Lawn care for La Vergne yards

Thin topsoil on graded La Vergne lots

A lot of La Vergne sits on ground that was scraped flat before the houses went up. The builder pushed the good dirt off, set the slab, and spread whatever was left back over the clay. So you get a yard that looks fine in April and goes hard as a driveway by the middle of summer. Grass roots stay shallow because there is nowhere for them to go, and shallow roots are the reason a lawn browns out here while the yard across the street is still green.

Mowing height matters more on that kind of yard than anything else we do. Cut it short and you burn the crown. The soil bakes once the grass is not shading it, and crabgrass takes the thin spots because it finally has light. So we run the deck high through the hot stretch and keep the blades sharp enough to cut a leaf tip instead of tearing it. Direction changes week to week too, so the grass is not always getting pushed the same way. Sounds small. It is the difference between a lawn that stands up and one that lays over.

The other thing about a flat graded lot is water. La Vergne yards tend to sit low and hold what the afternoon storms drop, and mowing wet ground rips the grass instead of cutting it and leaves ruts you will be looking at until fall. When a yard is soaked we work the dry side and come back for the rest. Nobody enjoys hearing that. It beats a set of tire tracks pressed into the back yard that take the rest of the season to grow out.

• Deck raised through the hot months, blades kept sharp
• Walks and drives edged, not just trimmed
• Trimmed close around AC pads and slab corners
• Clippings blown off the concrete before we leave
• Soft low spots left alone until they firm up

Weeds move in when the fescue thins

Middle Tennessee sits in the seam between cool season and warm season grass, which is why two yards on the same street can behave nothing alike. Fescue does the work here through spring and fall and then sulks in the heat. Bermuda creeps in from the ditch line and the curb strip and runs hard exactly when the fescue is checked out. Weed control has to know which one it is standing on, because what helps a fescue lawn in July can thin a bermuda lawn, and the same in reverse.

Timing is most of it. Crabgrass seed is already sitting in the soil waiting for the ground to warm, so the pass that stops it has to go down before you can see a single blade of it. Miss that window and you are chasing plants that are already rooted, which costs more and looks worse for weeks. The low wet corners near the creek bottoms grow nutsedge, and nutsedge does not answer to what you put down for crabgrass, it takes its own treatment. Winter is henbit and chickweed, and those get handled while the fescue is dormant.

Skip a season and the ground does not sit empty. Weeds fill what the grass gave up, and once they have the space they seed and hold it. In a subdivision where the houses sit close and one lawn runs into the next, that spreads down the row, so the yard you fixed last year gets reseeded from over the fence. We treat what is there and then keep an eye on the edges, the curb strip and the fence line, because that is where the next round always starts.

Bed work on a La Vergne subdivision lot

Builder beds around here are usually a narrow strip along the front of the slab with a few shrubs set in fabric and whatever mulch or rock got spread the week the house sold. That setup looks fine for a season. Then the fabric works its way up through the mulch, the rock sinks into the clay, and weeds root in the dust that collects on top of it and pull up with nothing under them. Fixing that means getting the old material out rather than putting fresh mulch over a bed that is already failing.

Mulch does two jobs, holding moisture in the bed and keeping light off the weed seed, and it only does either at the right depth. Too thin and everything comes through it. Piled up against the trunks and you hold water where the bark does not want it. About two inches, pulled back off the stems, and a cut edge to hold the line. On these flat lots the edge is the part that matters most, because a hard rain will float loose mulch straight out across the sidewalk if there is nothing holding it in.

Bed work is where most of a front yard's look comes from, and it is the part people put off because it is not obvious where to start. Elizabeth Earls wrote about hers on Google: "He cleared out our beds, took away large rock and leveled our beds to make it easier to plant and fill in the future." That is usually the order of it. Clear what is failing, take the old rock away instead of burying it, get the grade right, then mulch on top of something that is actually ready for it.

Getting a price in La Vergne

Easiest way is to call (615) 987-9982 and tell us which street you are on, or send the form and we will pick it up from there. Somebody comes out and walks the yard first, because a price guessed off a satellite picture changes the moment the crew sees the slope and the state of the beds. The estimate is free and it comes to you in writing with the work spelled out, so you know what you are agreeing to before a mower touches the grass.