The Lowdown On Lawns

If you are reading this week’s column in the hope that I’m going to tell you how to create and maintain a lush, green lawn that’s free of weeds, diseases and insects, then you can stop reading here.

On the other hand, if your lawn looks awful or if you want to rebuild it or if you’ve got a new home that will soon need a lawn, then I may have some help to offer.First, test your lawn soil for its pH. I’ve covered the importance of your soil pH many times over the years and you can easily do your own research, but it certainly hit home last spring when I tested my own lawn only to find that the pH was so off. As a result, I was wasting just about every ounce of fertilizer I was putting down.

It’s a simple test that you can do with an inexpensive kit. Yes, I was dubious about these kits, such as the Rapitest Soil Check, which costs under 5 bucks, so after running four samples on my own lawn I coded the results and did the tests a second time. The results were exactly the same—and not good. I could have been cynical and written off the double blind test as just being a cheap test—that was wrong twice.

Instead, I began adding limestone to correct the problem.

But my lawn, like yours, presumably needs other intervention. Bare spots need to be patched or they will quickly become weed-ridden. Some larger areas may need renovation, and in the worse cases an entire lawn may need to be totally redone. Here are some suggestions.

Know your grass seed. There are fescues, ryes and bluegrasses, and these are the three primary grass seeds that we use. There are any number of blends, with probably 20 or 30 at local garden centers, hardware stores and home centers, and some are clearly better than others. This is not a place to skimp. Find a quality blend and stick with it. Several local garden centers have their own house blends that they have made up based on their research and years of experience. You can also do your own research, and some garden centers will make a blend based on your choices. What you need to know is how many pounds of this blend you should be using for every 100 or 1,000 square feet and what the new seeding rate is as well as the overseeding (maintenance) rate is.

If you want to get more technical, you can find grass types—and their seeds—that are recent introductions and may require less mowing, less water and less fertilizer. They do exist. But so do the hucksters online, on TV and in magazines, that will claim that they have a special mix or new scientific blend that is simply a miracle. Simply not. And you’ll read about zoysia grass that only needs to be planted once and will result in a carefree lawn that will last for generations. Kind of. It’s a rough and coarse turf that turns green very late in the spring and browns out very early in the fall. It’s pretty obvious who has the zoysia lawn, and some live to regret it. Once planted it’s pretty tough to get rid of.

One of the more recent advances in lawn grasses is the introduction of endophytic types of turf. Many varieties of fescues and rye grasses are enhanced with an endophytic fungus that can promote better disease resistance and insect resistance. You can read more about this at http://tinyurl.com/je2o8jl, but keep in mind that Kentucky bluegrasses are not endophytic but should still be part of your seed blend.

Also keep in mind that no amount of patching, overseeding or renovation is going to cure a pre-existing disease, insect or weed problem. Get these issues under control at the appropriate time with the method of your choice, but don’t ignore them or they’ll simply return year after year.

For smaller areas less than 100 square feet you can buy “patching” kits that contain grass seed, starter fertilizer and a binder or seed mulch that absorbs water and helps the seed to germinate. All you need to do is a little prep—raking and maybe a light dressing of compost or topsoil—sprinkle down the patch mix, water and wait. Check out what types of seeds are in the mix, and if you don’t like what you see you can easily create your own patch mix.

For larger areas you may want to do a renovation. This can involve power raking or even tilling the soil to create a new seed bed for your grass seeds. Many of us would rather have our gardeners or landscapers do a job like this, but if that’s the route you take it’s still incumbent on you to specify the seed blend that will be used and at what rate it’s applied. You may hire someone to do the work, but it’s still your job to make sure that it’s done right.

Never let anyone apply a “builder’s mix” as a lawn seed. These are generally a cheap, fast-germinating type of seed blend that will perform well until you pay the bill, then it’s downhill. Key words … don’t skimp.

Machines can be used to do much of the prep work, from soil prep to planting the seed, and this is fine as long as there’s little compaction of the final seed bed. You may also choose a commercial method of seeding known as hydro seeding. In this process a slurry of seed, binder and or mulch and a light starter fertilizer is sprayed down, creating an even and uniform covering that will result in less compaction. But here again, you need to have control over what seed blend is used.

Once the seed and mulch is down it’s your job to make sure that watering takes place. The seed bed will need to be kept moist—not dripping wet—for two to three weeks until germination is complete. The first mowing should be high once the grass is 2 to 3 inches tall. No fertilizer should be added other than that added to the seed bed at planting, and that will be a special fertilizer for seeding.

Lastly there’s sod. It’s expensive but trust me, in the long run a sod lawn will always look and last longer than most seeded lawns. That is, if you use the right sod. You can now buy sod blends which include several varieties of different grasses, whereas years ago you could only buy bluegrass sod. For small areas you can do your own sodding by buying sod squares or rolls at local garden centers, and for larger areas let a pro do the work.

Lots to think about and plenty of decisions, but now’s the time to make them—NOT in the spring. Lawn work should be a late summer/early fall project. Still have questions? Please feel free to ask. But no, I won’t come over and give you advice, or a hand. Sorry. But keep growing.