There are a few things you should ask a weed service company before hiring to ensure you’re choosing the best professional for the job:

• How often will you apply herbicides?

• Do you include any spot treatments or manual weed removal in your pricing?

• Do you offer pet-safe and kid-safe herbicides?

• What other lawn services can you provide?

• Do you offer any kind of guarantee for the work performed?

• Are you properly licensed and fully insured?

• Do you have any customer references I could speak with?

Landscape fabric and a few inches of gravel should be enough to put under a deck to prevent weeds from flourishing. If you don’t want to invest the time and money on a project like this, you can regularly spray the area underneath your deck to kill weeds.

There are tools known as “sprinkler donuts” that are specially designed to aid in cutting the grass around your sprinkler heads by protecting them from your mower or weed whacker. You can also use a pair of hand shears to do the job manually if you’re willing to get a little dirty.

Mowing a lawn will, unfortunately, not get rid of clover, and it may even encourage it to flourish. Let your lawn grow to a healthy height of over 3 inches and then set your mower blades no lower than this level. Higher grass will cut out the light that clover loves and discourage it from spreading.