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Prepping your lawn for summer without breaking the bank

Riske says his company is often tasked with fixing lawns that didn't get the proper care early enough in the year.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Summer is just around the corner, and that means it's time to get to work on your lawn.

"The stronger and healthier the lawn is going into the summer months, the better chance you have of surviving through the summer," says Mike Riske, owner of MJR Landscape.

He says his company is often tasked with fixing lawns that didn't get the proper care early enough in the year.

"When it gets to a certain point it turns into a process, not a single time event to get it right," warns Riske.

Which in turn can cost you a lot of cash.

"The easiest way to have it not break the bank is to have it healthy to begin with," he says.

So where to start? Riske says the best place to begin is with laying down fertilizer to strengthen the grass.

"As the grass gets stressed with the heat, weeds tend to fill that void where the lawn is weak," he says.

If you do have weeds, you'll want to pull those out right away, and put down a pre emergent weed chemical, like Preen or Snapshot.

"Between manual weeding, mulching and the pre-emergent, you can keep the landscaping looking really sharp throughout the year," says Riske.

And don't just think it's a one-and-done process. Riske suggests fertilizing your lawn four to six times per season. And make sure it's mowed once a week or risk losing your hard work.

"It can happen but it'll take patience to get it back," says Riske. "It's almost like a massage, it takes three to four weeks to get it back after its knee high grass."

Everything Riske recommends can be done on your own with supplies and tools you can get from any lawn care store.

So get to work on those yards now, and your wallet will thank you later this summer.

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