The lure of the perfect lawn

With summer in full swing, odds are you’ll visit a ball field soon. Between the action on the field—and to distract me from the highway robbery that is a $6.75 Yankee Stadium hotdog—I’m busy checking out the turf. If you’ve got a lawn tractor, you can get the famous striping or checkerboard pattern seen on pro ball fields a special attachment.

John Deere’s EZtrack Grass Groomer kits, from $100-120, fit just behind the mower blades to groom the grass. Basically, the bristles push the blades of grass forward as you pass over them in a 42-62-inch wide band. So now you can have the basic striping pattern or a more complex checkerboard pattern after some practice.

Though televised sports hasn’t always been kind to lawns. Talk to an agronomist and they’ll probably tell you the first impulse most folks have after seeing a freshly mowed putting green or football field is to cut their own grass shorter. Scalping the lawn promotes weed growth and hacking off any more than 1/3 of the grass blade will ultimately deliver an unhealthy looking lawn. To keep your lawn looking it’s best, you’ll need to fertilize, and in this video TOH landscape contractor Roger Cook shows you the finer points of feeding your lawn with both drop and broadcast spreaders.