How's Your Soil?

While growing a healthy lawn seems like a fairly simple task, there are a few (hundred) ways your efforts can be sabotaged. When diagnosing a problem with your lawn, why not get to the root of the problem? If you having issues with your soil, the compaction, the pH, moisture or nutrient levels, any of these problems can spell disaster when you’re hoping for a healthy lawn.

Homeowners often come to us asking advice on some common problems. We wanted to share with you three questions we often get from homeowners. The experts at Nutri Lawn Ottawa are trained to diagnose these problems and provide a treatment plan to help your lawn get growing lush and green again.

Why do plants grow well next to my house but not in other parts of the yard?

If you have a newer home, builders will often bring in top soil for around the house, but not the whole yard. The top soil is often removed during the building phase, but that is where all the nutrients plants need are typically found. The deeper soil layers, which is now where you’re trying to grow grass, won’t have as many nutrients and can be loaded with sand or clay.

You can amend the soil (which is hard if you’ve already planted grass) or you can fertilize the soil and replace the nutrients that were lost. Nutri-Lawn Ottawa uses a combination of slow and quick release fertilizer technologies to deliver essential nutrients when they’re needed most throughout the season.

I can’t rid of the moss and/or mushrooms in my lawn.

Nutri-Lawn’s Enhanced Calcitic Lime application will neutralize the conditions allowing the mushrooms or moss to take over giving the grass the advantage. Our lime is designed to work quickly so you’ll see results faster than with standard lime applications.

Water pools on top of the grass when it rains.

Poor drainage could be caused by a number of factors including a clay-based soil. The most common cause of this problem is soil compaction. When there is a lot of foot or vehicle traffic on a lawn, or a heavy snow load during the winter, the soil gets packed down so hard the water can’t drain away fast enough. Soil that’s compacted won’t allow plants to send out deep roots and some roots may die from lack of oxygen.

Nutri-Lawn Ottawa recommends regular aeration in the spring or fall to remedy this problem. If the soil is particularly compacted, it may be recommended to aerate twice a year for a short time to alleviate the problem and allow oxygen into the soil. Aeration will also make fertilizers more effective and reduce insect and other infestations.

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How do you know if your soil is compacted? You can buy a special test kit. You can also take a metal rod and in the spring when the soil should be moist and soft, see how far into the soil you can push the rod. It should penetrate a good distance without a lot of effort. We are more than happy to drop by to help you plan your lawn care strategy. Contact us today!