so many of you want a better lawn you have a neglected yard that maybe has been sitting there for a few years or you have a brand new yard that just hasn't had the care in the past that it needs but maybe you don't want to do a full renovation maybe you just want to make it look better and work with exactly what you have there to begin with so there's a process for doing this and today that's exactly what we're going to go over the steps that you need to do to take what you have existing and make it better in just one season so the first thing i want to tell you to do is manage some of your expectations with lawn care this is not a process that it happens exactly overnight it takes some time it takes some patience but i think you'll see that just a few easy steps you can definitely make some big strides in one year this is going to reference throughout this video somewhat of a project lawn i did a few seasons ago across the street from me and so if you want to check out that playlist and get more details on everything we're talking about you will be able to check that out we'll have that linked here and also in the description below for some more details on all the process that i did but i'm going to do an overview today of those steps and some of the other things that i've learned along the way to give you the info you need also wanted to quickly bring your attention to the memberships page on this channel if you go to my homepage and click the join button you will see the various levels for exclusive content so i'd love to have you join the channel and get access to ask your questions on those live streams again go over to my youtube home page and click the join button we'd love to have you become a member so the first thing that you need to do and it probably seems simple is to figure out your grass type or at least the region where you live so that you can figure out general grass types for those areas so up here in the north we have cool season grasses this is kentucky bluegrass perennial ryegrass tall fescue and fine fescues so these are going to grow in a cooler region they do best in spring and fall during the summer they're still surviving sometimes they have to go kind of a brown off color to go into dormancy to protect themselves but they grow best in spring and fall during our cool weather if you live down south you're probably dealing with a warm season grass something like bermuda zoysia st augustine or centipede grass these are going to do best during the warmer parts of your year so you'll notice that during the winter time down south these go very very brown in color they're not dead but that is dormant turf that is sitting there waiting for the ideal temperatures to come back of summer then there is something called the transition zone and this could have cool season grasses so those same types that i just mentioned up north or it could have warm season grasses the same types i just mentioned down south sometimes these lawns actually have a mix of both which is not a fantastic situation because that can be difficult to manage going forward but this region simply means that it's warm enough in the summertime to have some warm season grasses but in the cooler part of the year it's also cool enough to have those cool season grasses this transition zone can be a difficult area but it doesn't mean you can't have a great lawn but one of the things that you need to do first is figure out your grass types that you're dealing with now if you're having trouble with this i get a lot of questions is there a specific site you can go to to figure out your grass type you can do some general searching of your area with google to just say wherever you live and type in grass types behind that a lot of times you will find something and you can go out into your yard and compare also it wouldn't be a bad idea it's most likely that you have an extension office close to you with a university that helps to answer lawn and garden questions so if you do have a question about your turf and what you have you could probably send them some photos as well they should be able to help you out to figure out which grass types you're dealing with so the next thing we're going to talk about is soil testing and i know a lot of people think this might be a complicated process that it's not something that's really necessary so can you start out with not doing a soil test most likely yes there's tons of people who have done this and who have not done a soil test at the beginning but what i want to bring to your attention is right now if you're just starting your lawn and you've not applied anything this season or if you're just starting on a new yard completely and you don't know what's happened in the past then this simple step is a good idea to figure out which fertilizers and which products you need going forward for the best success let's say you were going to look at something like applying malorganite so a lot of people would do this as a beginner because it's a fertilizer that's easy to spread if you go a little over a little under on your rate it's not going to cause any major damage but let's say that you found out in your soil test that you actually already have very significant phosphorus levels in your soil or that you figured out you need some potassium applying more phosphorus with malorganite isn't necessarily a good idea in this situation and the product contains no potassium so you're not getting those nutrients that you actually need that you found out from that soil test so if you'd like to learn more about this and a simple test kit that you can get check out this video that i completed this spring i will link it right here and also in the description that should give you a better idea of how to complete that test and to figure out the results and what you need to do after that the next step in improving your lawn is to simply mow it like crazy i know that sounds like a very simple step and something that seems like common sense when it comes to your yard but i noticed that a lot of people don't understand the importance of mowing the importance of actually the frequency of mowing and why that can actually change your yard drastically by simply changing your mowing habits a lot of people don't like to mow so they let things go too long maybe it gets to five or six inches tall and then they say i'm going to cut it back down really short because i don't want to mow again for a couple weeks this type of mindset is very very damaging to a yard so if you can just get out of that mindset and realize that mowing is actually the key to really transforming your yard without applying anything or doing anything