In this sixth article in our series on lawn gardening chores we're going to discuss a little about maintaining your lawn using a low maintenance program.

There are several reasons that someone might choose a low maintenance program for their lawn. One reason is expense. Maintaining a lawn so that it looks like a professional job takes a lot of money. Seed is not cheap, neither is soil, fertilizer, chemicals and tools. Maintaining a lawn on high maintenance can cost you hundreds of dollars a year or more. Some people just don't have the extra money. Another reason someone might choose a low maintenance program for their lawn is time. They may work a very demanding full time job requiring lots of overtime or may even have more than one job. Maintaining a lawn on high or even medium maintenance requires a lot of time and some people just don't have it.

Another reason people might choose a low maintenance program is because they are physically unable to do the work required, such as the elderly, people who have allergies or people who just simply do not have a green thumb and wouldn't have a clue where to begin. Other reasons could be that their lawn is situated so that it is difficult to care for, such as lawns that are on high hills or have trees all around. For these people low maintenance is hard enough.

Then there are those people who are just plain lazy. The last thing they want to do is spend their time on the lawn mowing, raking, seeding, fertilizing, laying down chemicals and weeding. They'd much rather be inside watching a good ball game.

So just what is involved in a low maintenance program? Actually, not very much. For starters you'll probably only cut your lawn once every 3 or 4 weeks unless it rains so much that the grass grows to the point where the town comes and threatens to give you a summons. Some people only mow their lawn every 6 weeks, especially in the summer. And then after the grass is cut the trimmings are left on the lawn in order to regenerate nitrogen. As for fertilizing, you might do this once per each season. Some people only fertilize once a year and others not at all. These type of lawns are allowed to go dormant during the hot summer months. The leaves are allowed to turn brown and the appearance looks quite dried out. Basically, these lawns rely on natural conditions for survival. If the summer is hot and dry then most likely the grass will die as people who choose a low maintenance program never water their lawns. These lawns are usually only green during the cooler months where there is enough rain to keep them green.

Many parks adopt a low maintenance program because there just isn't enough time and money in the town budget to care for these large areas. However, there are some residential people who for whatever reason stated above just let their lawns go the way of the weather.