Maintenance: Where the Green Grass Grows
Three tips on getting your yard ready for spring, and maintaining it.
As the rainy winter season in hawaii comes to a close, it’s time to check in with your yard. The temperamental weather either kept you indoors all day or threw you on a spontaneous adventure to take advantage of every ray of light. Meanwhile, your lawn was not getting much TLC. But now it’s time to roll up those sleeves and make way for spring with these easy-to-do yard tasks.
1. Know Your Type.
“In Hawaii, if you live on the windward side, you’re going to get more rain,” says Frank Suster of City Mill. “If you live Ewa side, it’s very dry. The type of grass you have is important.”
In addition to purchasing a grass type that will thrive in your environmental conditions, you’ll want to ask yourself how much or how little you’re able and willing to maintain your yard. Some types of grass require lawn mowing every week while others have a more slack schedule of every three weeks.
2. Remember to use fertilizer.
When purchasing fertilizer, you’ll notice there are typically three numbers. Those numbers stand for the amount of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium found in the fertilizer. To remember what those numbers mean, Suster says to memorize the phrase, “Up, down, all round.” Nitrogen (up) makes your grass and plants grow. Phosphate (down) establishes strong roots for new plants. Potassium (all around) takes care of any diseases that grass or plants may be susceptible to and will be helpful if you start noticing brown spots on your lawn.
3. Control the weeds.
“Naturally what I recommend is remove what you can. Pick it out, pull it out,” says Suster. But if you haven’t been maintaining your yard and more than half is overrun with weeds, weed whack or lawn mower over to trim it down. Then, purchase a weed killer.
Just be aware that certain weed killers are stronger than others. You might have to wait two weeks after using the weed killer to be able to plant again. In some cases, you might have to wait a year before anything can start growing again in your soil.
