home yard maintenance

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 28 May 2025 01:03
Published: Monday, 03 May 2021 17:22
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Landscaping:

if you buy a standalone house, chances are high that it will have a lawn in the front and in the back. If you are buying a condo, lawn care is taken care of by the HOA (Home owner Association). If you are buying a townhome, you may have to take care of the small lawn (if any), depending on the specific HOA.

Lawn care requires considerable time and money. If you are buying a brand new house, it will come with the lawn setup with grass and small plants and trees. You will immediately see 2 kind of areas: one with grass, while the other with no grass, but having cut wood (known as mulch). This mulch area is around trees and plants, so that no grass grows in that area. It's just to give a better appearance to the lawn.

If you buy a house in USA which is part of an association, then one of the long lasting nightmares as a homeowner are the landscaping violations. The whole and sole reason HOA  exist is to make sure that can fine home owners if they don't like the landscaping of that particular home. This is easy and recurring money stream for the management company which manages the HOA (as half of the fines go to mgmt Co). All other fines are very objective, can be contested easily and are one time fix. On the other hand, landscaping rules are very obscure (something like "landscaping has to be maintained in a first class condition"), can be sent out weekly, and for any reason (weeds in yard, grass on mulch, dead plants after winter, not enough green color to grass, blah blah, basically anything you can dream of ...)

No matter how much you maintain your yard, management company will always find a way to send you a violation notice. They will start imposing fines, interest, etc, and there is little respite from this. In the past, HOAs have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars filing lawsuits over landscaping, and have successfully foreclosed homes, which is totally illegal and non sense. Many HOA just fine you when they come to know that you haven't hired a professional to maintain your yard. Best thing is to avoid buying a home in an HOA. However no new homes in USA come without an HOA, so you are stuck.

Maintaining landscaping is one thing, and not getting fines is another thing. You can spend a lot of money and time trying to avoid HOA fines related to landscaping. I don't know when will that suffice. My article below lists general tips and tricks to maintain your landscaping in a decent condition. This will save you money, and require as little of your time as possible.

 My goal is to never spend more than $1K/year on landscaping including all the costs as irrigation, mowing, yard supplies, machines, etc.

 

 

Mowing: 

The very first thing that you will need to do is mow the lawn. This means cutting the grass, preferably every 2 weeks during summer and every 4 weeks during winter. I personally felt that mowing it every week, keeps it much healthier and it takes less time to do it. Regular mowing creates a tillering effect, keeping your grass greener and softer. You will need to buy a lawn mower to do this.

There are 3 different kind of lawn mowers to do this job:

  1. Manual mowers: These require manual effort, as the cutting blades rotate as you move the mower. It's the cheapest option, but takes lot of your energy. Good to exercise, but I don't see these anymore.
  2. Gas mowers: These run on petrol, and maintainance is required on regular basis. Cost in the range of $100-$200.
  3. Electric mowers: These mowers are the most convenient, as they run on electricity. Two options are available here: one with electric cords (corded), and ones without (cordless). Cordless ones have rechargeable battery, so they are heavier than corded ones. But advantage is that there is no cord to buy, and no cord to maneouver around. However, cordless mowers will last for an hour or so in one charge, depending on the battery life, so your lawn has to be less than 10,000 sq ft, or else it's going to require multiple charging in order to complete one mowing. Price wise corded mowers are cheaper than cordless ones. However, if you shop around, you can find cordless mowers for under $300 with good 2 year warranty. Do NOT buy a corded mower as those are difficult to manage, regularly gets the cord cut, and eventually don't end up saving any money. Buy the cordless one. 

Mower deals:

Tips for mowing:

  1. Always leave 3 inches of grass height in the lawn. you can do this by adjusting the height of the mower to 3 inches. Reason for leaving 3 inches is this: grass has 2 parts, a bottom dry part, and the top crown. you don't want to cut bottom dry part.
  2. Never cut more than 1/3rd of the grass height in one mowing. If you've to cut more than this, waiT for 2-3 days, and then again cut, 1/3rd of remaining grass height. this way, grass is healthier.

