Lawn Care How-To

Early Fall Lawn Care Tips

LAWN SEASON BEGINS IN THE FALL

You’ve probably heard us say this more than once, but it bears repeating: Fall is one of the most important seasons for lawn care! While many homeowners think of fall as the end of the gardening year and begin to neglect their yards, lawn pros see the fall as the beginning of lawn season, and do what they can to improve the lawn and soil quality at this time.

In the fall, especially in the North, lawns have the opportunity to re-build, repair and thicken up after going through the stresses of summer. The lawn attempts to expand its root system at this time, digging in and getting to more of the soil nutrients. It also increases blade growth, making more carbohydrates (food) and some of this food is stored for spring and summer use.

In the fall, conditions are usually more favorable for seeding too. The weather should be cooler and moister, and there will be less weed and disease pressure to contend with.

So without further ado, here are some fall lawn care tips!

Be sure to do an early fall fertilizing. In our lawn service business, we save our heaviest fertilizing of the year for the early fall. This stimulates growth and helps the grass send out tillers and runners to fill in thin spots. It also helps the grass produce the food that it stores to help it through the winter, and which gets it off to a good start in the spring. Our All-In-One for LAWNS is the perfect fertilizer to use for this.

Focus on soil improvement. Clay and soil compaction can prevent your lawn from being healthy even when you are doing everything else right. With a porous, bio-active soil, the grass roots can become fuller and go deeper. When the soil has better structure, the naturally occurring soil nutrients, as well as the nutrients from your fertilizers, become more easily available to the grass and other plants in your yard. Our company uses a liquid soil conditioner called Aerify PLUS to help aerate and bio-activate soils, and to provide some readily available organic matter. (As a matter of disclosure, we developed and sell this product on-line). Other traditional methods of soil improvement we recommend are compost top-dressing, or calcium/lime (if soils test acidic).

Handle any thatch that might have formed over the summer. Thatch is not just old grass clippings sitting on top of the lawn. Real thatch is a tightly matted barrier that could not be raked off without tearing up the lawn. Read more about thatch in our recent post.

Over-seed your lawn. The early fall is the absolute best possible time to seed your lawn if you live in the north. There are many reasons to over-seed your lawn. Aside from thickening it up, you can introduce newer, more heat-, insect-, and disease-tolerant grass types. Get new grass seed established in the early fall and it will thicken further in the spring. You can seed any bare or thin areas now and up till early October.

If your lawn does not have a thatch barrier, a simple over-seed can be done this way: spread seed over the existing grass and water heavily to work the seed down to the soil. Then keep the soil damp for a few weeks. A lot of this seed will take hold, especially if you spray Aerify PLUS right after seeding.

Practice seasonally appropriate mowing. Keep the grass fairly high into the early fall (unless your lawn is mostly bentgrass, which needs to be cut shorter). This will help the grass root deeper, thicken up, and build up food reserves. Don’t start mowing short just because the weather turns cooler. Lawn season is not over yet!

When the lawn’s growth begins to slow down, that is your signal to begin mowing shorter. Gradually lower the mowing height so it is 1 ½ inch high or less before winter. Bentgrass lawns can be cut even shorter.

Last but not least: be sure to keep the leaves from matting up on the lawn! Too many leaves left on the lawn can cause the grass the die back or rot, so make sure you rake up leaves if they tend to form a thick layer over your lawn. Leaves make for excellent compost though, so if you don’t feel like bagging, try dumping them around your shrubs and trees, or in your gardens beds.

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How To Handle Thatch

Here you can see the matted thatch layer blocking the grass roots from getting into the soil

What is Thatch?

Most homeowners and many lawn “professionals” don’t really understand what thatch is. They think it is the clippings that are just sitting on top of the soil, slowly decomposing–but that is not thatch at all. Real thatch is a tightly matted layer of stems, roots, and fibrous material sitting on top of, and preventing your grass from rooting into, the soil. Poorly established sod lawns can turn to thatch very easily, but all grass types can develop thatch when cared for improperly.

Thatch is a disaster waiting to happen! If you have a thatch layer it is critical that you handle it as soon as possible, otherwise you will have a very shallow-rooted lawn that is growing into the thatch layer more so than the soil. Summer and winter damage is almost inevitable. And the thatch layer will be a haven for insects and disease.

Eliminating Thatch

Now that we are in the middle of summer, the problems that come about from thatch conditions are really beginning to show. The matted thatch, where most roots are, will dry out a lot faster than the soil below, causing grass to go dormant quickly. And if watered to lightly, it will hold water like a sponge on top of the soil, which promotes diseases and keeps the roots in the thatch layer.

