Lawncare
Full-Service Lawncare for Reno
Having a good-looking lawn in our area is more than just water and mowing. It is a full-year of care that involves many steps. While grass is not the ideal groundcover for our arid, water-limited region, it can serve as a green and contrasting element for certain properties, if used in moderation. The ongoing costs and maintenance of grass are high. But we have some methods that keep those costs to a minimum.
Turf Maintenance
Having a good-looking lawn in our area is more than just water and mowing. It is a full-year of care that involves many steps. While grass is not the ideal groundcover for our arid, water-limited region, it can serve as a green and contrasting element for certain properties, if used in moderation. The ongoing costs and maintenance of grass are high. But we have some methods that keep those costs to a minimum.
For starters, each season, preparing your lawn for strong, healthy growth begins with prep services. These include opening up the root system, kickstarting feeding, and allowing air and water and light to penetrate through services below.
Dethatching is a technique of removing the thick, tough dead grass buildup the forms an underlayer in most mature, established lawns. It involves a special machine, called a dethatcher, that scrapes and lifts up this underlayer of dead grass debris. Then this debris is raked up and hauled away, or repurposed in our compost mulching program. While not every lawn needs to have de-thatching every year, it is helpful if done on a once-annual basis. By removing grass thatch, your turf roots can receive more water, light, and nutrients to facilitate added growth for a healthy looking lawn.
Aeration, which famously leaves the plugs of muddy grass throughout a lawn every spring, is designed to open up the deeper root system, 1-4 inches deep under your top turf layer. This allows water, fertilizer, oxygen and light to go down deep, and help strengthen your lawn. Over time, grass roots grow into a thick network netting, which can cause a lawn to be stressed and struggle during the hottest months of the year. By opening up and “aerating” the turf root network, your lawn can thrive the entire season, with deep root health.
Every season, a sprinkler system needs to be turned on. This is especially true in a dry arid location like the Reno-area. Sometimes, from our typical freeze-thaw climate, it can lead to sprinklers that need to be adjusted or even replaced. Testing and optimizing your sprinklers every season, for the best coverage, will help to ensure a healthy lawn. We are all about water and energy savings, so using the right sprinkler speed, pressure and coverage is essential. It helps to avoid dry spots, as well as low flooded grass area. Each sprinkler head has unique settings and features that can help achieve this. Our irrigation turn-on service includes testing and adjusting, to help your property keep lower water costs, reduce overspray, and spread out coverage.
Fertilization is one of the mose effective ways to having a brightly green lawn throughout the season. By using the right NPK ratio (chemical food makeup that includes the right amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, your turf can look strikingly beautiful and remain healthy throughout the year. Our in-house fertilizer includes a weed control product to help reduce dandelions and other invasive non-grass species. Unlike large national landscaping companies, who are more focussed on selling services for added corporate margin, we recommend our clients not over-fertilize their turf. Typically, once, or at-most, twice a season is fine. It provides just enough, without causing overgrowth and too much thatch buildup.
Smartscape is one of the few landscaping providers in the region that offers smarter organic fertilizer options. This specializer, clean manure, is designed for lawns and has the right about of nitrogen and food, along with fibrous organic matter processed from either composted organic matter, or slightly-composted horse and cow manure. While natural organic manure ferilization can be lower cost due to the sourcing we have access to, we tape off the area to reduce the exposure to pathogens to human users for a time period. In addition, when first spread, there will be a noticeable odor, although it dissipates over time. The benefit of natural organic fertilizer is that manure adds additional needed soil structure, that many top level can thrive on. It can make for tougher turf that can be walked on and used for recreational purposes. Best of all, organic fertilizer can potentially be less harmful for the environment.
Once or twice a season, the spreading of weed inhibotors in your turf can help reduce the growth of dandelions, yellow mustard, cheat grass, and other weeds. In addition, occasional “walk through” hand weeding can benefit a turf from already existing, stubborn weed plants. This can clean up an entire turf and make it mostly weed-free. This service can either be a normal part of lawn mowing on an extra time basis, or separate service during property cleanups.
Lawn mowing is an obvious and essential lawncare service for all grass turf in the Reno-area. At Smartscapes, not only do we use renewable solar power to power our commercial grade battery technology lawnmowers, but we can advise clients on optimal grass length to reduce water perspiration. Often in Reno, lawns are cut too low, leading to struggling grass, during our hot and dry mid-summer season. Our lawn mowing machinery has many options, to adjust cut length as the season progresses. This, along with our alternating mulching service, are smarter ways your lawn can be mowed.
Lawns frequently develop dry spots and dry patches. Rather than you worry about these, we can keep an eye open for developing spots, and make recommendations for repairs early on. This will help to keep your lawn green, smooth and consistenth throughout the entire surface. Whether sod replacement, sprinkler adjustments, seeding or other methods, your lawn can look good and clean.
Smartscapes alternating mulching service is unique in the region, in that we can make occasionally spread the grass clippings, to become natural mulch and fertilzier for your turf. This is a smart way of encouraging grass growth and strengthening your lawn. Spreading the grass clippings at every mow is harmful and not recommended. It ends up choking out water, light and nutrients, because it builds up too quickly. Not to mention, it becomes messy for users, and leads to “clumpy” spots. But occasionally spreading grass clippings, approximately once-a-month, or 3-4 times a season, provides just enough clippings to stay, break down and become organic fertilizer, while not building up and becoming thatch. Ask us about our alternating mulching program.
Edging, especially for most of our commercial clients, is an added service that makes turfs look clean and healthy, using sharp, defined borders. Because the fescue-based grass species in our region are lighter and thinner than souther bermuda-type grasses, we have found that most nearly all edging can be performed at the time of lawn mowing service, typically once a month, using our professional grade trimmers. This helps lower edging costs, and will leave your turf looking professional, while enhancing design, borders and planters all season. In addition, we can edge and clean up around ornamental rocks, trees and more.
You need a landscaping partner who knows the local area and can consult with issues like plant growth, grass health, and make recommendations to save on water, maintenance costs, and overall turf improvement. We are happy to offer you advice to improve your lawn, while looking for ways to help the environment and save costs. Just ask!
Smart Lawns from Smartscapes
Having a lawn on your property can be a quick and easy way to cover your surface. But it can quickly become a detriment if it is not managed smartly. Smartscapes smart lawncare service gives our clients full-service lawncare, all-season long, without having to worry about every issue. And our techniques can help you reduce water waste, water bills, and long-term maintenance costs.
Environmentally-Focussed Lawncare
Smartscapes environmentally-focussed operations allow us to deliver cost-effective mowing and lawncare, while eliminating exhaust, pollution, oil and gas spills. And the power comes from 100% renewable solar electricity form our on-site solar farm. Our lawnmowers and lawn technology are up to 60% quieter than standard gas-powered machines. Less disruption, and more enjoyment of your turf.
