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4 Spring Lawn Care Tips

by Trish

Just mowed lawn.Spring is here, which means the smell of fresh cut grass is in the air! Chances are you have questions about taking care of your yard, lawn and garden. From picking the right seed to watering, I’ve got the answers. It’s time to break out that fertilizer, lawnmower and other equipment to create the ultimate lawn.

Repairing your lawn

If only it were as easy as lightly raking your lawn when spring arrived, sigh. Unfortunately, one of the most common problems facing our lawns today is uneven ground. And low spots can cause poor drainage, which can result in bad growing conditions for grass and other plants. What you need to do is grab a shovel and cut away any areas that are raised. Another issue that can plague our beautiful lawns is soil compaction. This occurs when soil is densely packed, making it diffiult for grass to take root and easy for weeds to take over. Test your soil by sticking a garden fork into the ground. If the fork cannot penetrate two inches, your soil is most likely compacted. You must loosen the soil with an aerator designed to remove small plugs of soil.

Planting grass

Once you’ve figured out all the problem areas of your lawn, you may need to reseed parts that are brown or bare. Planting new grass can dramatically change the appearance of your lawn. Before buying seed, figure out which varieties will work best in your particular region and climate. Also, consider the amount of sunlight your backyard receives. If you’re seeding a large area, it’s best to use a broadcast spreader. However, smaller areas can be seeded by hand. Once the seed is planted, it’s important to water it regularly and fertilize. Wait until grass is three to four inches high to mow.

Continue fertilizing grass

Now that you have rejuvenated your lawn, it’s best to encourage growth and discourage weeds from growing. You can do this by applying a combination of fertilizers and herbicides. When applying these products, take into consideration where you live and your weed problem. Fertilizer can help grow lush, thick grass. However, when used improperly it can actually damage the grass. Herbicides must also be used with care. It’s best to apply a pre-emergent herbicide before the seeds germinate in the spring. Keep in mind that if you use this treatment you cannot plant new grass.

Properly mow lawn

It may surprise you that there is actually a proper technique to mowing your lawn. Cutting your grass too short can be harmful to your lawn. And mowing with a low blade can remove important nutrients that are stored in leaf blades. Therefore, it’s always better to cut your grass at the tallest height recommended for your grass type. See below:

  • Common bermudagrass: 1-2 inches
  • Fescue: 2-3.5 inches
  • Kentucky bluegrass: 2-3.5 inches
  • St. Augustine: 2-4 inches
  • Zoysia: 0.5-1.5 inches

A little bit of lawn maintenance now will ensure that your yard looks healthy all summer long. It’s critical to properly clean, fertilize and mow your lawn early in the season. Follow these spring lawn care tips for the best results possible.

Attached Images:
  •  License: Creative Commons image source

Ann Michaels is a freelance writer and lawn advocate. Her favorite hobby is making her yard look as beautiful as possible, which is why she buys religious garden statues from Saint Francis Garden to improve the overall look.

Filed Under: Lawn Garden, The yard Tagged With: cut grass, fertilizer, grass, grass seed, lawn, lawn care, lawnmower, mow lawn, plant, raking, repair, spring, tips, watering

Renovation Tips That Will Increase The Value Of Your House

by Trish

Selling or renting out your house may not always be easy, especially if it is old. Other than the attachment that you have to it, the house may be too worn out to catch a buyer’s attention. Old houses are harder to sell, since most people assume that they are not as stable as they were. If you are looking to sell your house, you need to make sure that it is in the right condition to be sold. This will help you to sell it for a higher value that it would have sold for, before being refurbished.

Should I renovate my house?

Renovation is a must! One of the most important factors to consider when you make the decision to sell your house is how to make it attractive to potential clients. A customer will only take a product that they feel is better than the last one they saw.

Your home therefore, needs to stand out from others on sale so that people literally keep lining up for it! With this in mind, the following tips will help you find out how to change the outlook of your home to make it look modern and appealing. It will also play a big role in making the value of your home go up.

  • Thorough repairs

If you want people to be attracted to the house you are putting on sale make sure they can tell that the items in your home are new. Fix every sink, faucet, cabinet, surface, counter or any of the spots you know have been broken down for years. When potential buyers come to see the house, they will scrutinize every part of the house to make sure they are not getting less than what they are paying for.

Use affordable, new and modern appliances or parts that will draw people’s attention and make them have more faith in the new house. If they see new parts and well done remodeling, they will definitely be enticed into buying or renting the house. It will also help you have more selling points to use to convince them.

  • Create more rooms

The best way to sell your home for a higher price is to emphasize the amount of square feet that you are selling by creating another room. This may be expensive though if you reinvent a room you stand the chance of selling the house for a higher asking price that you would have. It simply means that you may be able to recover more money than what you will use to create the room.

The cheapest way to do so is by using space that already exists. For instance, you could convert the attic into a self-contained bedroom in order to fetch more money for your home. This is cheaper since you will not need to build an entire room rather you will only be making installations and changes to an already existing space in your house. You can also convert a garage into a guest room if there are enough parking spaces outside. This will also give you the option of renting it out or selling it as a separate entity.

  • Be strategic

When remodeling, pay as much attention to the outer parts of the home as you would to the inner ones. People will be attracted to your house from what they see outside first. Make sure all the paint is fresh and the environment is clean with attractive elements such as flowers, a patio, side porch or veranda. It is also important to consider outer elements like the doors and windows. These will attract people even before they enter the house and give them an expectation on what they will be getting inside when they buy it.

You can use inswing or outswing doors, bars and door grids, molding, the jamb or stile designs in order to draw attention to the design of your home. Doors can also come in many designs like steel, wood or fiberglass depending on the setting of your house. When it comes to windows, you can use several replacements on your home improvement approach like vinyl wood or aluminum. Windows can also be a sales point because of the colors and designs they come in. Make sure the outer part of the house is just as great, if not better than the inner one.

Emma Parkes shares useful tips on home improvement. She works for Windows and Doors which excels in improving home energy efficiency of their clients. You can get her insightful tweets on Twitter by following her.

 

Filed Under: Home Improvement, Real Estate, Renovating Tagged With: Appliances, attractive, buyers, doors, fix, flowers, landscape, modern, old, paint, patio, renovate, Renting, repair, selling, stand out, value, windows

My neighborhood is under construction this week

by The Diva

I’m tired this week. Almost every day there’s noise on the street very early in the morning. Why? Well … there’s construction crews tearing up our sidewalks for some reason. I’m not sure why, but they’re replacing some of the sidewalks that were put in two years ago when some of our neighbors had their waterlines improved.

On Tuesday the sidewalk right in front of our house was torn up with one of those big hammer drills. Our whole house shook like crazy! Luckily it only took about fifteen minutes for them to finish. Then … once they removed the broken concrete they cleared the area and at about 4:30 pm they put in new cement and smoothed it out and moved on to other areas.

Before they left the neighborhood they blocked things off with wooded blockades and put canvas over the wet cement but by 8 pm – only about an hour after the guys had left the area someone walked in all the wet cement in front of my house and apparent all down the street (doing the twist in the cement) mucking it all up. Who does that? So it’s all ruined! So I guess maybe tomorrow I’ll have another hammer drill making noise in front of my house again.

Now the sidewalk in front of my house is only partly useable because of the mucked up footprints in the cement. All the little kids parading by with their cute little personalized lunch boxes are having trouble walking on it. I hope they fix it soon.

Filed Under: Home and family, Home Improvement, Items to Try Tagged With: cement, construction, fix, improvement, mucked up, neighborhood, repair, ruined cement, sidewalk, terrible, walking, waterline

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