Spring Cleanup: The 5 Surprising Benefits of Maintaining your Lawn
Do you ever wish there was a magic fix for all the little annoyances in your life? Like magically getting rid of weeds in your garden, upping the value of your home, improving your mental health, and even just making your lawn greener? Doesn’t that sound nice?
Spring is famously a time for new beginnings and fresh starts. If you’re wondering how to start fresh this spring and get that magic solution to the problems I listed above, you’re in the right place. The perfect spot to start your new beginnings begins with a thorough spring cleanup of your lawn.
Spring cleanup and lawn maintenance are more than just another thing on your spring to-do list. Maintaining your lawn can help it look and stay healthy, increase your property value, and, if you do it right, even improve your mental health. Are you ready to get started?
What is Spring Cleanup?
Winter is an extremely harsh season, especially for people in Southeast Idaho. It can also be intensely hard on grass and lawns. Cold temperatures can freeze the soil and make it contract- which damages the roots of plants. Heavy snow can weigh down and damage your lawns, and de-icing chemicals can damage or kill the grass. When the winter finally starts to clear up, your lawn could use a little facelift. This is where a spring cleanup comes into play.
A spring cleanup begins with removing debris and dead foliage from your lawn. You’d be surprised by all the trash and organic material that can pile up under the snow and stay there for months. Removing the debris can help your grass breathe again and take some of the weight off it.
Once your lawn is cleaned up, you can begin other spring cleanup processes, such as aerating, dethatching, watering, and fertilizing. These processes help your lawn stay healthy and promote new growth for the upcoming spring season. For example, aerating loosens the soil around the grassroots, and dethatching removes organic matter from blocking new growth. Watering and fertilizing encourage healthy new growth. Spring cleanup is how you reset your lawn for the new growing season.
Spring lawn care sounds like a lot of work. How do you know if it’s worth it? Cleaning up your yard can benefit you in many ways, but for the sake of this post, I’ve narrowed down the benefits into five distinct categories. Spring lawn care promotes healthy growth, prevents diseases and pests, improves curb appeal, increases property value, and even improves mental health. Does this sound too good to be true? Keep reading to learn more about each of these benefits and why you should consider cleaning and upkeeping your lawn once the snow melts!
1. Promotes Healthy Growth
Spring is the season when grass starts growing again after being dormant for the cold winter. A spring cleanup that includes dethatching, aerating, fertilizing, and watering can help refresh your lawn from that long dormancy period. All of these elements allow the grass to get the nutrients it needs for a healthy and green summer.
Dethatching is a process that removes dead grass and organic material that builds up on your lawn during the winter. Thatch prevents air, water, and nutrients from getting to the roots of your lawn. When you remove it, your grass is much more efficient at getting the nutrients it needs.
Dethatching is often confused with aerating. Aeration is a process that creates small holes in the soil of your lawn to help nutrients reach your grassroots. Although dethatching and aerating are completely different processes, they both help your lawn in similar ways. Both help your grassroots get the nutrients they need, and both boost your lawn’s resilience against summer droughts or storms. If you have questions about our aerating service, check out this article all about it!
Fertilizing and watering your lawn are other common care practices. Once your lawn Is aerated and dethatched, give your grass the nutrients it needs with high-quality fertilizer and regular watering. Water and fertilizer contain vital nutrients for your grass, and dethatching and aeration help your grassroots get those nutrients. These processes mean your grass is spending less time trying to stay alive and is spending its time growing instead.
Making sure your lawn gets a spring cleanup helps your lawn grow faster, stronger, and greener.
2. Prevents Lawn Diseases and Pests
The grass in your lawn isn’t the only thing coming out of dormancy in the spring! Common yard pests like grubs, chinch bugs, and other harmful insects are waking up too. Melting snow also means your yard becomes the perfect petri dish for your yard to get fungal diseases and weeds.
