Lawn care and lawn pest control

In this, like most other activities, balance is the key. Balancing your lawns water and fertilizer needs with your mowing schedule, and balancing the right mowing height between too long and too short, will give your lawn the best look, and the best health. The best defense against insects, disease, fungus, and weeds is a healthy lawn. Like a healthy body, a healthy lawn will ward off attacks by invaders. Proper lawn care will give you a healthy lawn, which will in turn, give you, the best lawn pest control.

The list below gives a few details about  lawn care, as it relates to lawn pest control.

• Scalping your lawn, weakens the scalped area’s turf, and allows weed invaders to take the place of the weakened grass.
• Not mowing the grass at a low enough level, leaves cover for insects and allows some low growing weeds to reproduce seed under the mowing height.
• Thatch hides insects, and should be removed or cultivated, and not allowed to build up. Good mowing practices will stop it from building.
• Waiting too long between mowings, can allow weeds time to reach seed head maturity, and plant themselves in your nice green lawn. Too much growth also provides cover for insects.
• When you have waited too long to mow, change your mowing height, so that you take off less leaf blade, and then mow again in a few days at a lower cutting height. Do this in increments until you reach your desired cutting height.
• You should never remove more than one third of the top at a time. Taking too much off at once will leave your lawn in a weakened condition, inviting more bugs and weeds to take over.
• Avoid mowing weedy outside areas before you mow your lawn. If you have to do this for some reason, stop and thoroughly clean your mower between the two areas.
• Mow away from your landscape beds and toward your lawn. Care should be taken to avoid throwing grass, weed clippings, and seed into them.
• Don’t “over water” your lawn and landscape beds. Many weedy lawn pests, and bug pests enjoy excess water, and may decide to take up residence in the new sea side resort in your landscape. Over watering fuels fungus, and bacteria as well.
• Over fertilization leads to most of the same lawn care problems as over watering.
• Don’t fertilize your lawn too late in the year. If you do, you may be fertilizing winter weeds instead of grass. This will have a bad effect on your lawn pest control efforts in the spring.
• Avoid aerifying late in the fall. Aerifying at that time, will plant the weed seeds that would have otherwise rotted on top of the ground.
• Avoid lawn compaction. Areas with heavy foot traffic, are likely to have poor quality turf, and are subject to invasion by weeds that like compacted areas. If you have compaction, loosen it by aerifying.
• If the problem is human pests, and an area is getting so much traffic because it is convenient to walk in that direction, a good lawn care tactic might be to add a paved foot path through the area, or you could plant or build a traffic barrier to make it less convenient.

Good lawn care is great lawn pest control. See more on lawn care and lawn pest control on our lawn management pages.

Of all the home maintenance operations, lawn care takes the lions share of resources. The average home owner spends more on lawn care than any other aspect of managing property.

Add up the cost of weekly mowing, fertilization, irrigation, and pest control, and a half acre lawn can cost as much or more to maintain is a mortgage payment.

Traditional lawns have a big carbon footprint

If you pride yourself on being green, and having a green lawn, there may be a few contradictions at work. There can be issues with fertility runoff, chemical usage, water usage, and excessive fuel use for equipment, and the manufacture of the products used to keep a lawn green. Even the “organic” pest control products available from manufacturers have a large carbon footprint, because they have to be gathered, processed, stored, packaged, shipped, and so do the packaging and labeling products used.

Lawn alternatives

There are ways to avoid this conundrum, save money, and have a beautiful landscape without sacrificing the environment, or your time and money. It can even be done without starting a massive landscape project, gradually, over a long period of time, and won’t look awkward and strange while it is being done. What we are talking about is a native habitat, or backyard habitat. Native habitats are an excellent and inexpensive way to modify your lawn, and save money in the long run.

How to start a native habitat

Start by adding a few native trees and shrubs around the parameter of your property. I say “native” because native plants will withstand the rigors of their native environment better than the exotic species more commonly used in landscaping projects. Native plants are already acclimated to your region, are naturally resistant to the pests in your area, and have evolved to adjust to your soil type. As a side benefit, native plants will attract native wildlife, particularly birds, which will then lower your pest population.

