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Guides

Lawn care, explained properly.

Most lawn advice is a list of products. These guides are the why behind the numbers the calculators produce — what a pound of nitrogen is, why fall matters more than spring, what the tuna can is for — and they say so when the cheapest answer is the right one.

New to this? Start here.

Four steps, in order. Most lawn problems are one of them skipped.

  1. 1

    Measure the lawn once

    Every pound of seed, fertilizer and every minute of water scales from your square footage. Guess it and everything is off by the same margin.

    Lawn area calculator →
  2. 2

    Get the year on one page

    Grass type and zone turn into a dated schedule — what to do, how much, and when — printable, with calendar reminders.

    Lawn care planner →
  3. 3

    Feed by the pound of nitrogen

    The bag’s “covers 5,000 sq ft” is marketing. Pounds of N per 1,000 is the number every recommendation is written in.

    Fertilizer calculator →
  4. 4

    Measure your sprinklers

    Twenty minutes with some tuna cans turns “an inch a week” into minutes on your controller.

    Catch-cup test →

Lawn

Feeding, seeding, watering and the calendar.

Understanding NPK: what the fertilizer numbers mean The three numbers, pounds of actual nitrogen, and why "covers 5,000 sq ft" is a marketing rate. Read the guide → When to fertilize: cool- vs warm-season schedules Fall-heavy for bluegrass and fescue, summer-heavy for bermuda — and why spring is the month to go easy. Read the guide → How much to water a lawn — and how to measure it "One inch a week" is a placeholder. The tuna-can test is the real number. Read the guide → Cool-season vs warm-season grasses Which you have, which you should plant, and why it changes every date on the calendar. Read the guide → How to overseed, start to finish Timing, seed-to-soil contact, the watering schedule that actually germinates seed. Read the guide → Soil testing: how and where Why lime without a test is a guess, how to take a sample, and what the report means. Read the guide → Full lawn renovation walkthrough Kill, prep, seed, water — the eight-week sequence for starting over. Read the guide → Why your grass seed didn’t germinate Soil temperature, moisture, depth and pre-emergent — the usual suspects, in order. Read the guide →

Garden & beds

Soil, mulch, spacing and frost dates.

Raised bed soil mixes explained Mel’s mix, 60/30/10 and the cheap fill methods — what each costs per bed. Read the guide → Frost dates and season planning The date is a 50/50 bet — what waiting costs, and whether to cover tonight. Read the guide → Square-foot gardening spacing chart Plants per square for every common crop — printable. Read the guide → Mulch types compared Bark, chips, straw, rubber, rock — what each costs per 100 sq ft per year once you divide price by lifespan. Read the guide →

Irrigation

Sprinklers, drip, and measuring what you put down.

Drip vs sprinklers for garden beds The saving depends on your plant spacing, not the tubing — 91% on squash, 22% on lettuce. Read the guide → How to design a simple drip system The parts list with quantities, computed from your beds — and why bed two costs a quarter of bed one. Read the guide →

Indoor growing

Light, nutrients and humidity for tents and hydro.

Grow tent humidity: how big a dehumidifier, really Your exhaust fan moves more water than your dehumidifier does — and the pint number on the box is measured at 65 °F, not tent temperature. Read the guide → Grow light spectrum: what the colors actually do Red wins the efficacy race on physics, not quality — and green beats blue, which is the opposite of what you’ve been told. Read the guide → Reservoir temperature: why warm water kills roots Warm water holds less oxygen while roots demand more of it — and no air pump can beat a falling ceiling. Read the guide → Hydro systems compared: DWC, ebb-and-flow, NFT, Kratky Two buffers decide it: what a power cut costs, and how fast the EC drifts when you’re not looking. Read the guide → Nutrient deficiency ID guide Old growth or new growth halves the list — and the three most-diagnosed deficiencies usually aren’t. Read the guide → pH in hydro: ranges and adjustment The published doses disagree by 4× because they leave out your water’s alkalinity. Here it is computed. Read the guide →

The short version of lawn care

If you read nothing else here, read this. A lawn needs four things, roughly in this order:

The right grass for the place. Cool-season grasses (bluegrass, fescue, rye) for the North, warm-season (bermuda, zoysia, St. Augustine, centipede) for the South, shade-tolerant species where it's shady. No amount of fertilizer fixes the wrong grass in the wrong spot, and the two kinds want opposite calendars — which is why the planner asks first.

Nitrogen, at the right time. Turf responds to nitrogen more than to anything else you can buy, measured in pounds per 1,000 square feet: fall-heavy for cool-season, summer for warm-season, never while dormant. Phosphorus and potassium only when a soil test says so.

Water, deep and infrequent. About an inch a week in the growing season including rain, in one or two long sessions rather than a daily sprinkle — and measured, because your sprinklers' rate is the only way to turn inches into minutes.

Mowing high, with a sharp blade. The free one. Taller grass shades out weeds and grows deeper roots; never take more than a third of the blade at once.

That's it. Lime only after a soil test, pre-emergent by soil temperature, and overseed in fall. Most of the rest of the shelf — "weed and feed," fungicides, soil conditioners, moss killer — is treating a symptom of one of the four above being wrong.

What the year looks like

WhenCool-season lawnWarm-season lawn
Early springPre-emergent as soil hits 55 °F; first mow; go easy on fertilizerPre-emergent; scalp bermuda before green-up; no nitrogen yet
Late springLight feed if needed; start measuring waterFirst feeding once fully green; seed, sod or plug
SummerWater, mow high, no nitrogen; watch for grubs and fungusFeed monthly (bermuda) and water deep; aerate during growth
FallThe main event: aerate, overseed, feed twiceLast feeding by early September; winter-weed pre-emergent
WinterStay off it; soil test; sharpen the bladeDormant; soil test; spot winter weeds

The planner turns this into dates and quantities for your zone and square footage, and prints on one page.

The mistakes that cause most problems

Guessing the square footage. Every quantity on the site scales from it. A lawn "about 8,000 sq ft" that's really 6,000 gets a third too much of everything, forever.

Feeding by the bag instead of the pound. "Covers 5,000 sq ft" is whatever rate makes the bag look big. Pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 sq ft is comparable across every product, and it's what the fertilizer calculator speaks.

Heavy spring fertilizer on a cool-season lawn. It buys top growth and mowing, not roots, and sets the lawn up to suffer in July. The thick spring lawn comes from last fall's feeding.

Watering every day for ten minutes. Shallow roots, disease, and a lawn that wilts the first hot week the sprinklers miss. Twice a week, long enough to soak six inches down.

Liming every spring "to sweeten the soil." Lime is a correction for a tested problem, not a tonic. Past pH 7 the grass yellows for lack of iron, and the moss was never about pH anyway.

Buying the fix before the diagnosis. Brown patches have half a dozen causes — grubs, fungus, dog, drought, dull blade, a buried rock — and most bottles marketed at them treat one. Look first; the answer is usually water or mowing, and both are free.