Last Updated on January 16, 2024 by Brian Beck
I get this question all the time, “Can you just come out and look at my lawn?” Every year someone is looking for the next silver bullet that will instantaneously solve their problems and satisfy their craving for a lawn repair fix. The reality is that people pardon the pun, are looking in the wrong place. Of course observation is a valuable tool in diagnosing any problem with anything however there are certain things that can only be ascertained in a lawn by literally getting your hands dirty. We have begun to shy away from the stereo typical drive-by to solve a problem. What is really needed is a closer observation of what’s taking in your soil and your watering habits. These two fundamentals represent about 80% of everything that is going to function in a lawn and they are the two biggest things that get routinely overlooked, mismanaged and misunderstood. Here are the three levels of observation and what can be expected from them:
1. The visual observation- there are a few things that you can observe by just looking at a lawn with no intrusion and that would largely be whatever is existing on the surface or can be felt when you walk across the lawn. This includes general watering habits and irrigation malfunctions such as bad heads. After doing
this for so long I jokingly tell my customers I can drive down the street at 30 miles an hour and tell you how well your watering, it’s that obvious to me. Plus the grass doesn’t lie so it’s going to tell you if something is wrong with it in water is the biggest predictor of turf failure. The other obvious things that you might see
are things such as chronic lawn stress which would produce thinning of the lawn and of course the color and density of the lawn have a lot to tell about how things are getting into the plant and creating the situation that you are in. This is all visual. As you can see there is very little that you can solve by just looking
at a lawn which is why we have stopped doing this as most of the fundamentals can be addressed over the phone and this will go much further than looking at a problem that a thousand other people have. Remember there are not that many afflictions in this climate and there are only so many problems that can
exist in a lawn. In other words, there are no novel or unique problems that exist only those that a million other people have suffered.
2. The internal visual observation- now this goes one step further as it requires you to get on lawn, walk around on it and if you have one pocket with the soil probe. What you’re looking for in this observation is typically how thick your thatch is which one can discern by simply walking on the yard and noticing
whether or not it is spongy. If it feels like you’re walking on a mattress I can guarantee you that you probably have an excess of an inch of thatch in the yard which is simply the dead root growth. This is symbolic of something much more significant in the lawn that we will discuss later but it is not good. One of the
greatest tools I have ever bought is a foot long soil probe from Amazon. They are about $50 and it allows me to check a few things. The thickness of your thatch, the composition of your soil, how deep the roots are going down into the soil and how far the water is penetrating into the soil. This gives you a lot of
valuable information that indicates what you are working with before the house was built, how you have managed your watering and irrigation needs and always tells me right away how compacted the soil is by how much energy it takes to push the probe into the ground. This is a dead giveaway of two things,
how much moisture is in the soil and how compacted soil is. This step goes one step further but only tells you so much. You can read the signs if you know what the causes are but most people do not know what they’re looking for, until we get the step number three.
3. The internal microscopic observation- to the initiated this should say a lot. There are things in your lawn that drive problems that you cannot see which is why we do not solely rely on looking at a lawn to solve problems nor can visual observations in and of themselves solve problems. The problems that you
can’t see require a lab and a microscope. Things that you should be aware of that dictate the health of your lawn and create success or failure are things such as: soil pH, soil organic content otherwise known as carbon, macro and micro elements in the soil, and also catIon exchange capacity known as CEC. These
elements can be quantified with a soil test and are actually far more important than just looking at a lawn which is important in the diagnostic process but cannot be relied upon alone to solve a problem which is why it’s frustrating when someone asks us to come look at the lawn, typically for free I might add.
So there you have it. This is the proper process for lawn diagnosis of issues and how to solve them. I would strongly recommend that you look at your soil before you look at anything else as it holds all of the secrets that contribute to lawn success and lawn failure. There is a solution for every problem you just have to know what the problem is and it is typically microscopic in nature.
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