Tips for Growing Lush, Green Lawns

Some simple maintenance techniques will ensure a healthy lawn for the entire season. While keeping your lawn healthy is the easiest way to keep it lush and green.

What makes a lush green lawn?

Healthy grass gets its rich green color from chlorophyll produced by each grass plant. A good greed color indicates that grass is getting all the nutrients, air and moisture needed for vigorous growth. The more foliage a lawn has (the taller and thicker the grass grows), the greener it looks.

How can I plan for a good green growing lawn?

To maintain a lush, green lawn throughout the year, choose a seed mixture of several varieties of grasses, such as Perennial Rye-grass, Kentucky bluegrass or Tall Fescue. This diversity assures that if one type develops a disease and turns brown, a large proportion of your grass will remain unaffected and keep its healthy green color. To ensure a good green color for many years, periodically over-seed lawns with a mix of the newest varieties to take advantage of the latest in disease and pest-resistant grass seed.

How can I keep my lawn green?

Lawn grasses use a lot of nitrogen to produce foliage during their active growing season. Begin the season by spreading a slow-release granular fertilizer. It will provide a steady supply of all the important nutrients for a period of many weeks.

A common cause of browning in many lawns is drought. Grass will turn brown and go dormant when temperatures are hot and water is scarce. To prevent browning, give your lawn a thorough watering each week if rainfall has been low.

Where rains are infrequent or water use is restricted, choose drought-resistant seed mixes. Water infrequently and deeply, rather than lightly and often, to avoid diseases and to help grass plants to develop a deep root system.

Below are four methods to keeping your lawns green:

• Test and correct your soil's pH, if necessary. Correct alkaline soils by spreading sulfur; modify acidic soils by spreading dolomite lime.

• Top dress: Spread and rake in quality topsoil, peat moss, compost or other organic material to add humus, which promotes healthy grass.