Without proper spring care, these nasty pests can take the offensive and commandeer your lawn as their own. This means that these bugs and weeds will erode the roots of your grass, making it more fragile. Then they’ll also take their ranks to the surface— thinning grass blades and creating discolored brown patches that feel impossible to get rid of.
If you want to avoid this all-out lawn war, purposefully prepare your lawn for the spring. This includes the services I mentioned above and other specialized care that your lawn might need. If you do this, your grass will be stronger and be able to defend itself against diseases and pests!
3. Improves Curb Appeal
Cleaning your lawn after a long winter isn’t just so that it stays healthy. It isn’t to avoid pests, and it isn’t to give yourself something to do when the snow finally melts. The core reason to take care of your lawn lies at the center of all these other benefits.
Your lawn is like the frame of your house. Can you imagine if the Louvre Museum hung up the Mona Lisa using a thumbtack? Of course not! The Mona Lisa needs to be in a nice frame. Like a frame on the Mona Lisa, your lawn is what frames your house. A healthy, green lawn will enhance the look and feel of your property, and help your house or business achieve a visually appealing and welcoming look.
At the end of the day, your lawn says a lot about your house. It’s like your outdoor living room and a place to gather with family, friends, and neighbors. If your lawn looks nicer, so will the rest of your property.
4. Increases Property Value
Though this might not be the main reason for lawn care, it’s certainly a benefit. If your lawn looks nicer, your whole house looks nicer. Do you know what happens to a house when it looks nicer? A nice house has more value than an ugly house. This means that if you take care of your lawn in the spring, your property value goes up. It doesn’t just increase by pennies either. According to some estimates, a healthy lawn can increase property value by 15 percent! This number is a ballpark number, so that doesn’t mean that your property value will increase by that much. However, a healthy lawn will never drive the value of your home down. It can only help.
5. Promotes Mental Health
Maybe it’s knowing that your property value went up, that pests aren’t infesting your lawn, or that your house looks better than ever before. But whatever the reason, having a healthy lawn can help promote your personal mental health and well-being. Even though it’s nice to have these other benefits, your mental health will likely improve because you can finally relax outside.
Spending time outside can be both invigorating and rejuvenating. Spending time in the sunlight can give you the Vitamin D that you’ve been missing all winter. When you have a lawn that looks nice and cared for, your lawn won’t be a source of stress anymore. It can be a place where you can finally reset. A healthy lawn means that you’ll finally have a place to play ball games with your grandkids, play fetch with your dog, and finally start growing those petunias. Having a healthy lawn is relaxation. Relaxation is happiness, and happiness is good mental health.
Maybe it’s knowing that your property value went up, that pests aren’t infesting your lawn, or that your house looks better than ever before. But whatever the reason, having a healthy lawn can help promote your personal mental health and well-being. Even though it’s nice to have these other benefits, your mental health will likely improve because you can finally relax outside.
Spending time outside can be both invigorating and rejuvenating. Spending time in the sunlight can give you the Vitamin D that you’ve been missing all winter. When you have a lawn that looks nice and cared for, your lawn won’t be a source of stress anymore. It can be a place where you can finally reset. A healthy lawn means that you’ll finally have a place to play ball games with your grandkids, play fetch with your dog, and finally start growing those petunias. Having a healthy lawn is relaxation. Relaxation is happiness, and happiness is good mental health.
Now that we’ve covered the five benefits of spring cleanup, you should seriously consider doing a spring cleaning on your lawn once the snow melts! A spring cleanup that involves cleaning debris off your lawn, aeration, dethatching, watering, and fertilization is well worth the work. Remember spring cleaning means healthy growth, fewer or no pests and diseases, improved curb appeal, better property value, and better mental health! That sounds like something worth investing in, doesn’t it? (Yes, it very much does!)
If you’re not sure where to get started with your lawn, or how to get the help you’ll need for this new venture, give us a call for a free consultation! We can help you narrow down the best course of action to get your lawn ready for the best spring yet!