Lawn Care Questions, Answered Straight
Pricing & hiring us
Our mowing starts at $40 per cut. That is a starting price, not a flat rate. What you actually pay depends on how big the lawn is, how much trimming and edging the property needs, whether there is gate access for equipment, and how overgrown it is on the first visit.
A standard Carrollton or Farmers Branch lot on a regular schedule sits close to the starting price. Large lots, corner lots and acreage cost more. We give you the exact number after seeing the property, and it does not change week to week after that.
Take the per-cut price and multiply by four or five cuts a month during the growing season. Starting at $40 a cut, that is roughly $160 to $200 a month for a standard lot on weekly service. Every-other-week service in spring and fall cuts that about in half.
Add-ons like fertilizer, weed control and mulch are priced separately rather than rolled into a monthly package, so you are never paying for something your lawn does not need that month.
No. No annual contract, no cancellation fee. You stay on a recurring schedule as long as you want the service and can pause or stop any time. Most customers stay because the same person keeps showing up, not because they signed something.
Ask four things: who actually does the work, the owner or a rotating crew? Is there a contract, or can you cancel? Is the quote given after walking the property, or over the phone before anyone has seen it? And do they carry insurance?
Then ask what they will not do. A company that says yes to every service, including ones your lawn does not need, is selling rather than diagnosing.
It is not expected and nobody should feel obligated. A tip after a big cleanup or at the end of the season is appreciated, but honestly the most valuable thing you can do for a small lawn service is leave a Google review and mention us to a neighbor. That is worth more than a tip.
Mowing
Weekly from about late April through September, every other week in March, April, October and November. Bermuda in May and June grows fast enough to want cutting every five to seven days.
The rule that matters more than the calendar: never take off more than a third of the blade in one cut. Letting it get away from you and then scalping it back does more damage than the extra week of growth.
St. Augustine goes much taller than most people cut it. Mowing it at Bermuda height is one of the fastest ways to lose a shaded lawn in a Texas summer, because tall grass shades its own root zone and holds moisture. More on picking the right grass in our guide to Bermuda vs St. Augustine vs Zoysia.
Usually early to mid March in North Texas, once the grass has broken dormancy and is actively growing. The first cut of the year is often a low cleanup cut that clears dead top growth and lets sunlight reach the soil. From there it is every other week until growth picks up in late April.
Warm-season grasses slow sharply through October and go dormant after the first hard freeze, typically mid to late November in DFW. Mowing generally stops in late November, though leaf removal runs into December and January.
Mulch them most of the time. Clippings break down fast and return nitrogen to the soil, which is free fertilizer. Bag them when the lawn is badly overgrown and clippings would fall in clumps heavy enough to smother the grass, or when a fungal disease is active and you do not want to spread it around.
Late February through mid March, before green-up gets going. Scalping means cutting low and bagging to strip dead top growth so sunlight warms the soil and the lawn greens up evenly. Too early exposes the lawn to a late freeze; after green-up it sets the grass back.
Watering
About one inch of water a week, up to an inch and a half during a July or August heat run. Deliver it in two deep soakings rather than a little every day. Deep watering drives roots down into our Blackland Prairie clay; shallow daily watering keeps them at the surface, which is exactly where the soil bakes dry first.
Most DFW cities cap outdoor watering at two days a week, and Coppell has held Stage 1 restrictions, so two deep sessions is both best practice and what the rules allow.
Early morning, roughly 4 to 9 AM. Wind is low so more water reaches the soil instead of evaporating, and blades dry as the sun comes up. Watering in the evening leaves grass wet overnight, which invites brown patch and other fungal problems, especially in St. Augustine.
Brown spots & dying grass
In a North Texas summer the usual suspects are drought stress, shallow watering, mowing too short, or a specific problem like chinch bugs or take-all root rot in St. Augustine.
Here is the quick test: pull on a brown patch. If it lifts away with no roots holding it down, you are looking at insects or disease, not thirst. That distinction matters, because the instinct is to water harder, and watering harder makes both of those worse.
The shape and location of a patch usually tells you the cause:
- Under trees — almost always too little sun for Bermuda.
- Irregular spreading patches in St. Augustine — chinch bugs or fungus.
- Straight lines or rectangles — irrigation coverage gaps or fertilizer burn.
- Worn strips — foot or pet traffic.
Reading the pattern first matters, because reseeding a spot with the wrong species just fails again next summer.
Fix the cause, then the grass. Loosen and level the soil, then either let a spreading grass fill in on its own or patch with matching sod. Bermuda repairs itself fast because it spreads by both surface stolons and underground rhizomes. St. Augustine and Zoysia are slower and usually want sod patches.
If the spot is bare because of shade or traffic, putting the same grass back will only fail again.
Weeds
Crabgrass is an annual, so the real answer is prevention. A pre-emergent in late February or early March stops the seed from ever germinating. Once it is up and visible in July, you are down to spot treatment with a post-emergent labeled for your grass type, or pulling it.
The long-term defense is a dense lawn mowed at the right height. Crabgrass needs bare soil and direct sun to establish, so thick turf shuts it out.
Nutsedge is a sedge, not a grass, which is why normal broadleaf weed killers do nothing to it and pulling it makes things worse — the underground tubers stay behind and sprout again. It takes a herbicide specifically labeled for sedge, usually more than one application.
Nutsedge is also a signal. It thrives in chronically wet soil, so overwatering or a drainage problem is often the actual cause worth fixing.