Despite what you may have heard, you cannot eliminate true thatch by raking or other mechanical means. When you try to handle thatch this way, you simply end up tearing out the lawn. The best solution is to get it to decompose at ground-level naturally, through the action of beneficial thatch-digesting soil microbes.

An easy way to get this thatch-digesting activity going is by applying the enzymes and microbes contained in our Biological Dethatcher. In summer, when soils are warm, decomposition of thatch with this product will occur faster. Each application should reduce it by up to 3/8 inch. If you are using our All-In-One for LAWNS you are putting on a small amount of dethatching microbes with each application. This is enough to prevent thatch and will slowly get existing thatch to decompose, but it is not enough to handle a bad thatch situation quickly.

If you are unsure about whether you have thatch, just click on the link to our Biological Dethatcher page and you will find all the information you need to see if thatch is an issue on your lawn.

How to Water Your Lawn

Abundant, deep roots is one sign of a healthy lawn. But did you know that the way you water your lawn can have a very significant influence on the depth and density of the roots?

The most common mistake homeowners make when watering the grass is that they water often, but not very deeply. The result of this is that the roots stay near the surface where the water is, instead of going down deep into the soil. The grass becomes dependent on the frequent watering and if you don’t keep up with it, the roots dry out very quickly in the summer heat and drought.

The next most common mistake is watering the lawn deeply, but too often. When the ground is constantly saturated the waterlogged condition will cause thinning and stunting of roots, and rotting in the worst case. During a wet season with a lot of heavy rains, lawns can suffer like this, and the grass becomes weak and off-color, and often ridden with disease.

So how do you water your lawn? For deep and thick roots, you should water the lawn deeply, but infrequently. In heavier clay soils this could be perhaps once a week in the summer. Sandy soils can need twice a week watering.

If you’re looking for a way to help manage clay or sandy soils, check out our Aerify PLUS and our Nature’s Magic.

How To Kill Moss With Liquid Iron

A few weeks ago we wrote about what conditions cause moss to grow on your lawn. Usually the best way to get rid of moss is to dig it up and re-seed. But did you know you can use our Liquid Iron to kill moss, too?

High concentrations of iron are toxic to moss and weeds, and can kill them without the use of toxic chemicals. Be careful when you apply, however–getting the higher concentration of iron on your lawn can harm the grass, too.

Mix the liquid iron at 2 oz per quart of water, 8 oz per gallon. Using a pump or trigger sprayer, wet the moss well with the iron solution, being careful to avoid spraying the grass. Test a small area first–the moss should turn blackish brown within 24 hours. If it doesn’t, increase strength to 9 oz Liquid Iron per gallon. Grass may turn brown if over applied but it should recover.

Bonus: whatever Liquid Iron you have left over can be applied at the regular rate later in the season when you want to green up your lawn without encouraging more growth!

Working with wet, clay soil

It has been a cool, wet spring in our neck of the woods, and we are eager to get the plants in the garden. But after digging around a bit, some of the beds were not ready for planting–they were too wet and sticky. You can’t just go by the calendar when it comes to planting flowers or veggies, especially where soils tend to be compacted or clay-like. You need to see if the soil is ready to be worked, or you can end up with a mess.

Here is a link to one of our favorite articles, which tells you how to avoid “premature cultivation .”

Easy, Natural Weed Reduction

Finally, one of the ways to reduce weeds is to crowd them out, or prevent sprouting with a thicker, taller lawn. Heavier fertilizing in the mid-spring and early summer with All In One for LAWNS or most other fertilizers, will encourage grass growth. Of course, this means you’ll also have to mow more, too. But regular, high mowing is the best way to keep your grass thick, healthy, and unfriendly to weeds!

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Have a great weekend!

All About Moss

Moss is a plant that can grow in conditions that other plants, including grasses, can’t endure. It is not a very aggressive or competitive plant, especially when compared to grass. Nature seems to use it more as a filler, for thin or bare soils. So, when you ask the question “Why is there moss in my lawn?“, the simple and correct answer is “ because you have conditions that are making it too hard for your lawn to survive.”

A few facts about moss
Moss spores are in the air and only need moisture to germinate and mature. Once established, moss can be very drought tolerant. Some mosses can survive in full sun, though most prefer shade. Moss can grow on any type of soil because their shallow roots simply hold the moss there without drawing nutrients from the soil. They get some nutrients from water, but mostly they make their own food through photosynthesis.

The biggest myth about moss
Ask most gardeners what can be done about moss and they will tell you that that the soil is too acidic (low pH) and it needs to be sweetened with lime (calcium). This is false! As we said above, moss grows in any type of soil – acidic, alkaline, and sometimes on pure rock. The only reason that lime sometimes helps lawns squeeze out moss is when the soil actually is too acidic for the grass to grow properly and it is thinning out. Adding lime in this case, would raise the pH and improve the health of the grass. So, as you can see, the real cause of the moss here is the poor health of the grass.

