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Having a backyard to enjoy with family, friends, or even alone can quickly turn from a pleasure into a nightmare. Not everyone has the time and patience to devote to yard work: cleaning the leaves, cutting the grass, pulling weeds, planting new flowers, sweeping the patio, shoveling snow in winter, and so on.
Yes, yard work may require a lot of work and a lot of time. The good news is that you can count this extra effort as exercise: just raking and bagging leaves can burn between 350-450 calories per hour. And the best reward is having a beautiful space to enjoy the warmer seasons.
If you are too busy to devote the attention your home’s exterior deserves, let’s take a look at some ways to get the most out of yardwork efforts.
Landscaping and Lawncare
The ideas of landscaping, lawn care, and yard work all overlap, but they refer to almost completely different works. In short, performing yard work duties can be organized to fall under landscaping or lawn care.
Lawncare is the term used to designate those seasonal tasks you need to do to keep your garden in order: mowing the lawn, watering the plants, trimming the bushes and trees, pulling weeds, fertilizing the soil, and so on. Generally, each of these actions takes about 20 minutes, and you can do it all in a productive morning or afternoon.
Landscaping, on the other hand, is more complicated and involves redefining and altering the appearance of your outdoor area. This can happen by planting new trees and flowers, reorganizing the existing ones, and even building new structures (walls, pools, pavement, etc.) Landscaping requires more time, planning, and money. Some things should also be done by a skilled professional, no matter how good you are with manual work.
Both routine tasks and a more complicated renovation require free time and effort. Fortunately, all it takes is a little planning to distribute the work or split it between different aspects more efficiently.
Time Well Spent
Summer is probably the best time to dedicate yourself to yardwork, as you end up combining the useful (the work that needs to be done) with the pleasant, i.e., spending more time outdoors. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your yardwork efforts:
Remember that too much sun exposure can cause your lawn to dry out.
Manual Sprinkling
Set aside the mornings to turn on the sprinklers or water the lawn manually.
Lawn Fertilization
Identify your soil type to find out the best way to fertilize your lawn.
Time Mowings
Book early morning or late afternoon (4:00 p.m) to mow your lawn because the grass is drier.
Avoid Overcutting
Don’t overcut lawn grass. Try to mow the lawn when the grass reaches 2 to 3 inches tall to spend less time mowing and effort that way.
Weed Control
Apply herbicide or weed control products when the temperature is lower for a few days. Deal with weeds as soon as possible, as the summer light hours make them grow quickly and strengthen their roots, making them difficult to pull out.
Protective Gear
Always wear protective gear like gloves, close-toed shoes, covers for legs, etc. Pay special attention to eye protection, as debris propelled by the lawnmower can seriously injure your eyes. In which case, it would be worth it to splurge on designer glasses frames that are made with hardier materials.
Don’t obsessively clean dry leaves on the lawn. Over time they decompose and become organic matter to fertilize the soil. But whenever you collect and make large piles of leaves, clean them immediately, so they don’t create mold and decay.
Enjoy Your Yard
Routine lawn care tasks, or even some heavier landscaping work, will surely take its toll on both time and money. It will be hours and hours invested in planning, planting, watering, pruning, caring, and fertilizing to have a yard you can be proud of – and even your neighbors will look at with some envy.
Dedicating yourself to yard work requires being proactive, as nature does not wait for your goodwill. The grass will grow regardless of your other commitments, the garden won’t water itself, and it only takes a few days of abandonment for all the work to go down the drain.
But if you manage to organize your time and follow the tips above to keep an eye on what really matters, you’ll have an amazing yard to enjoy.