How To Fix An Ugly Lawn | Lawn Care Tips For Beginners

[Music] what's up y'all i'm alan hayne the lawn care nut thanks for coming back for yet another week so i'd like to welcome you to a very very rainy saturday morning here in paris florida i'm not gonna be able to do too much filming out here at least not right now because we've got rain off and on pretty much all morning so far but the problem here is is i am super overgrown this is what happens when you put down a good application on a largo night seven days ago look at that color and that same ag beautiful beautiful sanag so the fact that it's raining means i'm not going to be able to get out and enjoy my mo like i typically like to do on early saturday mornings here but it is going to give me a good chance to speak to some of you that are newer subscribers and give you kind of a beginners type video which is something i haven't done in a while you see this shirt i'm wearing here no it's not a sponsor this is actually one of my best friends this is his youtube channel his name is steve sharon i'll link him in the description below so i'm wearing his shirt today because he recently i mean just like recently like yesterday reminded me of something very important and that is that now that we've passed the 100 000 subscriber mark thank you very much to all of you for that by the way but we've got a lot of you here that are definitely beginners and sometimes my content gets a little bit advanced and i kind of forget about you guys that are just coming along just learning you know and i'm here sitting here talking about calculating in rates and all kinds of stuff and you guys are sitting there going what dude so the fact that it's raining then gives me a chance to set up the studio here and give you some quick tips on how to cure that ugly lawn because it seems when you look at seo keywords for some reason a lot of you guys search that like how to fix an ugly lawn and i thought well okay i'll give you some tips that'll get you started to that but then don't forget look in the description below where i'll give you more detailed information videos that kind of expound on the topics that i talk about here that way you can get started here you can get some beginning ideas here you can subscribe to the channel then you can look at the description below and get more information and get deeper into some of these concepts and take that lawn from ugly to beautiful [Music] one thing's for sure even when it's raining out it's still very humid and hot here and i love it alright so let's talk about it how to fix an ugly lawn this is going to be fun i think we're going to go back to basics and even for those of you a little more advanced i still think you're going to get a lot out of this i hope you do because it's always good to go back and revisit things that you think you know it's been good for me too all right so first off let's talk about mowing because mowing is the single most important thing that you need to do and you need to do it properly in order to get your lawn healthy there is nothing else nothing else in this video that i'm going to give you that is important is mowing so we're going to spend most of our time there we're gonna do it right up front so just think about this concept for a minute that's one grass blade that i pulled from st augustine now again it's overgrown but just look at all of that leaf surface that can absorb sunlight you want to allow that as much as possible and while you do need to cut your lawn you want to cut it as tall as possible to leave as much of that leaf surface exposed so when you cut it off you still have quite a bit of leaf surface exposed to absorb sunlight which then allows photosynthesis to occur which then allows sugars to go down the plant now we're going to talk a little bit more about supporting that process when we talk about watering and fertilizing but the idea of cutting tall is to allow more leaf surface to be exposed to the sun all the time so what i recommend you do if you don't even want to try to measure how tall you're mowing just set your mower all the way to the tallest setting and let it go just forget it that's the easiest thing to do as a beginner all i'll do is put it in the little holes over here and i'll put it in the rest area over here get the window up i'll set it and just take that mower all the way up to the highest setting and you're good to go walk away forget about it [Music] now the other thing to remember here is you'll see that when i folded that over i did that in an exact third that's what i would leave you never want to cut more than one third of the grass blade's total length off in a single cutting the reason that you don't want to do that is you don't want to stress it too much if you take off a third the grass blade can handle it it'll be fine it'll regrow everything will be good if you take off any more than that and you're gonna you're gonna send a lot of stress into this plant and while it may recover it'll be stunted and that stunting can allow for other problems to seek into the lawn such as insect disease or even weed pressure you see there's a reason we plant certain types or species of grass as turf grass and lawns it's because those types of grass can handle weekly mowing and they can continue to grow through and they can create a really nice carpet and they can also resist weeds insects and disease that's why certain grass types are considered good for turf grass however when you stress them out when you stunt them by cutting too much off then they can't do what they're meant to do which is spread and hold and keep that carpet it stunts them and so then in that case it allows those problems so that also answers the question of how often should i mow