By Rusty,

As winter fades away and the warmth of spring emerges, it's time to prepare your lawn for the season ahead. Here in North Florida, spring brings not only blooming flowers, but also some challenges for maintaining a healthy, appealing, and lush lawn. 

After going through over 20 years of watching lawns react to spring, we're here to share the top five lawn care tips that are specific to North Florida to help improve your lawn’s curb appeal.

1. Weed Invasion Defense:
With the onset of spring, the warmer temperatures create the perfect environment for weeds to thrive. To combat this, a combination of pre-emergent and post-emergent weed control is essential for your turf.

We also emphasize the importance of addressing weeds in mulch beds, as they can quickly spread and detract from your landscape's curb appeal.

The key for weed control, if you’re going to DIY it, is to learn the fundamentals before getting started. Every year, we average about 1-2 calls a week from a homeowner who says, “I bought something at the home improvement store, used it on my lawn, and now it’s all dying. What happened?!?”
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The common denominator in each of these calls is one or a combination of the following:

  • Used a product for the wrong type of grass (for example, they used a weed control product made for Bahia or Centipede on St. Augustine grass)
  • Used a product made for 10,000 sq ft of grass on 3,000 sq ft of grass. (basically overusing the product because they didn’t measure their lawn or didn’t read the label)
  • Used a combination of products that singularly would work fine, however when applied together on the lawn had an adverse effect.

The lesson from these other DIY mistakes is to learn the fundamentals before starting; which are to know your type (or types) of predominant turfgrasses, know the measurements of your lawn and rates for product you're applying, and lastly, know your products timelines of effectiveness. 

2. Spring Irrigation Tune-Up:
As temperatures rise, North Florida experiences a dry spell that catches many homeowners off guard. Often, irrigation systems have been reduced or turned off during the winter months, leading to drought stress on lawns when temperatures increase in March.

Many homeowners also neglect servicing their sprinkler system, using the ‘set it and forget it’ mentality - not adjusting for seasonal changes or servicing it to ensure it’s covering properly.

Regular servicing and seasonal checkups are crucial to ensure your irrigation system is functioning efficiently and preventing dry patches in your yard. 

Without the proper amount of moisture in your lawn, fertilizer and weed control will have a negative effect on your turf’s health. 

3. Preventing Pests:
Springtime brings the awakening of pests that can wreak havoc on your lawn if left unchecked. Chinch bugs, Mole Crickets, and other landscape pests can cause a lot of St. Augustine, Zoysia, and Bermuda grass damage quickly if left to a reactive approach to landscape pest control.

Whether you DIY or want to partner with a local north florida pest control service such as ours, it is vital during the growing season to protect your lawn. If you choose the DIY route, be sure to use preventive measures rather than relying solely on contact products after you have an infestation.

Integrated Pest Management practices such as proper mowing height and irrigation management play a major part in preventing lawn insect damage. 

4. Soil and Lawn Nutrition:
Proper fertilization is key to promoting lush, healthy growth in your lawn. By timing fertilizer applications correctly in the spring, you can provide your turf with the essential nutrients it needs to thrive.

The result? A vibrant, dark green lawn that enhances your outdoor space.

If your home is new construction (within the past 3-5 years) or fertilization isn’t offering the results you desire, you might consider topdressing to boost your soil nutrition. Soil’s pH and poor quality can make fertilizer wasted due to the turf’s inability to take up nutrients.

Topdressing with quality soil makes a major difference for lawns suffering through that.

5. Bed Definition:
Don't overlook the importance of well-defined bed edges and crisp bed lines to give your landscape great curb appeal. Tidying up your landscape with defined beds and fresh mulch not only improves the health of the landscape long-term, but also elevates your curb appeal immediately.

The contrast from a green lawn to defined dark mulch beds gives attention to detail that makes your landscape stand out and make a lasting impression.

As you prepare your lawn for the spring season, remember that investing in professional lawn care services can save you time, effort, and frustration. The Master’s is dedicated to helping you achieve a healthy, beautiful lawn that you can enjoy year-round.

For personalized advice and assistance, our lawn and pest control professionals are ready to help! Contact us now at (352) 378-5296 or (904) 913-5296 or fill out our form at the top of the page, we would love to help!

2024-march-spring-landscape-hero_HERO.jpg
By Rusty,

Topdressing with Lifesoil's Comand Turf Builder is a game cheaper for your lawn. It makes an amazing difference specifically for client's with poor soil quality for one of these reasons. The soil is available throughout the southeast, but it is formulated and we apply the topdressings locally in Gainesville, Florida lawns.

Builders sand: Your home was built within the past ten years and was built with primarily Archer fill dirt or builder's sand. As you heard in the video, Comand topdressing helps add moisture retention ability and nutrient uptaking capacity for the roots of your lawn.

