There are a lot of reasons to love artificial turf. One of the biggest reasons is that it requires very little maintenance. However there are some things that you can do to keep your lawn looking great.

1. Rinsing Your Artificial Lawn Isn’t Required for General Maintenance

Should you ever water your lawn? Here are two instances where you don’t need to, and one where it’s a good idea.

Maintenance: Some customers believe that artificial lawns need to be watered to keep it clean. When we first install artificial lawn, we wet down the grass to ensure that the installation, especially the infill, is solid and won’t shift. As long as your grass still looks good, there’s no need to water it down – it won’t hurt, but it won’t really help either. There will be small bits of dirt and dust, you’re outdoors after all, but these will blend into the lawn just as they do on real grass.

Cooling: In the hot summer months, many customers have a habit of spraying their lawns to “keep it cool.” Again, it’s fine to do and won’t hurt anything, but shouldn’t be necessary with our lawns because we use only American-made, high quality turf with cooling technology built right into each blade. While older turf, and even modern-day cheap turf may get hot in the sun, ours won’t. So spray it down if you want to – you just don’t need it. (learn more about our cooling technology).

Spills: So when is rinsing off your lawn a good idea? Say you have a party and end up with a few spilled sugary drinks. Or your dogs get a hold of a rack of ribs and go to town. Just like caring for your indoor floors, these situations are times when rinsing off your lawn is a good idea. Even then, it may not be completely necessary – just like with real grass, eventually those sticky spots will fade away, but it’s probably a good idea to rinse off your lawn.

In summary, rinsing your lawn isn’t required for general maintenance, but it’s a good idea to rinse your lawn if you get it especially dirty – large parties, food fights, and ice cream eating competitions.

2. Brushing or Brooming is Good Every Now and Then

Just like watering, brooming isn’t necessary for regular maintenance with any turf from Paradise Greens. That’s because our turf is built to stand up to the test of time. Different turfs of course will have different resiliency, so be sure to choose a turf that’s appropriate for the level of foot traffic you expect to have – some are more durable than others and will keep their shape better, and these are usually recommended for commercial installs like country clubs, apartments and schools. 

So when should you brush? If you have especially high foot traffic (again, say after a party), or your have lawn furniture on your grass for an extended period of time and need to move it, you may need to brush or broom the spot where your furniture was in order to get it un-matted and looking great again. Brushing is pretty simple and your lawn will stand right back up again. There are a variety of tools you can buy that are good to have on hand if your lawn needs a quick brush. Brooming or brushing every now and then can keep your grass looking great for years to come – the above photo is from an install we did in 2006, and you can see how the brushed area of this putting green looks just like new. 

If you’re a Paradise Greens customer, then you should know that we offer a brooming service for our customers. So if you’re unable to brush your lawn yourself, we’re happy to let our experts take care of you. If you think your lawn needs brooming, then give us a call.

3. Pet Odors and Maintenance

Your dog Max is gorgeous. His bowel movements not so much. What kind of maintenance does your lawn need for pets? We’ve covered proper pet maintenance recently, but it’s worth mentioning since we’re talking about maintenance. Your lawn doesn’t require much maintenance at all – until you add pets to the picture. Fortunately, even then your lawn is pretty low maintenance.

Paradise Greens’ artificial turf is built with an infill that has odor neutralizing properties – it’s also organic and has an 80% absorption rate, so it speeds up the absorption and decomposition of pet urine and poop – unlike crumb rubber and sand, which can hold smells and heat up your lawn. So with our turf all that should be needed is to hose down any remaining fecal matter – the grass is porous and that material will be absorbed and break down naturally. The average nose won’t be able to smell a thing. We’ve installed our turf at doggie daycares before – if a place with 20-30 dogs trusts our turf, you know it can handle pet odors.

However, in some cases – if you have a very acute sense of smell, many animals, or an animal with health issues that has particularly smelly odors, you may need something beyond a hose-down. One of the products we’ve seen work well is WysiWash. It attaches directly to the hose and quickly sanitizes an area with minimal water waste – and it kills Parvo, in case your animal hasn’t had their shots.