else then that mindset alone can do a lot of improvement on your yard so for cool season grasses that we just spoke about kentucky bluegrass tall fescue perennial rye those grass types if you can raise the height up to around about three inches or so you can usually go taller than this with tall fescue if you'd like but the other ones i like to stay around the three inch mark this is going to allow you to not have to mow quite as often you won't be taking off as much of the blade every time you do mow at that three inch mark or higher you're going to notice over the season a drastic improvement of how things look it's not that you can't mow your yard short if you really want to i've done this for years on my yard but you have to increase the mowing frequency even more with this so if you want to go lower it simply means you're going to have to increase your frequency of mowing even more than that and most people don't have a lot of time so if you want to do a once a week mow or ideally if you could sneak in two miles a week at that three inch mark for cool season lawns you're going to see an improvement there for something down south st augustine likes that really tall mowing but if you have bermuda or zoysia it actually does benefit from a lower cutting so again your frequency of mowing would have to come up but if you can mow your bermuda and zoho asia lower it will actually like that and it will spread out and will fill in faster at those lower mowing heights whenever you're mowing if possible you don't want to remove too much of that grass blade in one mowing so even if things get out of control and you're gone on vacation and you come back and things are out of control just raise that mower deck up do a mow and then start to bring it back to your ideal height of cut after that but keeping it consistent throughout the year is really going to help with things and also having a sharp blade on your mower is going to be another ideal thing with this mowing it's going to be important so check out this video on how you can sharpen your mower blades at home it's not a difficult process something you can take care of yourself so if you'd like to learn more about that check out this video right here so the next thing i did in this project lawn was i applied a pre-emergent pre-emergent is going to be initial step that really helps neglected lawns especially if they've had crabgrass issues in the past to let those grasses that are in place really start to thrive applying a pre-emergent is a simple process it can be a standalone product that you get something like scots halts at the store or there's other various products that you can buy by themselves or since this might have been a neglected situation and you likely haven't had any fertilizer on the lawn for a while you can also buy fertilizers with the pre-emergent mix into those and for this specific situation it wouldn't be inappropriate to apply that at this time i personally like to do the pre-emergent separate from fertilizers there's more control with that but for the beginners if you just want to make sure you get a pre-emergent down and you also need fertilizer at the same time this might be the situation where you apply a product like that ideal situation you'd have this down before your soil temps reach 55 degrees you can look around your area if you happen to have any forsythia or you can check online with soil temps as well there's a couple different places that you can get some soil temp readings averages in your area and get this down before that gets to that point so you can really prevent crabgrass this season so in my project lawn in the past that was the first application that we made also i get a lot of people that ask me with the simple lawn box that i have available when should i apply some of these products so this was exactly when i applied my soil hume with a kelp in it as well on that first application of the season all this gets watered in that pre-emergent needs to be watered in to get activated so that was a good time to get that product down get everything watered in you can either time that with rain or you can get your irrigation going and make sure that it gets watered in and will be most effective with that the next thing that's probably taking over most neglected lawns would be weeds and surprisingly you can have a lot of weeds in your lawn and think that there's no hope for it whatsoever but with the right controls i bet you there's more grass there than you think there is once you take care of some of this and you start feeding the grass and you start doing the things that it needs you'll be surprised how much it can actually get healthy and look way better than you anticipated so in this project and what i would recommend for people is go out and figure out if you have some general weeds that you can identify a lot of times there's going to be dandelions clover things of that nature that are going to be some of the weeds that you can readily identify out into your lawn so when you go to the store there's going to be some generic type products for this they're going to cover many different weed types you've i'm sure you've seen these in stores so that again comes back to why you need to understand your grass type as long as you go to the store and get a generic product that says it's going to be fine for kentucky bluegrass perennial ryegrass or down south it's going to be fine for bermuda zoysia whatever you have then you can go out into the lawn and apply that and know that it's going to be safe many of these homeowner type products they may need an additional application more than just one but start with this it's a good way to start for beginners and i found that they're actually pretty effective products you're just going to have to look at it after that first application and see some spots that maybe didn't get control you can always spot spray these later or maybe one more application on the lawn as a whole is going to be appropriate but you can check that label to make sure what the intervals are in between when you can apply those things in this situation i had here with even just one application we made a big difference on those weeds that were existing and started to allow that turf to come back and thrive the other thing that will be appropriate to pay attention to after that initial application of weed control would be any areas that are starting to emerge again maybe even with crabgrass controls something along the driveway didn't get complete coverage or any of the areas that get really really hot that'll typically be where your crabgrass might emerge through so you can still take care of these things