Clay: Your lawn struggles to grow deep roots due to compacted clay soil. Aeration and  Comand lawn dressing will add some nutrients rich soil as well as non-compacting loose soil to begin to set roots into.

Soil Born Diseases: Soilborn Diseases in lawns can be reduced by removing the diseased soil and applying new organic compost to reduce the spread. This is not a cure, but an improvement for the soil.

To learn more about our Gainesville, Fl lawn health and topdressing service, visit our website at http://www.themasterslawncare.com or call (352) 378-LAWN

Topdressing a Zoysia Lawn with Comand Organic Soil
By Rusty,

Every lawn has to have a couple fundamental things to be healthy. They are (in order of importance):

One of the most frequently asked questions I am asked on an initial consultation with a potential client is, "Why isn't my grass as green as the other people in my neighborhood?" My response always starts the same way, that a lawn has three relatively basic needs for long-term health: Food, Water, and Sunlight. In the past two articles, we've discussed the right amount of water and sunlight, so that leaves the last tip of the series to be about food. "Foods" for the lawn for this reference are fertilizers, preventative pest control applications, and a healthy soil the grass is rooted into.  

Lawn Fertilizers and Nutrients

Many homeowners in our area use the ‘feast or famine’ method fertilizing once or twice a year because of chain stores recommending the spring and fall lawn feedings. This is one of the many ways that turfgrass and the human body are very similar. This is not unlike eating one or two large meals a week and expecting a healthy physique – It just doesn’t work like that. In the same way that nutritionists recommend consistent evenly portioned meals throughout the week because your body needs to be fed constantly, your lawn is at its best when it is given 5-6 doses of nutrients per year too.

Nutritionists also recommend not eating within an hour or two of going to bed so that you don’t go to sleep with a full stomach. Likewise, lawns do not take in many nutrients in the winter when it goes dormant. Too much nitrogen laid down at the wrong time of year can contribute to many environmental issues that are affecting our drinking water and our ecosystem. This is why we recommend early fall fertilization with a lower dose of Nitrogen (the first number on the fertilizer solution label), and focusing more on Potassium (the third number on the label) which increases the root structure through the dormant months.

Fertilizing with the wrong nutrient at the wrong time gets wasted.

Preventive Pest & Weed Applications

One other commonality between humans and lawns are vaccines. (This was written pre-COVID, so please do not take this as any political stance.) In the same way that getting properly vaccinated against Polio can help prevent the disease, one important piece of any fertilization program should include pre-emergents and systemic products to help prevent weeds and pests. Pre-emergents are formulas that bond to weed seeds before they germinate and render them useless so weeds cannot spread. This keeps the turf weed-free and healthy.

Soil Health

Soil health is an essential aspect of maintaining a healthy and vibrant lawn, because it is what makes the nutrients break down and feed the lawn directly. However, when it comes to new home construction, builders often use nutrient-deficient builder's sand to level the ground before constructing the home. While this may be beneficial to the builder's bottom line since it is cheap and readily available, it can have long-term consequences for the lawn's health. The builder's sand lacks essential nutrients and organic matter required for healthy plant growth, and it has poor water-holding capacity, which means that water drains quickly from the soil. This can result in a lawn that is stunted, patchy, and prone to drought stress.

How do newly constructed neighborhoods keep their lawns green when their soil is unhealthy? Every nutrient has to be fed from fertilizers and excess irrigation, rather than building the soil's health over time.

One of the best ways to remediate nutrient-deficient builder's sand is through annual aeration and topdressing with nutrient-rich, moisture-retaining organic soil. Core Aeration removes some of the existing soil while creating holes in the lawn for the organic topdressing to fall into and build a healthier soil. This new organic soil helps to increase the soil's organic matter content, improve water-holding capacity, and introduce beneficial microorganisms to the soil. Over time, this can lead to a healthier, more vibrant lawn that is better equipped to handle drought stress and other environmental challenges. While it may require some upfront investment, prioritizing soil health is essential for achieving a beautiful and sustainable lawn in the long run.

The ultimate goal of every homeowner who takes pride in their landscape is to have a thick, green, and lush lawn to enjoy. The easiest way to have that is to make sure it has the right amount of irrigation, a healthy dose of sunlight, and the proper lawn fertilization program. With those 3 things in-tact, your lawn will be the envy of the neighborhood.

If you know you have your soil and fertilizer right, but are wondering about the other two basic needs for a healthy Florida lawn, please see our videos about the other two basic needs: Sunlight and Water by clicking the individual links.

We hope this was helpful in understanding the basic needs of your North Florida Lawn. If we can help with your lawn's health, soil health, or pest control - please call our office at (352) 290-8715 or (904) 364-1166 or email our office at info@themasterslawncare.com

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3 Basic Needs of a Lawn - #3 is 🥕🥝 Food (Fertilizer) 🥒🍅