5 Tips to Choosing the Best Lawn Care Program For Your Lawn

When it comes to your Northeast Ohio lawn, you might wonder exactly what kind of care it needs to thrive each year.

How many treatments are necessary, what should be included and how do you know what you need?

Sure, you may know your lawn could use a lawn care program or require maintenance, but you might not know exactly which program would fit it best.

In fact, you might have a lot of questions building up, and when all the lawn care companies you’re looking at have something different to offer, that can just bring about more questions instead of answers. You don’t want to get more treatments than you need, but you also don’t want to miss something important.

It’s certainly a conundrum. You should be able to easily compare programs and find one that gives you the lawn you want in your budget. But this process is a lot like comparing apples and oranges when comparing one company’s offerings to another.

We know it can be confusing. That’s why we’d like to help you wade through the various offerings out there so you can better understand what you should look for in a lawn care program and make the best choice for your Northeast Ohio lawn.

Lawn Treatment Program Specifics to Focus On

When you’re assessing lawn treatment plans, you want to look at a few key areas to ensure you’re looking at the items that are most important to your lawn.

Here are some of the key things to consider when trying to create and maintain a beautiful lawn.

1. Don’t Just Look at the Number of Visits; Look at Lawn Treatments

Many lawn care companies tout their number of lawn visits, but the number of visits isn’t as important as what lawn care treatments a company provides while they are there.

A thorough lawn care program in Northeast Ohio takes into account which services should be performed at specific times of the year and incorporates them into the number of visits the company provides. So, it doesn’t matter what the number of visits are as long as all the services are completed.

While it’s a temptation to use visit numbers as a comparison point, it doesn’t mean you’re getting more for your lawn. What if they are charging for visits you don’t need?

Finding out specifically what’s included in a lawn care program is the best way to truly understand what you’re getting.

2. Ensure You’re Getting Adequate Lawn Fertilization

The use of a professional fertilization product applied at the correct times throughout the year will give your lawn the nutrients it’s lacking in your home landscape. You want your nutrients delivered at key times, including early spring, late spring, early summer, late summer, fall and late fall. Each one delivers nutrients that help the plant at different times of its growth.

At Turf Pride, we use an organic nutrient-based granular fertilizer and perform 6 fertilization treatments in our lawn care programs throughout the year.

3. Embrace Multiple Weed Control Strategies

Fighting weeds can be challenging. Some are tougher to control than others and some must be battled different ways and at different times.

That’s why it’s important to choose a lawn care program that focuses weed control on Northeast Ohio’s weeds, especially those you have particular problems managing.

That means two pre-emergent crabgrass prevention treatments applied in early and late spring, as well as liquid post-emergent weed control with granular organic fertilizer treatments from early summer through late fall to take care of those tougher weeds that emerge and need multiple applications to eliminate like ground ivy, wild violet and oxalis.

Because there are a variety of weeds that require different treatments for control, a company that applies multiple weed control tactics knows their weeds and can better manage them.

4. Don’t Forget About Grub Control

In Northeast Ohio, grubs are never a fun addition to a lawn.

Grubs are actually the larvae of bugs like Japanese Beetles, European Chafers, Southern Masked Chafers, and June Beetles. They are white with C-shaped, soft, squishy bodies.

And throughout their life cycles, they can damage your grass below ground and feed on your landscape once they hit the adult stage.

Receiving a preventative grub control treatment as part of your lawn care program in early summer is the best time to target these larvae when they are young enough to control and before they have eaten too much of your lawn roots.

5. Consider Aeration and Overseeding

Aeration and overseeding are typically considered additions or upgrades to a basic lawn care program. But they are important to discuss and consider since they can do so much to improve your lawn.

Annual aeration in the fall helps break up soil compaction and give your lawn a chance to better absorb oxygen, water, and nutrients. Overseeding can help incorporate improved varieties of grass into your lawn, helping you obtain a thicker, healthier stand of desirable grass.

If your lawn is particularly thin or you notice multiple grass varieties, these could be important services to ask about including in your lawn treatment plan to ensure you’re doing what you can to restore your lawn to its best health.

Choose a Lawn Treatment Plan that is Best For You

Different companies will offer different services.

They will also build these services we mentioned above into their programs in different combinations. As you choose a lawn treatment program, you’ll want to evaluate what’s included in each level of your prospective company’s lawn care programs.

If you see only one program, with everything else offered as add-on services, you want to make sure you do the math. This offering might look like the cheapest and best at first, but once you do the math, you may find you’re not saving money at all. In fact, it could cost a lot more.

Look for a lawn care company that spells everything out in their service offerings very simply for you on their website. This way, you aren’t surprised by anything.

We know this whole process can be complicated for you. Turf Pride would like to help! Give us a call and we can help you learn what your Northeast Ohio lawn needs and which program would be the best fit for it so you can get a lawn you’re proud of.

 
Want to improve your lawn’s health and create a thicker, greener lawn? Turf Pride can help. Get started today with a free quote. Together, we’ll customize a plan that gives you the most attractive lawn on the block.