Lawn care built for Nolensville clay

What sits under a new Nolensville lawn

Most of the newer streets in Nolensville sit on ground that got scraped flat before the houses went up. The topsoil came off, the clay underneath got driven on by every truck on the job, and then sod went down on top of it. It looks perfect the day you close on the house. Two summers later the roots are still sitting in that thin layer, they never got down into anything, and the first hot dry stretch in July burns the whole yard brown while the shady side stays fine.

Middle Tennessee sits in the seam where cool season grass and warm season grass both struggle for part of the year. Most yards here are tall fescue, and fescue does not like August. Cut it short and you cook it. We keep the deck high through the heat so the blade shades its own root zone, and we keep the blades sharp, because a dull mower tears the tip of every plant and leaves a yard with a gray cast to it a day later.

Spring is the other half of the problem. Rain comes hard here in March and April, the clay holds it, and a heavy mower run over the same line every week on soft ground leaves ruts you will be looking at all summer. We change direction week to week, we stay off the low corners near a wet ditch until they firm up, and on the bigger lots out toward Clovercroft and Rocky Fork we walk the ground before anything with wheels goes on it.

• Mow height raised for the July heat
• Mowing direction changed week to week
• Edges cut along drives and walkways
• String trimmed around posts and fence lines
• Clippings blown off the drive and street

Weed control on a Nolensville lot

Weed control is mostly a timing job. Crabgrass seed sits in the top of the soil all winter and wakes up when the ground warms, which around here is usually while everybody is still thinking about spring. Get the pre-emergent down before that and the seed never becomes a plant. Miss the window by a few weeks and you spend the rest of the season pulling clumps out of a fescue yard, because nothing sprayed on top of grown crabgrass leaves the lawn looking untouched.

The rest of it is knowing what you are looking at. Nutsedge is the light green stuff that shoots up taller than everything else three days after you mow, and it comes out of wet compacted ground, which describes half the lots in town. Wild violet holds on under shade trees and laughs at the usual broadleaf mix. Henbit and chickweed take over a thin winter yard while the fescue is asleep. Each one takes a different product and a different month, so we treat what is there instead of spraying the whole yard the same way.

The best weed control on any of these yards is grass thick enough that nothing else gets light. That is slow work on clay. It comes from mow height more than anything in a jug, and from staying after the bare patches under the shade trees before something else claims them. Spraying alone keeps a thin yard looking clean for a stretch, and then August arrives, the fescue backs off, and whatever was waiting in the soil takes the open ground. Thick grass is the only thing that holds it.

Mulch on beds that sit on clay

Beds around here are usually cut into the same clay the lawn sits on, so water either runs off the top of them or stands in them. Mulch evens that out. A proper layer holds moisture through a dry August and keeps the mud splash off the front of the house when it storms. Bare beds in this soil crust over hard, and then the rain you actually wanted runs straight past the roots and out to the street. That is why a bed can look watered and still have a plant dying in the middle of it.

Depth matters more than most people think, in both directions. Too thin and light gets through, so weed seed germinates and by June the bed looks like the yard. Too deep and it mats over and sheds water, and stems that want air sit damp instead. The other thing we fix constantly is mulch piled up the trunk of a young tree. Every new subdivision in Nolensville is full of trees still young enough to kill that way, and the bark stays wet under the pile until it rots and the tree gives up years later.

The older houses along the pike and the streets around the historic district have the opposite problem. There are big hardwoods over beds that have been in place for decades, and under them a layer of old mulch and leaf mold has broken down into soil and pushed the bed level up above the walk. Adding more on top of that buries the crown of everything planted in it. On those beds we cut the edge back in and pull the excess out before any new mulch goes down, which is more work and the only way the bed lasts.

Getting a price in Nolensville

Every price starts the same way, with a look at the actual yard. Call or text the number on this page, or send the form, and we will come out to Nolensville, walk the property, and put the estimate in writing so you can read what is included before you agree to anything. The estimate is free. If the yard needs something past a cut, a nutsedge problem or beds that have to be dug back out before they get mulched, it goes on the estimate as its own line instead of turning up later as a surprise. Keith Setler wrote in his Google review: "On time and professional. Really detailed attention to every inch of our yard and even took care of things we didn’t ask for. Will definitely keep on rotation." The number is (615) 987-9982.