after the fact with post-emergent sprays and doing it in a spot spray fashion so what that means is simply walking up and down your yard in a grid pattern and just looking for those spots where you might see a weed here and there and simply spraying that you're not spraying the entire yard anymore it doesn't need it in the areas that don't have any weeds it simply needs it in those few spots that you see something emerging again various products you can get at the store many times if you're dealing with a little bit of crabgrass emerging there are some products at the store that will say they've added crabgrass control you want to look on the label and see if that's going to be appropriate for your grass type but for here up north a lot of times in the summer we're looking at something like quinclorac which is in a lot of those products that say crabgrass control on them to help get rid of that crabgrass that may have emerged even from your pre-emergent next thing that people probably want to know is when can you apply your fertilizer again you have that initial application to get your pre-emergent down if you use the fertilizer with pre-emergent or sometime in the spring you apply to fertilizer on its own so when should the next application be for cool season grass here you can do another application in late spring this would be somewhere around late may right around that time frame maybe memorial day time frame for warm season grasses you're actually going into your best season which is summer so your fertilization should happen in that summer season so focus on your summer time for that fertilizer and make sure that you're getting it down in your ideal conditions when things heat up and when that grass is doing the best down south for us during the summer time we're kind of waiting in that lull period of just trying to hold on with those summer temps and the cool season grass not loving those things this is not a great time to apply a bunch of fertilizer to cool season lawns this is a time when if you're trying to keep some green going you can use some of these things like liquid products soluble products these are going to apply smaller amounts of nitrogen directly to the plant works really well in the summer time to hold on to some of that green color also if you're looking for an extra boost of green some of these products that have some iron in them typically this would be the time when i would apply something like that during the summer for cool season lawns when i'm just trying to hold on to my color and i don't want to dump a bunch of fertilizer on until we get to the fall season one of the other things that's important to mention on this first season is irrigation so if you're not getting a lot of rainfall you have to decide at that point with a cool season grass if you're going to allow it to somewhat go dormant in the summertime that just means it might go slightly off brown color and it's protecting itself from that heat but it's going to come back in the fall for the most part once the cooler temperatures return you can either allow it to do that or you can add irrigation on top of that to try to keep it as green as possible this is really up to you and your overall goals some people like to add that irrigation and some people don't if you're down south and you're in that hot period of time your ideal period of time but you're not getting so much rainfall that would be a good time to make sure that you would add some irrigation to it if possible that is going to be your best bet since you're in ideal conditions to add some supplemental irrigation and make sure that things are looking good so now we've gotten through the summer season down south you've done most of your applying you're probably seeing major improvements in your yard here during the summer season down there because that's the ideal time for it up here with cool season grass now you're getting to the fall season as soon as that heat begins to break and you're starting to see that you're moving into those fall temperatures that is when you can start to apply your fertilizer again in the fall for this first season on your cool season grasses i recommend a few more applications of nitrogen that would be right after that heat ends hopefully it's around labor day time frame then maybe another application september 15th another application october 1st these can be spread out slightly more if you want to do with one at the beginning of september one at the end of september one in mid-october it's going to depend on your climate and how long that those temperatures hold on but generally if you do that in your first fall season you're going to see major strides made when things come out of winter dormancy that next spring with that extra nitrogen you're going to have to keep up on your mowing but you're going back into those cooler temperatures so the grass is starting to slow itself down before you get to the winter season with your warm season grass as you're getting into the fall you don't need to be adding tons of fertilizer or anything at that time your main season has pretty much ended once that heat goes away and you're going to be tailing off and just getting ready for the winter season without applying too much more to the yard at that point weed control continues to be the same thing in fall you can continue that spot spraying of whatever you might find but i'm betting by this point what i saw in my project lawn across the street was that there wasn't a whole lot for weeds left at this point the grass was growing well it was thickening up it was looking good so hopefully you're having a very similar situation and by the end of the fall time i think you're going to be very very pleased with what happened in this first season now many of you might get to this and you might say what would be the next steps so if you wanted to go beyond this that is when you start to think about overseeding a cool season grass or a lawn renovation of a cool season grass or down south you might decide there's some thin areas here and there maybe you want to move some plugs to those areas and get those to start filling in but whatever you decide these are the basic steps the basic things that you needed to learn in lawn care and you can really take it as far as you want after that that was one season's plan with some very easy tips of taking a neglected yard something that you can definitely be proud of at the end of that like i mentioned that playlist will give you some more in-depth info of what i did on this project lawn but i hope that helped you today to learn some of the basics thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time