Lawn Maintenance | Month By Month Lawn Calendar

Choosing the Best Lawn Maintenance

It Starts With This!

Perma-Green recommends beginning each season by assessing your lawn for damage. After accounting for the previous year’s foot traffic, pests, drought, and winter stress, numerous other factors are taken into consideration. Factors include issues caused by drainage, shade, soil Ph changes, soil compaction, high foot traffic damage, pests, and thatch.

Once the lawn’s issues and problems are assessed, a strategy with best-practice solutions and treatments is developed. This strategy is the foundation of a smart Month by Month Lawn Maintenance Calendar.

Perma-Green does distinguish itself from over-the-counter treatments like Scott’s and Fertilome by using treatments that address the homeowner’s need, rather than using a one-size-fits-all mindset. For companies like Perma-Green, a full-season lawn care program is customized to meet the goals of the homeowner. These professional-grade solutions are sometimes unavailable to the public.

For instance, instead of using grub control, Perma-Green uses premium pest control that protects your lawn from other pests like the armyworm—the culprit behind devastated lawns in 2021. When comparing the cost of buying GrubEx from a big box store to what Perma-Green charges for a full-season program, the financials come out to roughly the same cost. Yet the stuff Perma-Green uses is effective all season long and isn’t harmful to earthworms, animals, family, or mother earth!

The Best NWI Lawns Have a Plan!

Perma-Green offers the below month-by-month lawn maintenance schedule as a general guideline. The best full-season lawn care packages should be customized to the unique requirements of the homeowner’s goals and lawn. Packages also vary by area, weather conditions, and other factors. For example, the weed & feed and watering practice for a Chesterton composition (sandy soil) will be quite different from Valparaiso’s diverse soil types. Actual treatments and services should be individually assessed.

February

Fall Fertilizer and Winterizers prove why they are your lawn’s MVP. While you are safe and warm inside, these treatments are working 24/7.

March

Watch for snow mold damage as the snow recedes. Over-seeding may be recommended to re-seed any thin or bare spots. Perma-Green also likes to recommend specific northern grasses that may be optimized to your lawn’s unique needs & requirements. If over-the-counter mixes are used, consider a mix of bluegrass, fescue, and rye.

April

Apply crabgrass-preventer by April 15th and begin mowing your lawn. Between 3- and 4-inch mowing height is recommended to hold in water, discourage weeds, and promote deeper roots. Spring aeration may be recommended if the yard is severely compacted. Aeration improves root depth while allowing oxygen, water, fertilizer and nutrients to flow. It’s OK to leave the plugs on the lawn, since they will be mulched back in naturally. It’s also permissible to pick them up. Just wait a day or two for them to dry out. Watering the lawn the night before will help soften the soil and allow core depths up to 3”.

May

Begin to fertilize as the rapid spring growth levels off. The optimized time to fertilize is significant and changes every year. Most lawns will not need more than 1lb per 1,000 sq ft in May—and again in September. Previous year’s treatments, aeration, and other factors determine the actual amount used. As warm weather begins to dry out your lawn, from late May to early June, start a regular morning watering routine (before 8 a.m.), being careful not to overwater as to prevent the chance of fungal growth. Simply water enough to relieve drought stress. As a rule of thumb, consider no more than ¾ to 1.5 inches total per week, depending on the climate. As noted, the actual amount recommended is different. Northern Lake County water requirements are very different than lawns further from Lake Michigan.

June

Raise the height of the mower and mow a little less frequently. Perma-Green advises you to leave the clippings on the lawn. They will degrade and put the goodness and moisture back onto the soil. You might also choose to water your lawn in prolonged periods of dry weather. (See Perma-Green Community pages for your town's lawn precipitation & watering tips) May or June may be the best time to Control Grubs and other pests. Grub control, such as Merit, is typically used by most lawn care companies and over-the-counter treatments. Perma-Green switched its grub control treatment to Acelepryn-this premium grub control is safe, slow-releasing, and effective against every type of white grub as well as other turf-damaging pests including armyworm, black cutworms, sod webworms, weevil, and billbugs. Merit would be used if treatment is applied in July as a grub preventative.

July

If your lawn is lacking vibrancy, improve your full-season lawn care or consider a professional service. Apply postemergence herbicide if an undesirable amount of crabgrass develops. Keep mowing height, cut less frequently, keep watered, and kill weeds. Grass growth should have slowed down by now so keep the mower a little higher and cut a little less frequently. Aeration is good anytime to alleviate thatch and reduce compaction. Aeration allows water, air, and nutrients to get to the root zone.

