By Diane Lee (WSPA)
We spend a lot of green on our lawns, six and a half billion dollars a year according to the lawn institute. If you want to cut back this growing season, there are steps you can take right now to save on everything from fertilizer to mulch.
Over the 16 years Greenville homeowner Harold Owens has cultivated his lawn, he’s learned some tricks to cut down on mowing, maintenance, and overall cost.
“What I did was I put all the beds in and then all these multitudes of different bushes and plants and flowering plants that come up at different times of the year,” said Harold.
And those flowers he plants are all perennials. He uses straw in those beds instead of mulch to reduce cost.
The grass, not greener a few door down where we met up with Clemson Cooperative Extension Agent George Dickert.
He advises homeowners to take several soil samples from your lawn, about 3 to 4 inches deep. That testing, which runs only $6, reveals the PH and nutrient levels so you know what type of fertilizer you need and how much.
“Once we move through and pull all of our samples, we’ll mix them up and we’ll fill up a common zip top sandwich bag full. We need a pint of soil per sample,” said Dickert.
By the way, you can also submit leaves that may have a disease or fungus for testing, too.
You’ll need to drop off the samples at the Cooperative office in your county which you’ll find here.
“Now if you have plants that are dying in your yard and you don’t know why, Clemson Cooperative says one of the biggest killers is water, in fact in this bed there are a few plant that are going right now, so check to see if there are sprinklers nearby.”
Finally, Dickert says no need to chop those popular crape myrtles. It’s less costly to plant dwarf versions than pay a gardner every year to prune them back.