Find ground covers native to your area, and add them where appropriate to help prevent erosion. You can also add some landscape stone paths if you like.

Continue to add trees, shrubs, and ground covers including native grasses until you have no lawn, or very little lawn left to mow.

Native habitats:

• Are less costly
• Are less time consuming
• Use less pesticides
• Use less fertilizer
• Require less maintenance
• Provide built in pest control
• Have a smaller carbon footprint
• Are wildlife friendly

Sometimes you may need to fill in some bare spots in your lawn, or maybe even start over with your lawn.

Want to jump start your new lawn, or your lawn repairs? Want to make your neighbors wonder how you got a new lawn in just a few days? There is a way to do it! It is done by germinating seeds, before you apply them to your lawn. This gives you an advantage over the weather, and hungry birds.

It will require:

• A new plastic trash can.
• Your seed.
• An air pump from an aquarium.
• Water.
• A cloth strainer of some type.
• Pelleted dolomitic limestone.

This is how it’s done:

Make sure that everything that comes into contact with the water and the seed is clean.

1. First, rinse out the trash can, to make sure that it is free of any chemical residue.
2. Add fresh clean water, to the halfway point.
3. Put the air pump air outlet inside the can, so the pump will circulate the air evenly. You may need to weight it with a clean heavy object. It should be circulating the water a little, and have a lot of air bubbles when plugged in and turned on. This air and circulation is very important. If you don’t do this part, your seed will rot, and you will have a stinky rotten mess!
4. Slowly pour in the seed, and stir with a clean utensil, until all the seed are wet. The amount of seed that you can process this way at one time, depends on the strength of the air pump. Put only as many seed in the tank, as the air pump you use can easily agitate.
5. The waiting is the hardest part. It will take several days. Use this time to prepare your planting area. Till, rake, add amendments, do whatever it takes to get it into shape for planting the seed.
6. Check this concoction every day, to make sure that it is well agitated, you may need to stir it occasionally, and make sure it smells clean.
7. When the seed coats start to swell and crack, you are about ready to apply them.
8. Strain the water through a cloth strainer of some type. A new paint strainer is what I like to use, cheese cloth will work, so will many other types of cloth. Just drain the water and save the seed.
9. Carefully mix the seed with the dolomitic limestone, continue to add limestone  until the mixture is dry enough to work in your spreader. Your planting area should have been prepared ahead of time.
10. Now spread the seed out evenly over the area.
11. A light dusting of sand and organic matter spread out over the top will help. In a very short time, you will see the seed begin to grow.
12. Water the seed lightly as needed, do not let the seed dry out!

If you have done everything right, you should have a good stand of Bermuda grass in your new lawn, or once bald spot, in only a few days. Then just kick back and watch the neighbors scratch their heads!

When it comes to mowing lawns, size matters! There is an appropriate lawn mower size for every area.

A small push mower would not be appropriate for a 2 acre lawn, unless you are mowing for exercise, and a large, heavy riding mower is not appropriate for a 200 square foot space.

Large riders are great for mowing large spaces, but can cause problems in smaller spaces, especially in areas with slopes, and many turns. Sharp turns with heavy mowers, can cause the tires to dig into the turf, which weakens the turf in that area. If these turns occur on slopes, this often results in erosion. Mowers often have to cover the same ground several times for turning in small lawns, and this results in compaction. The result is a problem that has become so common that it now has its own term and acronym: Big Mower Blight, or BMG.

Big Mower Blight can cause lawn damage due to compaction, erosion, and increased weed problems because it weakens the turf. No amount of increased irrigation, fertilization, or weed control can solve this problem.

There is a simple answer to the problem of BMG, simply use a smaller mower!

If there is a secret to the perfect lawn, it is this: Mow often!

