Maintaining a lawn is difficult and expensive. It takes time and energy to keep it looking clean and healthy. Having a lawn is often like having a pet. You have to feed it, groom it, and take care of it when it's sick. But seeing that beautiful green carpet of grass can be worth all the pain and effort.

Soil Health

Before you plant your grass, you've got to look at your soil. The soil is the lifeline of your grass, where your lawn gets all its nutrients and water. If the soil is unhealthy, then your lawn will also be unhealthy.

Soil amendments and conditioners are products that you add to improve the quality of the soil. If your soil is sandy, it won't retain water and nutrients very well, so it needs an amendment that will help with those things. If your soil is clay, it will retain too much water and the roots of your grass will rot. Adding a soil amendment that will break up the clay will help that.

Soil also can be chemically altered. Some soil is too alkaline and other soil is too acidic. Soil conditioners are available that will help lower or raise the pH level, depending on your lawn's need.

Once you've cleaned up the soil, you can seed your lawn. The time in which you're waiting for your lawn to grow may be the easiest time of your relationship with your lawn. It's too young to treat with anything, so all you can do is wait.

Fighting Weeds

Once you've been able to cut your lawn three or four times, you'll want to apply a pre-emergent herbicide. These are preventative herbicides that attack weed seeds. You'll need your lawn to be fairly short so the herbicide can reach the seeds. Pre-emergent herbicides will help prevent large-scale weed infestations.

You still may find weeds in your lawn, and if that happens, you'll need a post-emergent herbicide. This type of herbicide attacks plants that you can see. Spot treat the weeds that you can see and then blanket the whole lawn to kill off any weeds that you can't see but might be growing already.

Fertilizing Facts

Fertilizing your lawn should be done at the beginning of the growing season, whenever that is. Growing seasons can be different for different kinds of grass. You should use a calendar to determine when you should fertilize. Once you have fertilized, you should mark on the calendar what you did and when you did it for future reference.

Fertilizers come in many forms and must be applied carefully. Chemical fertilizers can burn a lawn if not applied properly, so read the label very carefully and stick to the instructions. If you're looking for an alternative to chemical fertilizers, organic fertilizers can be just as or even more effective than chemical fertilizers. Fish oil and seaweed fertilizer are organic and have many of the vitamins and minerals that your lawn needs to stay strong.