Disadvantages Of Hiring A Professional Lawn Care Company

A healthy lawn can make your home feel like a haven. However, your lawn comes with maintenance duties like pulling weeds, fertilizing, and watering. With so much responsibility, you may wonder if it's best to do it yourself or hire a professional. If you have the time, you may realize that tending to your own lawn is better than putting up with the disadvantages of hiring a professional lawn care company. After all, leaving it in the hands of professionals can expose you to harsh chemicals or restrict your lawn to automatic treatments that don't fit the type of grass and other plants you have.

A lawn company's maintenance schedule may not be ideal for your vegetation, especially when you have diverse lawn plants requiring different fertilization times and methods. The soil type, amount of shade, and cold or warm season grass categorization all affect how much nitrogren your grass needs in its fertilizer. If you're trying to economize, lawn care can become an extra expense you don't need. Those costs can be even higher in peak seasons like fall and spring. According to Angi, you can get a self-powered lawn mower for the one-time fee of $200; compare that to $30 to $80 per professional lawn mowing service visit, or $80 to $380 for fertilization. You can quickly boost your home's curb appeal on a budget by cutting the grass yourself or installing a smart irrigation system. Accordingly, you have several cons to consider if you choose a professional lawn service. Plus, handling your own lawn can provide vast mental and physical advantages like burning calories and a better sense of relaxation.

Weeds can be an annoying and destructive element on any homeowner's lawn. That's why many people use herbicides to help control their growth. However, many of the weed control products used by professional lawn services contain questionable chemicals that are unsafe for constant exposure. These chemicals have also been responsible for contaminated runoff that seeps into wetlands.

Protecting your children and pets that play in these spaces is a major reason to consider switching to organic lawn care. Some chemicals in popular market herbicides have been linked to birth defects and even cancer. Consumer Reports senior scientist Michael Hansen, PhD, told the outlet, "A growing body of research has linked many [pesticides], even at low levels, to potential health problems such as cardiovascular disease." When you rely on a lawn service, you may not have full transparency about the safety of the chemicals they're using. 

At least when you opt to do your own lawn, you know exactly what you're putting on it. You can freely use non-toxic methods like mulching, compost, hand-pulling weeds, and smart irrigation to keep it healthy. Focusing on natural ways to keep your lawn green helps create organic spaces where microorganisms in the soil thrive, and it also keeps friendly pollinators around. 

It's no secret that caring for your vegetation can be pretty labor-intensive work, so you can expect to burn calories. Heavy yard work can help you burn around 400-600 calories per hour. That is why one of the disadvantages of hiring a professional lawn care service is losing out on regular physical activity from the comfort of your property. In addition to the physical benefits of DIY lawn care, there are several mental health pros. According to Psychology Today, being in nature can boost immunity, lower cortisol, and increase vitamin D and mood levels.

So, if you've been putting off going to the gym, you can easily get a full body workout and save on a gym membership fee. Start your mowing workout by using an electric or manual machine. And, as the seasons change, look forward to raking leaves that work your biceps and the quads as you bend over and put them into bags. Plus, you can move your shoulders, hands, and knees for squatting as you dig holes in the soil to plant seeds, while pulling deep weeds can break a sweat as you work your arm muscles. Moreover, you'll enjoy some friendly wildlife like squirrels and birds as you turn the soil, mow the lawn, fertilize plants, and lay down mulch.