you should mow so that you only take off one third of the grass blade's length in a single mowing so for some of you that could be once a week maybe twice a week down here in the south with saint augustine in the height of the growing season you know like june july it's definitely twice a week sometimes even every three days if i really wanted to get nutty which of course i do now you also want to make sure that you do have a sharp blade if you don't know how to sharpen the blade you don't want to sharpen the blade just go to your local lawnmower shop buy a brand new blade as a replacement that should come sharpened put that on your mower and leave the old one with them and let them sharpen it for you cost you 10 to 15 bucks but then you'll have two blades all the time that you can switch in and out you don't have to do anything you don't have to use a file as you guys saw in my last week's video i don't really know how to use a file either but either way keep the blade sharp trying to give you really good simple beginner tips to make sure that you can mow that lawn properly because mowing is really the most important thing [Music] now the next piece with mowing is that you want to mulch the clippings and i know you guys hear this all the time you should mulch your clippings because it's like natural fertilizer i know that some of you hear that and you're like whatever dude i don't even believe that but seriously it's a true concept and it really works in a lot of places across this country there are hay farmers and if you talk to hay farmers they live and die by the amount of nitrogen that's in that soil and they definitely want to return as much as they can because they know that when they go to harvest their hay crop they're actually removing nitrogen that they had to put in to make the hay grow so it's pretty logical if you think about it the way that grass grows is it's the plant right if you remember from your middle school botany classes what plants do is they create sugars through the process of photosynthesis and they make their own foods so they can grow but there's something that has to support that growth just like in humans i mean you've heard they tell kids you know take your vitamins eat your spinach so you can grow it big and strong it's kind of very similar to your lawn if you're feeding it by the way fertilizer is not lawn food it's just that's kind of a generic term we use but if you're feeding the lawn or actually you're feeding the soil with the right nutrients and enough moisture that will then support optimum photosynthesis in the lawn and help the lawn grow thicker quicker and stronger and resist all kinds of disease pressure you know heat pressure whatever other kind of pressure it can get so i want you to think about it you're going to apply fertilizer which is essentially nitrogen and it's other things but when you apply that nitrogen that nitrogen then is into the soil and once it becomes readily available within the soil the grass plant uptakes it along with water and then those nutrients nitrogen phosphorus potassium other micronutrients too like iron and other things we don't get too complicated here but all of those nutrients support the process of photosynthesis so more sugars can be sent down the plant to spread out the roots create more roots or in this case saint augustine create more runners and then more nutrients and water can go up more more more photosynthesis can occur up down up down up down grow grow grow spread gross bread gross bread gross bread and that's what we want right we want that gross bread gross bread grow spread grow spread all around to create this beautiful thick carpeted turf so just logic with me now if i'm putting in nitrogen fertilizers and the grass is using that to grow right but then i cut that grass plant off some of that nitrogen is in those blades because it's been taken up right and that's why it's green too by the way if i take those blades out and away from the lawn i am physically removing nitrogen however if i mulch them back in and let everything go back down i am returning that nitrogen it's just in a little different form but i am returning that nitrogen back into the soil and that is super healthy and that's why you should mulch your clippings as often as possible all right so now i'm going to go in the garage because like i said even though it's rainy it's sweaty out here but i'm going to go ahead and go in the garage but what i wanted to suggest to you or what i really want to get you to understand here is that mowing is probably the most important lawn care chore you can do mowing properly it's probably the number one way to take an ugly lawn to looking better is to mow properly and so i hope you'll take those tips to heart and then we'll get to the rest [Music] all right next is irrigation now this is one that you know can stop some of you from succeeding because you have water restrictions or maybe you just have too big of a lawn to water so that's something that you need to consider is irrigation if you can't irrigate at least pick one spot maybe only do the front and not the back have some kind of strategy so you can at least have a part of your lawn looking good and keep that irrigated well all season long now this will mostly appeal to those of you up north and in fact i've got a video down below that i'll link to that tells you exactly how to water your lawn but for those of you with cool season grass especially during the summer season you want to get down one half inch of water every week that's it pretty simple to do that just put a rain gauge out in the lawn throw your sprinkler out see how long it takes for the sprinkler to hit one half inch of water in an area and then move it you obviously have