Mowing is just one lawn care activity. It doesn't prevent the unwanted plants (weeds) from growing. These weeds will grow along with your grass, and start killing your grass, as they take away the necessary resources (water, sunlight) from the grass for their own growth. For these, we need fertilizers and chemical spray. This is covered under next section.

 

 

Weed Control:

Weed Control is best done before weeds grow. Crabgrass is the most common weed that is hard to pull out, and grows very fast. Below are few chemicals that help prevent crabgrass as well as other weeds.

Crabgrass Control (Weeds): https://www.lowes.com/pd/Scotts-32-04-lb-Crabgrass-Control/1000140423

Pre Emergent: These are chemicals that you spray before the weeds come, i.e when weeds are dormant. This is usually in the fall (i.e Nov-Feb). If you spray pre emergent during the fall, you will hardly see any weeds during the summer. If you forget to do this, then it's very hard to control the weeds with post emergents or other chemicals. It's too late by the time you start seeing weeds germinate.

Crabgrass pre-emergent: Crabgrass is pretty easy to control. You just have to put the right chemical/weed killer, else it's impossible to get rid of it. Regular weed killer will work on all other weeds, but will never work on Crabgrass. A chemical, Prodiamine, is very effective. Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Quali-Pro-Prodiamine-Pre-Emergent-Herbicide-Granules/dp/B004GTQBEK

Prodiamine Preemergent => It's expensive at $100, however it will last you 10 years or more. Don't buy smaller bottles, as they cost you way more over the long run. This is the way to apply it:

  1. Measure your yard area. Per 1000 sq ft, you need 0.5oz of Prodiamine. The dosage of prodiamine determines how long the yard is going to be crabgrass free. For 4-6 months protection, 0.5 oz is good. For 12 month protection, you need 1 oz per 1000 sq ft. Don't go over 1oz per 1000 sq ft, as that may damage the grass.
  2. Fill in 1 gallon water in the spray tank. 1 gallon is for 2000 sq ft of yard area. Put in 1oz  - 2oz of Prodiamine in it. Shake it well. This amount in spray tank is good enough for 2000 sq ft of yard area. For 4000 sq ft of yard area, repeat twice.
  3. Once the water and the Prodiamine are mixed in the tank, start walking over the yard, spraying it. Within 14 days, turn on your sprinkler system to let this chemical get into your soil. This will have more effective control of weeds.

 Post Emergent: These are chemicals that you spray after the weeds come, i.e when weeds are visible. Most of the weed n feed fertilizers, weed killers, etc you see in the market are the post emergent. These are not as effective as Pre emergents. You need to apply post emergent in conjunction with Pre emergent to get best results. If you have done a good job applying Pre-emergents, you won't need much of post emergents,

 

Grubs: If you see your grass not needing a cut even during active growing season of summer, that means the grass isn't growing, which indicates something wrong with the grass. Most of the times, you will also see that the grass is really easy to pull off from certain places (sometimes it comes out like a carpet indicating no roots at all). The most common reason for this is over abundance of grubs in your soil, which are little worms in soil, which feed on root of any plant including grass. If you are seeing the damage, it's too late as larva of Grubshave already hatched into adults and will keep eating grass. You can control further damage by killing whatever grubs you have by using this 24 hr Grub Killer product => https://www.amazon.com/BioAdvanced/dp/B001H1GQ54

For next season, you should apply grub killer to prevent grubs from laying eggs. This is done in Spring season before summer comes (i.e March/April). So, we kill Grubs before they lay eggs. You need to water extensively to let this chemical go underneath deep in the soil to get all grubs. You need to apply only once a year, as after summer, no grubs will come anyway. You need season long Grub control for this => https://www.amazon.com/Scotts-GrubEx1-Season-Long-Killer/dp/B0050DV4ZW/145-1063152-0610042

