. If you want to learn everything there is to know about DIY lawn care and then fix an entire lawn perfectly in one season then you are probably going to not enjoy the process. You are probably not going to finish the year feeling like you succeeded either.

You will however feel satisfaction if your goal is to simply improve your lawn month over month, quarter over quarter, season over season.

If you can resist the urge to compare your lawn to other people’s lawns that may already be in peak condition, but instead compare your own lawn to where it was 6-12 months ago then you will succeed every time.

If your main goal in your own lawn is to improve it then it’s easy to enjoy the process and it’s very hard to fail. That’s the goalpost you should always keep in mind.

Chapter 3

The Un-Sexy Things You Should Know Up Front

In my opinion there are a few things you need to know up front about a lawn to start improving it in dramatic ways…but, if you don’t know any of these things on day one you can still make dramatic progress quickly by sticking to the basics of lawn care: watering, mowing, fertilizing, weed control.

  • The average lawn needs approximately 1-inch of water per week via rain or irrigation or a combination of the two.
  • The typical lawn will look its best and be easiest to maintain if it is mowed twice a week. If you mow when others think your lawn doesn’t need it yet, then you are probably on the right path.
  • Fertilizing a lawn isn’t hard. Depending on the products you buy you could even hand spread it if you wanted to. Adding a little bit of all nutrients to the lawn is better than adding only Nitrogen…and organic and/or natural sources of nutrients will usually be the safest for your lawn over the long term, typically resulting in the healthiest lawn possible.
  • Weed control can easily be systemized. If you apply weed preventatives in the two times of year that most weeds germinate and apply weed killer in the windows of opportunity in the midst of the growing season then weeds will be minimal throughout the year.

Each of those basics I’ll go into in greater depth later in this text but it’s the other things that will take you far-they aren’t very flashy. Almost no one in your neighborhood will know them about their own lawns and it’s why knowing them will give you a leg up.

When you know your lawn’s:

  • soil type
  • soil temperature
  • soil pH
  • and grass type (or types)

Then you can dial in all of the basic functions (water, fertilizer, mowing, weed control) more effectively.

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