Lawn Mowing And Pest Prevention

One of the largest and most critical areas to deal with in home pest prevention is the lawn.

The lawn is a place for show, a place for recreation, and a place where children usually have their first real contact with nature on a physical level. The addition of children and pets increases the importance of both controlling the pests and the nature of the control.

Mowing.

Mowing is the one thing that if done properly, will yield the best bang for your buck where both your lawn, and pests are concerned. If all the other things are done reasonably well, this will make your lawn an oasis for you, and a hard target for pests.

Make sure that you start with a good mower, with sharp blades. Sharp blades cut the leaves of grass more smoothly, lessening the chance for disease, and adding to the overall appearance. A dull mower blade makes for a ragged cut, and makes mowing harder for you and your mower.

You should mow as often as possible, at least once a week during the growing season.

Reasons you should mow often:

The more often you mow, the "tighter" your lawn will become, because the grass will start to grow laterally rather than upward. This will create a more resilient lawn with more competition for weeds.

Mowing more frequently will allow you to lower your mowing height, providing less cover for insects, and less cover means fewer bugs.

As a result of the tightening of the turf, it will be more durable as well. Mowing heavily trafficked areas more frequently can help to prevent those ugly bald spots in your lawn.

Since there is less leaf blade to transpire water, the lawn will need less water, and irrigation can become less frequent.

Less frequent irrigation will help to keep fungus and bugs from becoming a problem.

The clippings you have will be smaller, and will degrade more quickly, putting more nitrogen and organic matter back into the soil, so less fertilizer is needed to keep the lawn green and healthy.

Thatch, and the insects that use it for cover, will be less of a problem.

The need for bagging will disappear.

It will help your lawn to be more healthy, and healthy lawns ward off lawn disease bugs, weeds, and fungus, can withstand more traffic, and suffer less from insect damage, recovering more quickly when these problems do occur.

You will have fewer weed problems, because they can't go to seed between mowing's, and because the weeds will be competing with a healthy opponent.

The more frequently you mow, the smaller the clippings, so they become easily available for your lawn to recycle into nutrients, and organic matter. If you bag your lawns clippings, you are taking away as much as sixty percent of the lawns fertility, and depriving your lawn of organic matter and other benefits. Avoid bagging like your lawn depended on it. Leaving your clippings on your lawn, reduces the amount of waste going into landfills, adds nutrients and organic matter to your lawn can help save money on fertilizer, and promotes a healthier lawn. It just makes good sense!

Frequent mowing discourages pests, disease and fungus, and helps your lawn grass to grow laterally. There are many other benefits as well.

This site is designed to lead naturally from one subject to the next. It can be used without doing this. To follow in sequence, go to Other Lawn Care As Pest Prevention

If you need help to carry out the steps provided on this site, or treatment for the bugs and weeds and other pests already on your property, the best place to go for that help in The Tyler, East Texas area is TexPest Services.

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