some overlap that you're going to do but again that's part of the fun of lawn care right is figuring out how am i going to move my sprinklers around i lived up north for 15 years on my turf type tall fescue lawn and i only had manual sprinklers that i moved around it actually became a very good source of enjoyment for me and a great excuse to drink a craft beer down south water requirements are a little bit different depending where you live i'm in florida and i'm coastal so right now for the last few months we've been getting enough rain every day we get rain pretty much every day in the afternoon and this year's been a super wet season but even in normal years we get rain every afternoon so i don't have to run my irrigation system at all i don't have to drag any sprinklers around the only time i have to do that is in the earlier spring when we're not in our rainy season in that case i get down about the same thing about a half inch a week but i have to watch temperatures because down here in florida temperatures can skyrocket pretty quickly and sometimes i have to double up on that so in that case and what i want you to understand north south east west no matter where you live there's nothing that can substitute good observation in logic and just watching your lawn and getting to know what it does and how it responds okay so you have your mowing down and your irrigation which those are the top two in order of importance next let's talk about fertilizing because that's the one that's probably the most daunting for most of you it's also the one that's got what i would say the highest barrier to entry but once you kind of figure it out and you do it a few times and you know that everything works out okay it becomes very easy for you it becomes a very simple task now the first thing is i'm going to recommend that you use organics i've got my friend milo down here they are not sponsoring this video but i have loved them been in love with them been using their fertilizers for many years long before they ever knew who the lawn care nut was and the reason that i recommend milorganite and other organic fertilizers you can pick whatever one you want the reason i recommend those is because they're goof proof now trust me i can understand the environmental impacts and being friendly and all that kind of stuff and trust me i totally appreciate that but the real reason the number one reason that i always recommend organics is because they're goof proof and because they get results the reason they're goof proof is the reason they're goof proof is because they're not gonna burn your lawn it's just that organics are naturally slow releasing and that's really what burns a lawn burns a lawn is when too much nutrient is zapped right into it too quick organics won't do that even if you over apply now i'm not telling you to go totally nuts and crazy and be stupid about it but definitely understand that you have a bigger margin of error when you're using these and if you do make a mistake as a beginner you're going to be just fine and you may even discover what a lot of you have that when you throw her down for real you get extra double triple awesome results throw her down let's hope for the best now i don't want you to think that i'm too crazy here i do recommend that you measure your lawn and i'll link below there's been a couple of videos i've done that show you how to measure your lawn it's very important because you need to know how big each lawn space is once you know that then you can kind of go out and fertilize with organics and you'll be just fine i know spreader settings are a problem in all that so let's talk about that right now what spreader setting do i use or does it even matter when i'm using an organic so let's just take this little section right here and let me just do a really quick tutorial for you a beginner's kind of tutorial on applying fertilizer okay so the first thing i need to do is understand how big is this lawn space again i'm going to link below to some videos i did on that but we can get a quick measurement very quick just like this [Music] by the way we all have trouble with crack weeds so we need to get length and we need to get width okay so let's do this first one here ready let's walk it off take normal step all right so that was 13 steps and we're going to consider that each step is three feet your mileage may vary some of you guys that are over six foot your steps might be a little bit more so you might want to figure out how long yours are but for me i'm just about three feet and i'm pretty safe now we're going to measure this end here [Music] i'm cutting it off here at the palm tree okay so that square i don't know if you can see the sidewalk over there right over there so that square from the sidewalk and all the way over here and right to that palm tree so i'm 13 steps by 15 steps so yes we do have to do a little bit of math now but don't worry it's beginner's math all right so there is our square right and there's our palm tree right there this is a sidewalk trying to draw while i film so it's not the greatest but we said 13 steps this way and we said 15 steps this way right so if each step is 3 feet 13 times 3 9 3 right 39 feet is that right so we're going to make my math easy we're going to make it a 40 and then we've got a 15 times 3 is 15 3 4 45 so that means that this section here is 40 by 45 so we've got to do a little math there 40 by 45 put that up there so i can annex that zero four times five is eighteen so that's eighteen hundred square feet okay so that means that this section again here we are back out here again right sidewalk over there right that section right there all the way up to this palm tree here is 1800 square feet all right now you're well on