Mowing often offers many advantages, frequent mowing:

• Removes less blade leaf each time, so the grass suffers less shock.
• Encourages lateral growth of tillers and stolons, which thickens the turf.
• Reduces the need for water.
• Decreases fertilizer needs since smaller clippings revert to nitrogen quickly.
• Prevents weeds from gaining a foothold since it creates a healthier lawn, and cuts the weeds off before they have a chance to produce seed.
• Decrease thatch.
• Reduces the chances of attack by fungus.
• Reduces cover for insects.
• For these reasons, frequent mowing reduces the need for herbicides, insecticides, fungicides.

With the need for less fertilizer, water, and pesticide, mowing frequency also saves you money!

Prevention is always the best means of control, and with mosquitoes, prevention offers the only control that is remotely successful for home mosquito control.

Pesticides offer only limited control for a limited time, mosquito misters are falling under increasing scrutiny, repellents are only moderately successful, and are often dangerous for the user, mosquito magnets and other types of mosquito traps are limited to the ones that are already hatched, and do nothing to stop the larvae, nets and screens are also limited in scope.

There is nothing wrong with any of these methods, they are all helpful in their own way, but they all fall short because they do not deal with the problem at it’s root. To ultimately win the battle against mosquitoes, and the diseases they transmit, attrition will not work. They can always reproduce faster than we can kill them! To win, we need to keep them from becoming a problem to begin with.

Home mosquito control through prevention

Mosquitoes, like any other type of pest, prefer certain habitats. In the case of the mosquito, they need:

• Water for larvae to hatch and grow.
• Cover to avoid predation.
• Blood for reproduction.

Eliminating any of these, will stop reproduction in your area.

Water:

If you have puddles of standing water, buckets, tubs, or any other receptacle for water on your property, mosquitoes can find it, and use it against you. If receptacles are the problems, dump them, and make sure that they can no longer hold water. If the problem is standing water in low spots or puddles, provide a way to drain the water either through surface drainage, that is, fill the low spots and holes, or sub surface drainage, such as a french drain, or a pipe drain with a catch box. If you use the catch box and pipe drain, make sure that the grade on the system is consistent, so that water doesn’t accumulate in the pipe. This could cause mosquitoes to use it as a basin, and become a home for other pests.

Don’t just look at the ground, there are other areas which might hold enough water to encourage mosquito populations such as home gutter systems, which should of course, be cleaned and maintained frequently.

If the water problem is a pond or lake on your property, the problem is not only water, but also cover. In fact, it probably has less to do with water, than with cover.

Cover:

If ponds or lakes exist on your property, you obviously do not want to drain them to get rid of mosquitoes, but you can reduce the amount of cover available. High weeds, and shallow water around the shallow edges of a pond should be removed. If filamentous algae, or pond scum as it is commonly called cover a large part of the body of water, the mosquitoes have a perfect habitat. They have water easily available for producing young, they have blood available from the animals that come to the water to drink, and they have cover in the water for protection from the fish who would otherwise dine on them! Skimming off the algae, or otherwise eliminating it will remove the cover, and and allow the fish to do their job.

If mosquitoes are exposed to natural predators, the predators work very well as a biological mosquito control method. If the predators can’t get to them, they can’t eat them. If you have brush and weeds around your home, it gives mosquitoes a place to hide from the things that like to eat them. It also gives them a place to find small animals for the blood needed for reproduction. If you eliminate hiding places like brush, weeds and high grass, you will drastically lower the population by exposing them to predation by their natural enemies.

Blood:

The female needs a blood meal to produce offspring. That may often come from you! Sometimes it comes from small animals. Reducing the availability of water and cover, reduces the numbers of small animals present to feed the hungry female.

Off site mosquito problems

If you paid attention to the mosquito prevention information above, and followed the suggestions, most of your problem with mosquitoes is gone. There are however, other circumstances that can allow mosquitoes to be a problem for you and your family, and some of them may not be within your means to control. This could include such problems as swampy areas on adjacent properties, or ponds and lakes that exist nearby, and are not properly maintained.  Even if this is your situation, you should still use the home mosquito control methods mentioned above, which will still eliminate most of the problem, and then concentrate on the things you can do about your off site problem.

