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Avoid Doing This To Your Lawn...

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brown lawn In one of my recent training seminars, one of the Field Service Professionals, Jason who works in our Plainfield, IL office, sent me this picture of a lawn with a good deal of damage. My first thought was that the homeowner applied too much fertilizer to the lawn using a drop spreader, but the more I looked at it, the more I started to second guess the cause of all of the browning. The reason why I don’t think it is caused by fertilizer is that the browning is too consistent, although there are several areas that appear to be unharmed. I also wondered about the lines going through the damaged area, which is something you would not see if this was related to a misapplication of fertilizer. I have not actually seen this site, but I am fairly sure the damage that is seen in this lawn is the direct result of being power raked too deeply. A power rake is a machine that has a series of tines on a shaft that spins at a very high velocity to “power rake” thatch dead grass from a lawn. If done properly, there is little damage or stress to the lawn.  Unfortunately, many times the user of a power rake machine sets the cutting depth too low and ends up causing damage to the lawn.  Since it is just supposed to skim across the top of the lawn, not rototill it.

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Another concern with power raking is that the process can damage the crown of the plant. The crown is the growth point for the roots and the shots. As long as it is alive, the plant will recover from numerous stresses. The process of power raking will damage or even kill a good number of crowns. When a lawn is power raked, it will pull up an abundance of grass blades, both alive and dead. That means there will be a good deal of raking to remove all the plant matter from the lawn. There are power rakes that have a grass collection system, similar to a leaf sweeper, to collect the grass that is pulled up. It may make it easier to use one of those, but the grass still has to be placed into bags or into a compost pile. The alternative to power raking is core aeration. It is a much simpler process and will benefit your lawn a lot more than power raking will. Contact your local Spring-Green office to sign up for this important service.  Your lawn will be greener and more importantly healthier if you do.