 

 

Sprinkler Installation and Repair:

If you have a sprinkler system to water your lawn, it's another financial pain. However, you should be able to do almost every repair yourself, instead of spending 100's of $ for each call. They don't involve any plumbing or fixing difficult leaks, as most of the parts are standard, and may just be switched with a new one. Repairing sprinklers is NOT plumbing job, small leaks here and there may still be OK and NOT that difficult to fix :)

If you dont't have a sprinkler system (especially for old houses), I would suggest to not put one, as it not only saves money, but there's also nothing to maintain. Just use a regular garden hose to water your yard from time to time. Grass may die in extreme summer, but will come back when the weather cools. Just don't allow grass to die to a point where roots start dying. Then, grass won't grow again. Water the lawn before that starts happening. 

First, let's understand the basics of how sprinker system works:

Link showing mock setup=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYV7Oac5T98

Link showing installation from scratch => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMsVext_DnY

Pipe size:

There is a pvc pipe running under your yard soil, that carries water to all sprinkler head. Pipes are classified based on internal diameter of the pipe. External diameter doesn't matter for fittings. Most of the pipes used in homes are either 1/2 inch pipes or 3/4 inch pipes in internal diameter. The next size up is 1 inch pipe which are mostly used in industrial agriculture, but not in residential yards. You have to know your pipe size.

You have a solenoid, as well as water heads that may go wrong. Lastly, you may have the sprinkler board

Changing Sprinkler heads:

One of the easiest things to do is changing sprinkler heads, They my break, leak, or just not work efficiently after a couple of years. Very easy to replace and each head costs only $5-$10 depending on whether's it's stationary (where head doesn't rotate) or rotary (where head rotates in an angle, and angle is adjustable).

Video explaining how to change heads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6BDhysSi3A

 

Repair Pipe cuts:

Sprinkler pipes may get cracks,leak or may just accidently get cut while you are diffing in the yard. It's very easy to fix. Tough part is finding out where the leak is. Since it's under the yard, there are multiple ways to find the leak. One is to turn off all faucets, taps in your house, and see if your water meter needle is still moving. That may indicate a leak in the main line before it enters the sprinkler. Sprinkler pipe leaks may not be caught using this process as sprinkler is turned off by the sprinkler board.

To find sprinkler pipe leaks, turn on the sprinkler in manual mode, and check for low water pressure (i.e if not all sprinkler heads come up, that may be a problem with sprinkler head, solenoid or some leak in the pvc pipe for that zone). Rule out the sprinkler head problem by replacing the heads not popping up with new ones. If they still don't pop up, replace the solenoid, and if still doesn't pop up, then chances are there is a leak. Look for water pooling in any certain area, or grass being overly green in same patch of ground. That indicates that patch of grass is getting lot more water underground which can only happen with underground leak.

Once you have dug up, and found the cracked pipe, there are 2 ways to fix it:

 

 

Misc supplies/tools:

Water hose:

You will most likely need a hose to water your grass or your plants at some point. May be because sprinkler stops working, or you might just want to water your grass  little extra. 100 ft hoses with lifetime warranty are available for $50. Buy these. Do NOT buy the "expandable hoses" as they are not going to last beyond one year. They are fancy but that's all they have.

05/25/2025 : 100 ft garden hose => https://slickdeals.net/f/18331678-flexzilla-garden-hose-5-8-in-x-100-ft-heavy-duty-lightweight-durable-zillagreen-hfzg5100yw-e-55-33-at-amazon

Though the link above takes you t amazon, you can buy the same hose from home Depot for the same price => https://www.homedepot.com/p/Flexzilla-5-8-in-x-100-ft-ZillaGreen-Garden-Hose-with-3-4-in-GHT-Fittings-HFZG5100YW-E/203549988