your way to knowing how much fertilizer to put down on this 1800 square foot lawn let's take a look at the bag now [Music] okay now most of you whatever fertilizer you get it's going to be right on the front see this covers 2500 square feet and i know florida 6 000 square feet that's a different rate for florida we're not looking at that right now what we're looking at here is this one and this is the one that i want most of you to use this is the one that i use when i'm not in public you have the luxury of not knowing what i know you don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties you want me on that wall you need me on that wall but anyway so 2500 right so we know though that our lawn space is 1800 right so if we have 1800 and this covers 2 500 that means that we're going to use how much of that bat so just do some simple math in your head 1800 divided by 2500 is what it's like three quarters i think it's like .71 or 0.72 you could do the math on your calculator but it's three quarters point seven two is like three quarters so what does that mean it means i need three quarters of this bag in order to cover this section of my lawn out here does that make sense i'm really really sweating now i love it so do you get that three quarters of that bag would cover this area i'm just looking at the very simplest math that i can the bag says it covers 2500 square feet i have 1800 square feet so i've got three quarters of that lawn size or three quarters of a 2500 square foot lawn so then i therefore logically should put down three quarters of that bag to get a proper application on this section of my lawn well so how do you know three quarters of the bag will you eyeball it okay it's not that hard just eyeball it that's why i say this is goof proof it's an organic if you go too much if you happen to actually put that entire bag down one full bag on that lawn out there you're gonna have no problems no issues in fact your lawn is gonna be beautiful green beautiful green however if you really do then eyeball it eyeball three quarters of the back seriously i trust you to eyeball three quarters of the bag time for me to get my sunglasses out and a towel okay another question that i do get often though is should i mow before i fertilizer and the answer is yeah you probably should just makes it a little bit cleaner it's not required but if you do mow just mow normally you have to mow extra low none of that kind of stuff just mow normal which i said was tall before you fertilize probably a good idea just to allow the fertilizer to kind of get down a little bit deeper a little bit quicker the question that i always get next is how do i set the spreader right because you have all these different settings that you can use and sometimes that can be a little bit confusing all right so the first thing is is i recommend you use a broadcast spreader that's going to give you the most consistent application and it's going to make things the easiest on you next are the settings and you can see there's in this one this is an earthway spreader but doesn't matter they're all going to be different some have a dial but there's multiple different settings that i can use right you can see is that the further i dial this back the more those drop holes are open see they're fully open right there now watch when i close it so when i close it like that now you can see the drop holes are a little bit more closed okay so it's closed right there and what i recommend you do when you're first starting out is set it down at a lower setting somewhere about one third of the way to the end and then just lock it down so now that we have it locked in at one third i'm going to go ahead and open this up there's no fert in there and you'll be able to see my drop holes are slightly open see that now i've got a very important video for you that i'm going to link below that's going to show you exactly how to fertilize this lawn how to do a trim pass and then how to throw back to the wheel marks of the previous pass that's not as hard as it seems but i'm gonna go ahead and link you to that video you're gonna need to watch it but the question that you'll have is well how do i know that setting is right so that i can get this done in one pass because that's really the goal right is to get the lawn fertilized with one pass of each area so the goal would be to go up and back and up and back and up and back and be done and have that exactly empty whatever you put in there that three quarters of a bag that you put in there that when you went up and back one time it would be completely empty when you finish and that's what you would call a perfect application and over time it's not hard to get that it's just like swinging a golf club or riding a bike you just kind of know you just know the feel you know the walking speed which is three and a half miles per hour it kind of just makes sense and you feel it but until then i'm gonna give you a foolproof method or one that i used to like to use when i was a beginner that'll really help you out and that is the cross method so i can tell you that on most spreaders no matter what spreader you get the setting from a logonite for a one pass like i just showed you is probably going to be somewhere a little bit higher somewhere up in there because we really want to get this down heavy however because you're a beginner and you're not sure we've dialed it back what i want you to do is plan to make this in two maybe even three passes so here's what you do load up your hopper with all three quarters of that bag the whole thing and then what i want you to do is go up and back and up and back and up and back and i want you to do what i call a double fast walk with your spreader when you're done you're going