Managing Home Maintenance Costs

Most consumers and homeowners do not realize how important it is to complete proper fall cleanup to maintain their lawns and gardens. After the colder weather in the fall sets in most plants begins to go into their dormancy phase. Trees lose their leaves and annuals die off. Fall cleanup is often the furthest thing from everyone’s mind during this time frame. If you want to keep your lawn healthy over winter, there are a number of things to do. Thanksgiving and the holidays are just around the corner.

Keep your Lawn Healthy over Winter

Properly prepare your lawn for the winter and spring. This step will ensure you have a healthy lawn in the coming year. Leaves left to rot on the grass can often kill the grass underneath. Leaves also provide a home for small rodents. Small rodents will build burrows through the longer grass leaving a mess in your lawn. This occurs when a lawn is left too long just before winter sets in.

Lack of proper fertilizer that strengthens the root system can make all of your plants vulnerable to damage. A dry winter or spring will damage lawns with weak root systems.

Fall cleanup prices offered by landscaping companies will depend on the lawn clean-up services actually performed. The following is a brief fall clean-up checklist that consumers and homeowners may consider.

Keep your Lawn Healthy over Winter – Fall Clean-Up Checklist

1. Trim Lawn to the proper length to discourage small rodents
2. Apply fertilizer to promote proper root growth
3. Rake all leaves and other debris from the lawn and gardens
4. Remove all dead annuals
5. Pickup dead or broken branches from shrubs and trees
6. Clean out eaves troughing
7. Install protective burlap wraps on shrubs if needed
8. Additional services as required

This is not a complete list. Every homeowner may have specific tasks that they may want to be considered. These can be included in a packaged clean-up cost estimate or quoted separately.

Competitive Pricing

Many consumers will consider doing some or all of the work themselves. Suddenly they find that it is too late to do most of the fall cleanup themselves. Homeowners can request a competitive pricing estimate today for leaf cleanup, lawn and garden fall preparation. Once they have the cost estimate, they can make a decision to have all or part of the work completed.

Everyone loves a beautiful yard, with Rich green grass in the weeds.  Many people either do not know how to achieve this result or feel they have to spend a great deal of money to have a really nice lawn. They want inexpensive lawn care solutions. Consumers all over North America know that keeping the lawn well-maintained will ensure that it looks great but it also keeps weeds away.  Weeds will overtake the lawn particularly if the grass is not healthy or not very thick. The reverse is also true, a healthy lawn will prevent weeds from taking hold and will even prevent them from growing to start with.

Inexpensive lawn care

The following are steps that every homeowner can take to have a great-looking lawn without spending very much money. It may take a few more hours of your time but it is definitely worthwhile and will ensure that you don’t spend a lot of money either.

Here are the steps for inexpensive lawn care :

• Fertilize your lawn four times a year
• Water your lawn on a regular basis
• Use weedkiller twice a year
• Apply spot we killer as needed
• Apply grass seed to thicken up the lawn to thicken up the lawn
• Pull all larger weeds by hand once a week
• Mow the lawn as often as needed but maintain grass height at 1 1/2 inches to provide good cover

Homeowners who follow these simple steps will have a great-looking lawn which will be inexpensive to maintain. You will also be the envy of the neighborhood.

Are you tired of dealing with weeds in your lawn? There is a time-tested way to reduce and eliminate them, but it does take some work! For inexpensive weed management in a nutshell keep your lawn really healthy. Apply fertilizer at the appropriate times. Thicken with grass seed at least once per year. Make sure it has sufficient water. Spot spray with weed killer as needed. Finally, pick the larger weeds by using a tool that will remove the weed and the root as well.

Some weeds can be easily pulled out root and all just by grabbing them around the stalk and pulling. Others like dandelions have to be cut off several inches below the ground and then pulled out. The writer uses a small chisel to cut the root about 2 inches below ground level and then pull the plant and root out. They come out quite easily this way and will not grow back. Dandelions are the easiest to deal with. They are large, easily seen, and are easy to pull out using the method mentioned.

A healthy lawn mentioned in this way will deter the weeds and make your job much easier to control weeds growing in your lawn. The grass will be thick and will have a fighting chance against all of the weeds that begin growing all of the time.

Inexpensive weed management

The above steps are relatively easy to do and do not cost a great deal of money. It can get very expensive if you allow the weeds to overtake the grass in your lawn. Once this happens there are not many alternatives. You can kill all of the weed by spraying, but then often you’re left with very thin grass or less. You have to be careful when you spray to avoid damaging other plants as well as people walking on a newly sprayed lawn.

One of our neighbors let his lawn go. Never watered it and never did anything about the weeds. Once this happened, all he could do is replace the lawn. He still has not replaced his lawn. It is simply too expensive for home. He took another approach.

He added grass seed all over the yard and then topped it off with topsoil. Just enough to cover the seedlings and allow them to begin growing. A much less expensive approach, but one that takes much longer for the lawn to recover.

He could also remove what was left of the sod and all of the weeds. Then he spread several truckloads of topsoil on the lawn and fertilized it. The next step involved applying new sod all over his yard and watering it for many days to avoid the hot sun killing the new grass before it had a chance to establish itself. We are confident that it cost him well over a thousand dollars for his new lawn.

Spending a few dollars and a few hours a week could have saved him a great deal of money. That’s the main message of this post. Saving money by doing some of your own work and maintaining your property, in this case, the lawn. But many people are less concerned about the savings they might achieve vs. the instant repair that laying new sod will provide.

For more saving money ideas, click here. Consumers can put a little work into their homes and yards and save thousands of dollars.