Money saving tips for your lawn
Having a lawn can be expensive, especially a well maintained one. With the price of gas at an all time high and just your essentials for living going up daily, everyone is looking for a way to stretch their dollars further. Here are some tips to maximize your savings while keeping your lawn healthy.
Gas Saving tip #1
Mow less often by raising your mower deck height
This seemingly simple practice can push your mowings further apart by upto a week depending on the weather. By increasing your grass height upto a maximum of 4 inches for cool season grasses, you can cut your mowing time in almost half. Grass wants to be at a certain height and by mowing higher it is closer to that predetermined height. This will keep your grass from wanting to push topgrowth faster to return to its previous height.
Gas (and Money) Saving tip #2
Cut back on high nitrogen fertilizers (or all fertilizers)
By limiting your use of fertilizers on your lawn you not only save the money you would have spent on the fertilizer but also can cut back on your mowing expenses and your water schedule. This tip may be the overall best savings practice I put up on this site. Some will ask if skipping fertilizer will damage the lawn, or set it back. Most lawns can go without fertilizer with very little ill effect. In fact synthetic fertilizers can be the cause of much lawn decline, but that is a subject for another time.
Money Saving tip #3
Use concentrates instead of ready to use pesticides
Almost all consumer availbe pesticides, wether for weeds or insects, come in both a RTU (ready to use) form and a concentrate that you dilute yourself. Most times the RTU will cost about the same amount as the concentrate. Say a gallon of weed killer sells for $10, the same quart concentrate may sell for $11 dollars or less but will make over 5 gallons. Even if you have to buy a pump up sprayer (or reuse the sprayer and bottle from an RTU) you will quickly save money on the first bottle. Now this is only true if you plan on using the larger amount. Most chemicals are fine if stored in their original container for upto a couple of years, just keep them out of the sun and don’t let them freeze. Always follow labeled directions.
Money Saving tip #4
Use proper watering techniques
I have wrote about this several times on this site. You can go either here: http://reallawnsense.com/blog/?page_id=107 or here: http://reallawnsense.com/blog/?page_id=58 Either should give you the basic information to use to see if you are watering incorrectly. Proper watering will almost always use less water and use it more effectively. This alone can mean huge savings on your water bill. Also with proper technique your lawn can go longer between waterings and that will save you even more.
Got another tip, leave it here in the comments or send it into info@reallawnsense.com or use the contact page and I’ll get it posted.