Timing beats product. Pre-emergent in late February stops summer annuals like crabgrass; a second round in early fall stops winter weeds like poa annua. Post-emergent handles what is already growing, matched to both the weed and your grass, since some products damage St. Augustine.
Past the chemicals, thick grass cut at the right height crowds out most weeds by itself. See our weed control service for how we schedule it.
Priced per property, based on square footage and how heavy the weed pressure is, and usually sold as timed applications through the year rather than one spray. A single rescue treatment on a badly infested lawn costs more than a maintenance application on a lawn already in good shape. We quote it after walking the property.
Fertilizer & timing
Three or four applications, timed to the grass rather than the calendar. First in April, after the lawn has fully greened up — never on dormant grass. Again in June. A third in late August or early September. An optional late-fall round supports root development going into winter.
Fertilizing too early in spring is a common mistake here: it feeds the weeds before the grass is awake enough to use it. Details on our fertilizer program.
Late February to early March for summer weeds, before soil temperatures hit about 55 degrees and crabgrass germinates. Then again in early to mid September for winter weeds. Pre-emergent only prevents germination, so putting it down after weeds are visible does nothing about what is already up.
Aeration
No, we do not offer aeration, and we would rather tell you why than quietly leave it off the list.
On most North Texas home lawns it gets sold a lot more often than it is needed. Our Blackland Prairie clay does compact, but core aeration on a healthy lawn rarely produces a difference the homeowner can actually see, and it opens the soil surface to weed seed in the process.
If a yard is genuinely compacted — construction traffic, vehicles parked on it, heavy use — we will say so. But nearly every struggling lawn we get called out to look at has a mowing height, watering depth or fertilizer timing problem instead, and those are free to fix.
For most established North Texas lawns, no. Aeration helps genuinely compacted soil, new construction where equipment ran over the yard, and lawns with heavy thatch buildup. It does not fix drought stress, shade, insects, disease, or grass being mowed too short — which between them account for the large majority of struggling lawns here.
If someone recommends annual aeration without walking your yard first, it is fair to ask what specifically they found that calls for it.
Sod & new lawns
Heavy and frequent at first, then taper off as roots take hold:
New sod has no root system, so it cannot pull moisture from below. It can dry out, shrink and pull apart in a single hot North Texas afternoon.
Roots start knitting into the soil within about two weeks, and sod is usually established enough to mow at two to three weeks. Full establishment takes roughly six weeks in the growing season.
The test is simple: lift a corner. If it resists, it has rooted. Stay off it as much as you can for the first two weeks.
Bermuda is the least expensive per square foot, St. Augustine sits in the middle, and Zoysia is the most expensive, with fine-bladed Zoysias at the top end.
Installed cost is driven less by species than by the property: total square footage, whether a truck and pallet jack can reach the area, how much dead turf has to come out, and whether grading or topsoil is needed. That is why we quote sod installation per property instead of posting a square-foot rate that would be wrong for half the yards we see.
Yes, but it is the hardest time to do it. Sod laid in July or August roots fine if it is watered aggressively, and any lapse in the first two weeks will kill it. Late April through June is the better window, because the sod roots before peak heat. Late fall is the worst, since sod laid then will not root before dormancy and usually means paying twice.
Trees & shrubs
Late winter, roughly January and February, while trees are dormant. Cuts heal quickly once growth resumes and the branch structure is easy to read without leaves.
One important exception: prune oaks in winter, never February through June. Oak wilt spreads through fresh cuts during that window, and it kills mature trees. Broken or hazardous limbs come off whenever they appear, season aside.
February into early March, before new growth starts. But how matters more than when. Cutting the trunks back to stubs every year, what people call crepe murder, produces weak whip-like growth and permanently ruins the natural shape.
Proper pruning takes out suckers at the base, crossing branches and old seed heads, and leaves the trunk structure alone.
Priced per job. The drivers are size and number of trees, how close they sit to the house or power lines, how much has to be climbed rather than reached from the ground, and how much debris gets hauled off. Trimming small ornamentals and clearing low limbs is a different job from taking weight off a mature oak.
We handle trimming and shaping. We do not take on large removals or anything needing power line clearance work.
Mulch, leaves & cleanup
Measure the bed in square feet, then pick a depth. One cubic yard covers:
So a 200 square foot bed at three inches takes about two cubic yards, which is 27 bags at two cubic feet each. Two to three inches is right for most North Texas beds. Never pile mulch against a tree trunk.
Material cost depends on type — hardwood and native cedar at the lower end, dyed and premium mulches higher. Installed cost adds bed prep, edging, hauling and spreading, and scales with total bed square footage and how easy the beds are to reach. Buying bulk by the yard beats bags on price once a job covers more than a couple of beds. See mulch installation.
Priced per visit, based on lot size, how heavy the drop is and how many mature trees you have. One big cleanup after full drop costs more than staying on a schedule through the season, because volume is the main driver. Properties with large oaks or pecans in Carrollton and Farmers Branch usually need two or three passes rather than one.
Quoted per property, because cleanups vary more than anything else we do. A spring tidy-up on a maintained lawn is a small job. A yard nobody has touched in six months, with overgrown grass, storm debris and beds full of weeds, is a much bigger one. Debris volume to haul off is usually the biggest factor. We walk it and give you a firm number before starting.
The widest range of anything we do, because it covers refreshing a couple of beds all the way up to regrading, new sod, planting and edging across a whole property. Quoted per project once we understand what you want and have seen the site. Phasing work across a couple of seasons is common and often what makes a bigger project affordable.