Residential Lawn Maintenance & Expert Care Tips for Minnesota

We recommend watering your lawn between 5am and 9am. Watering between 9am and 9pm is not ideal because some of the water will evaporate before it is absorbed into the soil, thus wasting the water. Watering between 9pm and 5am is not ideal because the grass blades will remain wet overnight from the watering and this leads to more lawn disease. 

When watering the lawn, infrequent watering (every 4-5 days) is best to encourage roots to go down deeper in the soil. This is often referred to as a deep and infrequent watering strategy. There are cases where you may need to water more frequently. When you are growing in new grass or you are trying to recover grass from stress more frequent watering is recommended. In these cases we recommend daily watering, if not multiple times per day. 

If you are watering regularly, the city watering restrictions are typically okay. Where homeowners get in trouble with following city restrictions is not watering enough to carry the lawn until the next watering interval. The longer the watering restriction, the more you need to water each time you are able. 

If you are trying to grow new grass or recover stressed grass, most cities have permits that can be obtained to allow you to water more frequently. Reach out to your city about these special use permits.  

We recommend placing a few rain gauges around your lawn when you run your irrigation system. Run the irrigation system for a set amount of time, such as 10 minutes, and see how much water you get in the rain gauge. Then you will know for every 10 minutes how much water your system puts out. Please note, that each zone will be different due to irrigation head style and number of heads. So we recommend you test each zone individually. Using several rain gauges helps you get a good average for each zone. 

Many homeowners do not have an irrigation system and that is okay. For much of the year, mother nature provides lawns with enough water. To keep green grass, while reducing how much you have to pull a hose, we recommend identifying areas of your lawn that dry out more quickly. Often these will be slopes or mounds. During average weather, watering efforts should be focused on these areas, while avoiding the rest of the lawn. During heat or drought, other areas of the lawn may need additional water as well. When you don’t have an irrigation system, it is important to focus your watering efforts on the areas that need it most. 

There are two main things to look at if you are watering your lawn and it is still turning brown. First, are you watering enough? Many times irrigation systems are programed for average weather. But when we get heat or drought, the amount of water applied does not keep up with the grass demand. Second, it is possible that another problem is occuring in your lawn. Both disease and insect pests can turn your lawn brown even when enough water is present. 

If you are watering and your lawn is turning brown, reach out to us so we can identify what is causing the brown and design an action plan for you. 

The best mowing height is going to very by season. In the spring, 3-3.5 inches is best. In the summer, 4-4.5 inches is best. In the fall, 3-3.5 inches is best. Generally speaking, longer is better than shorter. Mowing longer means the grass has more leaf surface area to produce energy, which then transfers to better stress tolerance. The late fall is the only time, where we recommend mowing slightly lower in order to minimize disease and matting during the winter months. 

It is a best practice to mulch grass clippings. Mulching grass clippings returns valuable nutrients to the soil and provides food for soil biology. We only recommend bagging clippings when the grass is extremely long and mulching the clippings leaves a cover over the grass.

It is preferred to mow when the grass is dry, but yes it is okay to mow when the grass is wet. The only time we advise strongly against mowing when the grass is wet is when your lawn has disease. In this case, mowing when wet may spread the disease. 

Absolutely, it can be too hot to mow. Mowing when the temperatures are above 85 degrees, can cause rapid water loss in the grass leading to the grass turning brown. This does not kill the grass, but it will take several weeks for the grass to recover. It is always best to let the grass grow longer than to mow it when it is above 85 degrees. 

We recommend never cutting off more than 1/3rd of the grass blade at any given mowing. More simply, if your grass is 6 inches long, the lowest mowing height you should mow it is 4 inches. 

We recommend at least every 2 years. Dull mower blades can make the grass more susceptible to disease and insect pests. If your mowing branches or have a very bumpy yard, shrapening your mower blades every year is recommended. 

There is no single best mowing pattern. We recommend changing the mowing pattern each time you mow to avoid creating grain or ruts in your lawn. 

Thin and patchy areas typically develop due to poor growing conditions. Poor growing conditions include shade, traffic, soil, topography, pests, disease, insects or other stress. Proper identification of the poor growing condition allows us to create a plan to correct the thin and patchy areas. Correcting a thin and patchy area typically involves two steps. Correcting for the poor growing condition and then seeding/sodding the area. Reach out to our team for help identifying the issue and desiging a corrective plan. 

This depends on what caused the damage. There are some problems like voles or red thread disease that will recover on their own with time and improved growing conditions. Other problems like grub damage require repair. In all cases, seeding an area will speed up the recovery from the damage. Reach out to our office for proper identification of the issue and help knowing whether it will recover on its own.