to have some left over more than likely because again i keep reiterating this but that's the reason for this low setting you're probably going to have some left and then i need you to see how much do i have left do i have 50 of what i started with or do i have 75 of what i started with or only you know figure out how much you have left and then i want you to use logic in a perfect world you'd have exactly half of what you started with left and in that case now what i want you to do is go back this way don't go the same way because you can create stripes go back this way same walking speed same overlap all the way back and essentially then when you get done with that second pass going that way that should be empty right when you hit the edge of this palm tree here now in the case that it was three quarters full still then what i want you to do is slow your walking speed down a little bit don't change the setting go back and forth this way again but just slow down a little bit and let more come out so essentially eyeballing it all the way through again so that when you get back to the end here bam you're at zero and so you can kind of figure out the rest from there you get the idea that i'm talking about i want you to get it done in a two app situation the first app that you're doing going this way gives you a gauge it lets you see how things are working how much is coming out how much is going down in the hopper so you understand on the second pass how to adjust and you're just going to adjust through walking speed and nothing more now over time when you've been doing this for a while that's when then you can start to figure it out okay well i understand that when i'm done i'm having three quarters left or half or whatever and then you can adjust this back a little bit because now you understand how your walking speeds already adjusted now you start playing with another variable which is the amount that comes out of the hopper right by opening these up even further and that's really it just understand your variables your variables of how you set the spreader and your walking speed i'm assuming that you're going to get the overlap right which is throwing back to the wheel marks of the previous pass again i've got videos in the description below that'll help you with that concept well i'm thinking i may have gotten a little bit too technical with that description please don't let that stop you just go out and throw her down just go out there and put the fertilizer down don't be scared of it okay trust me you're gonna be fine don't let that stop you don't be scared by the way if you can't find the lord or night a lot of you it's not sold where you live or it's just not available or whatever i'll link in the description below to ringer laundry store another really good organic fertilizer that i like that has potassium in it so it's going to give you that really like true true green color rather than the bluish green color that the malorganite gives you which is a really nice look too i'll link the description below to that they've got free shipping and i'm pretty sure they can ship everywhere even canada now how often should you fertilize if you're trying to cure an ugly lawn i want you to fertilize every five weeks on the dot with an organic fertilizer put it down throw her down keep mowing keep irrigating keep in mind fertilizing this much is going to cause you to have to mow more okay but that's all right because we're trying to fix this ugly lawn and the way we fix the ugly lawn is to stimulate the turf grass to grow and the way we stimulate the turf grass to grow is by keeping it mowed properly consistently keeping it irrigated and definitely keeping fertilizer in there so that photosynthesis is supported okay now the last one is weed control i know that's one that everybody's going to ask about but really this is not the most important on the order of the list and in fact i'm not going to talk too much about it in this video and the reason that is is because i want you to master the other three first i want you to master the mowing first and foremost secondly i want you to get your irrigation in order figure that part out and then thirdly i want you to start fertilizing with organics every five weeks to stimulate growth yes it is going to stimulate the weeds to grow too but trust me the turf grass will out compete it to a certain degree you're not ever going to be able to eliminate weeds completely especially in the south but you're never going to be able to eliminate weeds completely in any lawn just with proper fertilizing mowing and watering but you can get i would say at least 50 to 60 percent there and then you can pick up the chemical treatments in the weed control which i'll link to the videos in the description below to explain how to spray for weeds and things like that and if you subscribe to the channel i'm sure that i'll be doing another weed spray video a very comprehensive one sometime in the next couple of months and so with that i'm gonna go out now and enjoy my mo as always i hope these tips have been helpful to you i'm alan hayne the lawn care nut thanks for watching and i'll see you in the lawn [Laughter] you

Channel: The Lawn Care Nut

Views: 4,772,073

Keywords: lawn care tips, the lawn care nut, how to fix ugly lawn, fixing ugly lawn, ugly lawn, how to fix an ugly lawn, how to revive a lawn, reviving lawn, lawn care nut, lawn care tips for beginners, lawn care tips and landscaping, lawn care tips for spring, lawn care tips for early spring, lawn care tips for winter, lawn care tips weeds, lawn care tips youtube, lawn care tips for february, lawn care tips and tricks

Id: jnMLaRCrRR4

Length: 26min 18sec (1578 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2017