The Best Kept Lawns Have The Most Problems

A lawn tends to adapt itself to the care and treatment that it receives from the homeowner. If a homeowner indulges his lawn with regular watering, regular feeding, and regular use of pesticides, his lawn will adapt itself and come to expect the continuation of this treatment.

It is important to understand that when a lawn is subjected in a limited way to drought, insect infestation or disease, it builds some resistance to these conditions. There is the process of natural selection at work.

If you water your lawn on a very regular basis you will be cultivating many thousands of individual grass plants that are all accustomed to receiving regular watering. Now if something should happen to disrupt this regular watering - such as an imposed watering ban or an extended trip away from home - this lawn will find itself without all the water it has grown accustomed to receiving. This lawn will be less able to survive any type of drought as compared to another lawn that has become adapted to periodic droughts. During a drought any individual grass plants that are intolerant to drought are apt to die out. In a lawn that has become adapted to an occasional drought there will be many individual grass plants that are in fact very well adapted to prolonged drought. When these adapted lawns begin to receive water or rain again, it is these drought resistant grass plants that will be left to reproduce themselves.

This same adaptability also holds true when it comes to a lawn’s resistance to attacks by insects and disease. If you continually apply preventative chemicals - such as pesticides and fungicides - your lawn will have less chance to develop its own natural resistance to attacking forces. Also, it should be noted that if you maintain the lushest, greenest and healthiest lawn in your neighborhood, then your lawn may become the lawn of choice for hungry grass-eating insects looking for a place to lay their eggs.

The bottom line here is that natural selection is always at work despite what you do or don’t do for your lawn. If you want your lawn to have more natural resistance to whatever Mother Nature might throw at it, don’t be too regular and too quick to intercede on your lawn’s behalf. Your lawn will adapt to that behavior and you are apt to become a slave to your lawn.

NEXT TIME: Lawn Diseases