Winter Weeds Have Arrived!

I am into weeds. I will apologize upfront.  We are still facing very warm and sometimes hot days, but I have noticed the appearance of several winter annual weeds starting to emerge in lawns and flower beds.  I have seen a lot of sowthistle, prickly lettuce, and Poa annua popping up the past few weeks which are indicators that our days are getting shorter and nights are getting cooler.  That’s just fine for me as I am more than ready for a cool down.

Cudweed

If you are like me, you will not want these weeds getting a foot hold in your landscape.  What can you do?  First off, I would be sure to remove or spray emergent weeds and not let them flower which will result in the further spread of the unwanted pests.  If they already are seeding, please carefully pull or dig these out and dispose of them in your green waste can.

The next step would include applying a pre emergent herbicide to both the lawn and flower beds while they are nearly weed-free and allowing the irrigation water to activate them into the top inch or so of soil.  Most of the common pre emergent herbicides (Amaze, Preen, Surflan, Halts, Dimension, and Barricade) are root inhibitors thereby stopping the weeds from developing a healthy root system while allowing existing plants to continue growing with minimal root suppression.  The above list controls a large list of grassy and broadleaf weeds, but often week on the thistle and composite families.  Commercial products often combine other pre emergent products to improve the weed control spectrum and pick up some of the more difficult weeds missed.  This includes some rather pricey products like Gallery, Snapshot, and Freehand.  Ideally, pre emergent products need to go down mid-September into October to prevent the weeds from successfully emerging this winter. Complete weed control is rarely achieved.

Another approach includes the addition of mulch.  Mulch can potentially add aesthetic value, reduce water loss, and reduce weed pressure.  Pulling weeds is often much easier with a good mulch layer.  Generally, mulch layers less than 2 inches deep are not very effective for weed control reduction. In order to maintain a 2-4 inch mulch layer, one needs to repeatedly add more mulch every few years as it breaks down over time.

Before you know it, we will be talking about crabgrass prevention and other foes like spurge, nutsedge, and green kyllinga.  Meanwhile, now is the time to plan for the coming onslaught of winter weeds in your landscape.  Good luck!

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.

Key Crabgrass Tool Absent from Store Shelves

You may be looking for an effective way to get rid of crabgrass from your lawn.  Many products prior to 2012 contain MSMA in products like Weed Hoe, or Trimec Plus.  Well, you won’t find it on the nursery or garden center shelves now and probably never again.  As a professional lawn care operator, we have until the end of 2013 to use MSMA and then we must find other alternatives. There are several products for homeowners now on the market for post-control of crabgrass and they all contain Quinclorac (“Drive”). I have not had success at all in the Central Valley of California getting any significant control using this. Maybe you will be lucky and make it work, but my guess is that it will not, and you will be out the time and money you have invested. 

What are your alternatives?  1) Cutting it out. 2) Ignoring it and letting the frost take it out in November. 3) Hiring a lawn care company that still has some on hand to selectively remove the crabgrass.

What is the future of crabgrass control?  There are some products in development and a few that could be useful in certain cases.  There is a product called Tenacity that has some decent post emergent control on crabgrass, but it will only be recommended for cool season turf, as bermuda will turn temporarily white following application.  There is some hope that the use of Dimension plus MSO at 2 pints/Acre will provide some respectable post emergent control of crabgrass as well as very good preemergent control. 

My hope is that the EPA will be open-minded and see that our industry has no great alternative to MSMA for crabgrass and even more so for dallisgrass control and that MSMA registration for use on turfgrass would be reinstated.  I have heard it suggested that the data supporting a ban on MSMA was flawed, but I can’t say for certain. 

Mushrooms and Toadstools in my Lawn!

You may be curious about the sudden appearance of mushrooms in your lawn over the past two weeks and you may want to know how to get rid of them.  First of all, they are not very likely to cause any damage to the lawn. If you are patient, the warmer, drier, weather is right around the corner and they will be gone as quickly as they came.  If they bother you enough, you could go out in the morning and collect them, place them in a bag and discard them.  This will also reduce the spore levels in your soils from the above ground fruiting bodies that you see.

They are a soil-borne fungi usually feeding on organic matter, compost, or even some old tree roots. They are part of a natural decaying process that peaks in the spring and fall here in the valley when temperatures and moisture favor their growth.  I would recommend regular watering and feeding of the lawn to ensure the lawn’s health and let the decay process continue.  Lawn aeration couldn’t hurt either, to encourage healthy plant roots and more oxygen in the soil.

I personally would not recommend a fungicide due to cost and likely poor results.  I have seen the guy on PBS recommend using dry laundry detergent (without chlorine bleach) to dry out the mushroom bodies.  I have not verified that this works on mushrooms, but we have heard some complaints of injury to the lawn.  I would just learn to tolerate the short term nuisance and only pick them if it makes you feel better knowing that you are doing something at least.

Another Year and the Same Brown Spots

Well summer is right around the corner.  Lawns have looked great the past few months and now that temperatures are rising we see the arrival of the ugly brown spots in our lawns.  Many jump to the conclusion that they have a fungus.  This is not very likely.  Our weather has been awesome for growing things and I do not even consider summer diseases like brown patch, pythium, or southern blight until we hit the mid 90s and night time temperatures stay above 70°F.  Okay, we had 1 day in the 90s, but that is not enough to explain the spots.

I start troubleshooting problem lawns with my soil probe.  I am looking for proper soil moisture levels in the top 4-6 inches first before I start point fingers at diseases or insects.  You can try our screwdriver test yourself.  Take a 6 inch or longer screwdriver that is preferably stout and try pushing it into the ground in both the good and ugly areas.  You will find that water stressed soils will not let you penetrate more than a few inches without excessive effort.  Good areas should allow you to push the blade in 4-6 inches with moderate effort.  If you or the screwdriver disappear into the soil below it just may be a little bit too wet.

That brings me back to the point that you may have a water coverage problem or that you just are not watering enough.  Unless you are moving hoses around the yard, those of us with a sprinkler system generally do not move our sprinkler lines and heads around.  This explains why brown spots show up in the same spots each year.  Check your sprinkler coverage by placing out cups around the yard to monitor the level of irrigation various parts receive.  Clean or replace heads that have poor patterns.  Consider upgrading to a more efficient irrigation head like the  MP Rotators.  Hire a reputable irrigation specialist.

I or one of our technicians would be more than happy to check out your concerns, but start with the screwdriver test and let us know what you found out.  By the way, diseases and insect problems are heading this way starting with grubs in May, followed by lawn diseases in June, July, and August.  I’ll cover those in the next few weeks.