August

If your lawn isn't treated with grub preventative in May or June, Perma-Green recommends applying Dylox as a curative when grub damage is occurring- If the population exceeds 9 grubs per square foot. If the population is minimal, they are unlikely to cause damage to your lawn or its root system. Normally starts showing late August through September. August is an ideal time to modify your watering schedule. Below the Perma-Green community pages offers a quick reference for watering tips and real-time precipitation (rain) forecasts. The pages offer ballpark recommendations. Soil composition varies by neighborhood in NWI. Actual watering instructions can vary. Perma-Green has a "Rain Forecast & Grass Watering Tips" for most NWI towns and LaPorte, Porter & Lake County. (Visit PG's Home Page for your town's Rain Forecast & Watering Tips) Here is the Porter County Page. https://perma-green.com/porter-county-lawn-care/

September

After taking a beating from the summer heat, fun, and regular use, September can be the right time to start fall aeration, over-seeding, and fertilizing. Optimized aeration and re-seeding schedules may vary from May to November. September is also the best month to rejuvenate cool season grasses. Careful selection of grass mix provides long-term success. A mix of rye, fescue, and bluegrasses may be used for NWI over-the-counter mixes. Familiarity with soil composition can offer benefits in determining the best choice of seed. Options include newer grass varieties with improved disease and insect resistance to an established lawn or adding a better grass variety for a select area. For example, fine fescue can be planted in an area with dense shade where Kentucky bluegrass doesn’t grow as well.

September is a month where weed competition is low, temperatures begin to cool down, and moisture elevates. Core Aerating, over-seeding, and fertilizing lawns is the best way to rejuvenate your land. Ala Carte Services can exceed the cost of an annual lawn care plan, creating a compelling reason to hire a lawn care service to save money!

October & November

Use walk leaf blowers and leaf vacuums to pick up & remove leaves. This prevents the compacting and smothering of grass. Repeat the process in the spring.

October & November is the general timeframe for applying fall fertilizer and winterizer. While a full-season weed & feed program builds up the health of your lawn and prepares your grass to survive the bitter NWI winter, the MVP of your month-by-month lawn care calendar is fall fertilizer and maintenance.

While we appreciate Steve Daly’s helpful hints, Daly reminds us that every lawn is unique and best practice lawn services should be customized according to your lawn’s health & environmental factors. I discovered my best lawn ever after my first season with Perma-Green. I believe PG's advice and coaching were a big part of my success. To learn more, check out this link: Choosing a Weed & Feed Plan

Purdue Turf Science | 7 Reasons to Hire Lawn Services Like Perma-Green

1. Service: It is a convenient way to maintain an attractive lawn—especially with today’s busy lifestyles

2. Expertise: Lawn care professionals understand how plants grow & what it takes to cultivate an attractive lawn

3. Simplifies the confusing task of purchasing the proper fertilizers and/or pesticides for your lawn

4. Eliminates the time-consuming task of calibrating spreaders and sprayers to accurately apply products

5. Eliminates the liability of proper fertilizer/pesticide storage, which should be stored in locked, waterproof, and ventilated areas

6. Reduces the risks to our environment caused by inexperienced homeowners applying fertilizers & pesticides to their lawns

7. Professionals can use pesticides that are not labeled for home-owner use

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Lawn Maintenance | Less Than Doing It Yourself!

Backyard Summer BBQ & Cocktail Party Or Picnic On The Lavn Scene And Concept

Choosing the right lawn maintenance is critical in Northwest Indiana. The summer’s intense heat and mid-summer drought coupled with frigid cold winters leave your lawn depleted of its nutrients. Now consider the mosaic of soil composition. The only real solution is working with a lawn maintenance company that has experience & expertise in working with the diverse challenges of your yard. While it’s no secret that a good lawn service provider can often treat your yard for less than doing it yourself, many times the treatment is ineffective because the homeowner doesn’t mow or water their land correctly.

According to Steve Daly, who operates Northwest Indiana’s oldest lawn service, having your best lawn ever is easy. Find a lawn service that can be counted on to handle the weed & feed, water correctly, and set your lawnmower to the right setting. While the Valparaiso-based lawn service offers free coaching to their full-season customers, we asked Daly for a little professional advice as to what lawn maintenance needs to be done each month of the year.

Before getting started, Daly cautions anyone from using this guide verbatim. The actual advice given to his customers varies from yard to yard. Watering instructions, for instance, depends on the previous week’s rainfall & soil composition. The right amount of watering for a lawn with a sandy composition can lead to diseases in a neighboring lawn consisting primarily of clay. In my Valparaiso neighborhood, most homes have topsoil added to the front lawns and mostly consist of clay in the backyards.

The Best Lawn Maintenance Starts When Most Quit!

So where do you begin? According to Perma-Green’s Steve Daly, the best time to start a healthy, green lawn is when everyone typically quits—the previous fall. He states, “After a long winter and wet spring, your fall fertilizer & winterizer have proven why they are considered the MVP of any full-season weed and feed program.”

Daly goes on to explain, “Besides helping your lawn by providing it with the essential nutrients needed to survive the winter, these significant fertilizers are providing your lawn with the right nutrients & amendments in early spring when it’s still too early to start a spring fertilizer treatment.”

Daly blends his real-world experience with the refinement of formal education. His undergraduate studies were conducted at Purdue University. Furthermore, his practices are certified through Purdue’s Extension and OISC.