A man and his lawn

There is something directly related between a man's ability to be a man and the quality of his lawn. A man's character can almost be judged on his care of his lawn.

Maybe that is a little dramatic but there is something inherently in me and many other men to make sure there lawn is green and plush. I mean the lawn care industry $21 Billion industry, some people must really care about this stuff. (according to them).

The reason I am going on this tangent is that I have a few brown spots in my lawn, grrr. So I am working on developing a strategy, yes a fricking strategy to get rid of brown spots, on how to fix this. Being this my first year with my own lawn I am researching. I have concluded with exhaustive research (asking 4 or 5 other gentlemen what they and do and their results) that the 4 step Scott's treatment is the way to go. I only have 5k square feet of lawn so it won't be crazy expensive either. Also if you have any feedback let me know what products you use.

So the question I had is why are just some random spots brown, so I turned to the interwebs to answer this question. I found the http://www.thelawninstitute.org/. They most be the foremost experts they call themselves the lawn institute and because of that I value their opinion.

So they have a convoluted answer for this but the root, pun intended, cause is stress. "Either biotic (living) or abiotic (not living) stress placed on a plant." Ok, now how what actually causes each and why does the Scott's 4 step prevent this?

Well living causes are usually insects, such as grubs, diseases or animal urine. Then not living causes are more environmental like lack of nutrients, sun, temperature, amount of rain and even sub-terrain things like stones causing water to flow away.

The Scott's system works because it helps mostly the abiotic issues like nutrients, but also biotic issues like competing plants.

Step 1 is a fertilizer and crab grass preventer. You need to put this down mid -late April. I am doing it this weekend. This helps provide nutrients to the soil and prevent the growth of crabgrass which can steal nutrients from lawn.

Step 2 is another fertilizer and weed preventer but it prevents dandelions and other broad-leafed weeds. This needs to be applied April to June.

Step 3 feeds and strengthens against heat and drought and uses Water Smart® technology which improves lawn's ability to absorb water and nutrients. This needs to be applied June - August.

Step 4 builds stronger, deeper roots for winter.  This produces a thicker, greener lawn next spring. This gets applied in the Fall.