30 Days to a Better Lawn in 2013

Step outside and take a good look at your lawn.  Do you see bare spots or patches of undesirable looking grasses and weeds?  Maybe your kids’ activities, your dog’s constant pacing in the same path day after day, or your parking the car on the front lawn has caused the lawn to thin out due to wear and compaction.  Its true that the 19 straight days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees certainly did not help our cool-season lawns either.  The lawns are beat and just looking for some tender care.

Cooler temperatures are just around the corner.  What is left of the lawn will perk up and appreciate the cool nights and shorter, milder days.  Crabgrass will stop germinating by mid to late September.  Thirty days from now life will be great!

What needs to be done in the next 30 days to have a better lawn for next year?  Get ready because this is where you come in.  Check for unwanted grasses.  Patches of Bermuda or dallisgrass are hard to kill and should be sprayed 2-3 times in the starting early September.  Dense sections of crabgrass or bentgrass are fairly easy to kill and could wait until the middle of September to spray.  If you think the lawn looks bad now just wait to see what it looks like in a few weeks!

Here’s the good news. Oct 1-10 is a great time to reseed all those problem areas.  I would strongly recommend scalping down the areas to be reseeded prior to seeding followed by a fall lawn aeration to loosen the soil and encourage better root development.  Areas could then be raked or dethatched mechanically to make a proper seed bed.  Select a quality grass to match your existing lawn and follow suggested seeding directions.  Generally tall fescue and ryegrass go done around 7-10 lbs/1000 sq ft.  Next apply a ¼ inch of clean humus or compost to cover the seed to keep in the warmth and moisture to insure good germination.  Apply a starter fertilizer like 10-20-10 at 10 lbs/1000.  Water 2-3 times a day lightly to keep the mulch and seed moist for the first 7-14 days.

Here is what NOT to do. 1) Nothing.  Your lawn will be no better next year and likely worse. 2). Sprinkle some seed over the bare spots and hope for the best.  This is not much better than option 1. 3). Buy the cheapest seed you can find like annual ryegrass.  This will result in the ugliest lawn on your block.  It never really greens up, it grows very fast and often clumpy, it does not match any grasses in your lawn, and often gets riddled with disease in the winter months.

The window of opportunity is here.  Now get outside and take the actions for a better lawn in 2013!

Are You Seeing Circles?

If you are like me, you may have spent countless hours watching the Olympic coverage the past few weeks, but I am not talking about those circles.  Lawns in the Central Valley have been taking a beating with the 15 plus days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. We have seen spots and circles as a result of the weather conditions favoring various disease and insect activity.

Before one jumps to the conclusion that they must have either a disease or insect problem because they see parts of their lawn turning brown, one must first see if the lawn has sufficient water in the top 4-6 inches to meet the lawn’s water needs.  If a screwdriver can be pushed into the ground 4-6 inches with moderate effort most likely there is sufficient water in the root zone.  Dry soils will only allow the screwdriver to go in 2 inches or less in non-sandy soils.

Next, one looks for patterns to the brown areas.  Are they circular spots or rings or angular?  Do the leaves have spots or lesions or are they chewed off shorter than the mower could possibly cut (possible cutworms or webworms)?

Lawn diseases are typically circular in their pattern.  Three distinct fungal pests thrive in the summer heat on tall fescue, rye, and bluegrass lawns.  Pythium is a water mold that can quickly cause small to large brown blotches in the lawn and is associated here with excessive watering in most cases.  It is not the number one problem, but it is relatively easy to reduce its damage by reducing the amount of water applied and not mowing the lawn when it is wet and or boggy.  Rhizoctonia brown patch will form small to large patches of browning turf due to the numerous tan lesions that damage the blades.  It thrives in sunny locations with poor air movement and often increases with evening watering.  Faint to distinct yellow-brown circles with green centers in the lawn ranging from 1 to 12 feet in diameter usually signals southern blight.  One can usually note little seed-like sclerotia along the outside edge in the thatch to confirm the identification. By mid September these will likely all be subsiding as the evenings start to cool off.

Cultural practices like watering deeply 3-4 times a week and avoiding irrigation in the evening may reduce disease incidence.  Preventive fungicides are available that provide up to 30 days control and are a great option for the months of June, July, and August.  Like people, the cool-season grasses enjoy the 65-80 degree weather and cool nights, but unfortunately we have no control on that.  

Relief is coming soon!

A Few Thoughts on Water Conservation

I do not claim to be fount of all knowledge on irrigation, but I can recommend a few things one can do to be more efficient in the use of their irrigation water in the landscape.  I love lawns and so I am not inclined to always jump at the idea of removing turf from the family landscape.  Actually, I would be looking for ways to keep my lawn and landscape healthy with the proper amount of water at the proper interval to encourage deep irrigation and deep healthy roots.

Three areas come to mind and one of them is planting the correct plant material for the right soil, exposure, climate, etc.  Beyond that, I think one would be very wise to look into “smart clocks” (irrigation controllers) and more precision delivery from the newer emitters.  You can make your controllers “smarter” with these new clocks that take into account the soil texture, zip code, daily temperature, rainfall, slope, plant material and so on.  The addition of a local mini weather station, or internet-based weather input, will allow the amount of time needed to run each valve to be adjusted up or down during each cycle.  This will go a long way to increase efficiency over the common method of turning the clock on in March and turning it off in late October with no regard as to the actual needs of the plants.

Finally, there is the choice of irrigation emitters themselves.  There are nozzles like the “MP Rotators” and “PrecisionSeries Nozzles” that are much more efficient in both their uniformity of coverage and the rate of delivery.  With a larger droplet size and slower rate of delivery one can greatly increase the uniformity and significantly reduce the chance of runoff.  

Check with your local irrigation supply house and see what advances have been made in the past few years.  They will pay for themselves in your water bill, your plant’s health, and conserve water.  It’s the smart thing to do.