We are frequently asked how many lawn care visits do I need? With so many different lawn care companies out there offering different programs, with different numbers of treatments and visits, you might find it difficult to compare one program to the next.

While a lot of people get really hung up on these numbers as they try to compare one company to another, understanding exactly what’s being performed during those visits is the real key to choosing what’s best for your lawn.

It shouldn’t have to be so difficult to understand what you need—and it honestly doesn’t have to be.

Having a better understanding of how lawn care companies package their services will help you be a more educated consumer. This is important as some lawn care companies in Alexandria, Arlington, and Springfield, VA will take advantage of homeowners who don’t understand what a lawn needs to thrive. We commend you for taking an important step by doing your research.

The Number Game: How Many Lawn Treatments Do I Need?

You should know that there are a lot of games played around visits and treatments. Since lawn care companies know that most homeowners don’t really know how many lawn applications are necessary, they take advantage of this fact to try to make their program seem more enticing than it really is.

Most commonly, in the Northern Virginia area, we find that big franchises will push the least number of lawn care visits on unsuspecting homeowners just to make their package price appear low and get customers in the door. But they know full well that it won’t be enough treatments and that the results will fall short—so they’ll plan to upsell more services later on.

We hear from homeowners who have previously been roped in by these lawn care companies’ enticingly low costs only to realize they were getting taken advantage of with an incomplete program. In fact, we’ve had prospective customers choose other companies over Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape for this very reason—only to come to back to us later and say they felt ripped off by the bait-and-switch lawn care company.

Nobody likes games. They want to understand what they need from the onset.

How Many Lawn Care Visits Are Truly Best?

First and foremost, it’s important to recognize that it’s not just the number of visits that matters but what individual treatments are performed during each visit. The number of visits only really matters if the lawn care company is performing the lawn care treatments that are needed when they are needed.

At Kingstowne, each of our 3 lawn care programs includes the same lawn care options—10 treatments which are performed over 8 visits. It’s important to recognize that visits and treatments are not the same thing as more than one treatment can be performed during the same visit. While the lawn care options remain the same for each program, stepping up from the Squire program to the Knight program adds power-seeding and stepping up to the King program also adds weekly mowing.

We’ll let you in on a little secret—we could actually schedule fewer visits and perform more treatments at each visit in order to reduce our travel time and save the company some money. But we feel strongly in the value of having a technician out to your property regularly.

Our program works out to a professional being on your property every 4 to 6 weeks and the benefit lies in having a trained eye giving a thorough overview each time they’re there. Our technicians often spot problems early on, before they become serious and that’s the biggest benefit in having them visit regularly.

Not every company operates this way, though. For instance, if a company only offers 4-5 visits, that might mean someone is only on your property every two months—and a lot can go wrong during that “in between” time.

How Many Times a Year Should I Fertilize My Lawn?

As we mentioned, the most important aspect of lawn care treatments is that they are performed appropriately, including their timing. The important treatments include a series of professional weed control, lawn insect control, and fertilization treatments.

Of course, we often get a lot of very specific questions about fertilizer, including how many times it should be performed. Fertilizer is a bit tricky to understand. Once again, it’s not so much about the number of visits but about what’s actually performed. The same amount of fertilizer could be put on a lawn in 4, 5, or even 7 visits. What is really about is the rates and formulations delivered over the year.

At Kingstowne, we currently perform 5 fertilization treatments each year. This is a perfect amount in order to be able to put down the fertilizer at the exactly right times and in the right formulations.

Fertilization is a really important aspect of a healthy, thick lawn and your lawn will always need certain amounts of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium throughout the year to thrive. Depriving your lawn of these nutrients will lead to a slow decline in its health.

Making an Informed Decision for Your Lawn

Now that you understand a bit more about lawn care programs and lawn treatments, you can start to narrow down your choices. It’s incredibly helpful to make side-by-side comparisons as you do your research. Take the individual treatments from each company and put them side-by-side with another to compare and contrast what’s included. If you don’t see something on one company’s program, ask them why. Also be sure to ask the other company why it is included. Never assume you do or don’t need a certain service—probe for answers to find out what will work best for your lawn.

As you now know, it’s not so much about how many lawn care visits are made as much as it is about the treatments that are performed (including how many, what they are, and when they’re incorporated during the year). That’s why you want to be sure that your lawn is getting everything that it needs.

By choosing a lawn care company that is transparent with this information and will tell you exactly what you need from the onset, you can feel confident that your lawn is getting everything that it needs to look and perform its best.

Visits and treatments should never be treated as a marketing gimmick. If you want to be certain that your lawn is getting what it needs, then make the wise choice of a company that doesn’t play games with your lawn’s health and your hard-earned money.

If you’d like to feel confident your lawn is getting what it needs to thrive, request your quote, choose from 3 lawn care package options, and relax as you get the royal treatment.