Neighbors and Officials

Talk with the people who own the adjacent property about the problem. Do this before contacting public health officials. See if there is something that can be done by the owner before involving officialdom. If not, that is your next step. Encourage them to practice long term control rather than short term controls like pesticides. It will cost them less in the long run. If they are reluctant or obstinate, explain the health and public safety issues involved.

Prevention is the most natural of home mosquito control methods because it denies them what they need to thrive and reproduce, and exposes them to natural predators like birds, bats, and fish. These natural predators are the next step in our mosquito control system, biological control.

Biological mosquito control

Biological mosquito control is the next best step in home mosquito control, after we have used the best prevention methods. You have modified the habitat to work against the mosquitoes, now, you should modify the habitat to work in favor of their predators. This can be done by providing shelter and other encouragements for such predators as birds and bats. This can mean providing food sources like natural, native plants that birds enjoy, and a source of clean water like a fountain, or a well maintained, non stagnant bird bath. Bats require the same things. Bird and bat houses differ, but are fairly easily attained.

Other home mosquito control measures

In small areas where water cna not be drained immediately, a light spray of mineral oil over the surface of the water will prevent mosquito reproduction.

There are botanical products available which are effective in killing the mosquitoes that find their way to you. These, used in conjunction with a sound prevention program, work well as a backup.

Mosquito misting systems with plant oils offer a usable tool when used with prevention.

More natural, and native style gardens may offer answers to some of the difficulties  facing the homeowner. Traditional lawns require a lot of resources like extra water, fertilizer and pesticides to keep them looking the way we have grown accustomed to seeing them.

Good landscape planning using native trees, shrubs and ground covers may produce more efficient results. Perhaps even backyard wildlife habitats will become the gardens of the future as we head toward predicted times of more water use restrictions for lawns. The cost associated with traditional lawn irrigation can be expensive as well. Having a huge lawn and not having the water available to irrigate it could become a big brown ugly fact of life in many states.

If lawn care costs are getting you down, you might consider this idea from the “green” community: To be more green, have less green! By less green, we mean less turf covered area. Turf grasses are pretty efficient at cycling water and nutrients if they are fed and watered properly, and they do a good job of providing clean oxygen, but most of them are not native to our area, no, not even Bermuda grass, and they require more nutrients, and more water than other types of plants in order to maintain that lush green color we all love! They also require an inordinate amount of pesticides compared to trees, shrubs, and ground covers.

This extra cost and attention results from the need to modify the environment to allow a non native species to thrive in it. Sometimes the modifications can be relatively small, but in many cases they become nearly all consuming.

Planting native trees and shrubs can be a nice alternative, and offer a little relief for your pocketbook in these tough times. There are even some pest control benefits if you plant the right combination. If birds are attracted to your yard, they will handle a lot of your pest control for you!

You don’t even have to suffer the ravages of massive lawn and landscape renovation projects to accomplish this. Renovation can occur over a long period of time, gradually allowing and encouraging a more native habitat to take over the non native habitat. The results can be amazing.

Native habitat advantages

Natural, garden like habitats are:

• Less thirsty for water beyond what the weather in an are naturaly provides.
• Less hungry for extra nutrients.
• Less likely to suffer from weather conditions in your area.
• Less likely to be destroyed by pests.
• Less likely to attract pests.
• Less likely to attract non native predators.
• Less likely to cause biodiversity problems.
• More likely to thrive.
• More likely to attract native species which eat pests.
• They will not escape into the wild and displace other natives.

Utility buildings are outdoor structures. Utility buildings, by definition, are buildings which can be used for many purposes. Probably the most common utility building is the portable storage building, and the most common use for such structures is as home storage sheds, but there are many other possibilities.

Utility building uses

• Storage.
• Workshops.
• Offices.
• Home gyms.
• Play houses.
• Tool sheds.
• Game rooms.
• Television rooms.
• Craft and hobby shops.
• Fishing and hunting cabins.
• Guest rooms

This is not an exhaustive list. The imagination is the only limit.

There are other types of utility buildings. Modular steel garages and carports are very popular, and can come as a turnkey package, or as building kits. Wood, metal, and vinyl storage building kits are also available from many manufacturers.