Weak Grass/Moss Causing Conditions
Here are the major reasons for moss on lawns:

Too much moisture. Soggy soils, often clay types, drown grass roots but shallow rooted moss can tolerate and thrive in wet soils.
Too much shade. Grass plants needs a fair amount of sunlight for enough photosynthesis to keep them healthy. Shade tolerant varieties can withstand a little less light, but some moss varieties survive in total shade.
Clay soil/compaction. Grasses are tough plants that can grow in fairly heavy clay top soils, especially if the soil is moist. But extreme compaction or denser clays are almost impregnable. Moss has no problem growing on this dense clay.
Drought/ Dry soil. This might sound counter-intuitive, since moss likes moisture, but here is what can happen. When high clay content soils dry out during a drought or normal summer conditions, the loss of moisture causes the soil to actually shrink, which turns it tighter and denser. This can tear and damage grass roots and make it impossible for them to get to the nutrients and water. When the lawn finally begins to receive rain or water, opportunistic moss spores germinate easily, since the grass is not healthy enough to compete. Last summer we experienced a major drought in the North East, and this spring we are finding more moss than ever before.
Tree Roots. Tree roots can cause moss in a couple of ways. 1. The larger roots that grow close to the soil surface do not give the grass enough soil to dig into. Hence, moss develops and grows on top of these roots. 2. When lawns are not watered deeply, the finer and even microscopic feeder roots of the tree can move upwards into the topsoil and compete with the grass for both water and space. This weakens the grass and permits moss to come in. This also can happen around shrubs that border the lawn, especially evergreens.
Poor Mowing/Trimming. Poor mowing, mostly too short, can cause your lawn to change from one grass type to a less desirable type. In cases of very short mowing, or even scalping, no grass can survive. Usually you end up with low growing weeds or moss. The same holds true for those who use their “weed whackers” to trim the edges of the grass close to the ground. The short grass does not allow food production (photosynthesis) and has no chance for survival.
Very Acidic or Very Alkaline Soil. As mentioned above, this is not the major cause of moss on most lawns. In extreme acid or alkaline conditions nutrients will lock up and become unavailable to the grass. This causes unhealthy grass and allows moss to fill in.

If you have any questions about moss, please feel free to drop us a line at info@natureslawn.com!

How Drought Conditions Cause Soil Compaction

If you have been using our products you are probably very aware of the need for good soil aeration and reducing compaction. In the past we have talked about how clay soils can hold too much water and become soggy, swelled, and oxygen deficient. Now let’s talk about what happens when clay soils get too dry.

A few weeks of mid-summer drought does not do much to harm soils, but when the drought goes on for a month or more, things can go really bad. In our area of the country, we’ve had a few months of virtually no rain. Soils have lost much of their moisture far beyond the root zone. As a result, the clay soils have deflated and actually shrunk back. Cracks are appearing in lawns and gardens and soil is pulling away from the foundation walls of many houses. In severe cases, the dryness has shifted enough soil to cause broken water mains that are deep under ground.

Photo courtesy of University of Minnesota

As far as the lawn and garden goes, the dry, shrunken soil has reduced pore (air) space in the root zone. In our area, yards that have not been watered regularly have lost much of the soil aeration that they had in the spring. The tightness around the roots now prevent both water and nutrient absorption. And because the soil has become more compacted, when water is finally applied it penetrates very slowly.

The solution, of course, is to get more water into the soil in the lawns and garden beds. If the soil is rock hard the water will have a hard time penetrating, or could roll right off the high spots or inclines. The easiest way to get the water to move through the soil easily is to treat with Aerify PLUS before watering (or All-In-One for LAWNS if that is all you have).

What we recommend is applying the product to the yard and then watering for a short time, perhaps 15 minutes. Then wait another 15 minutes for the water to penetrate a bit and form some channels the soil. After that, water heavily for at least an hour. If there is any sign of runoff, stop watering and give it time to penetrate.

If you have any comments or questions about your lawn or any of our products, feel free to email us at info@natureslawn.com. We’re always happy to help!

Fall Fertilize and Aerate Your Lawn in One Step

Our All-In-One for Lawns, both original and the Phosphorus Free version, are remarkable products. They not only contain a great lawn fertilizer, but also have some of our Aerify PLUS -Liquid Aeration product in it, along with Biological Dethatcher microbes and beneficial root fungi called Mycorrhizae. This “lawn care kit in a bottle” makes a perfect fertilizer for your early fall fertilizing and can be use for a late fall Winterizer too.

In the North, you should fertilize heavily ASAP if you haven’t already. Then wait until the grass stops growing to do a final winterizer application. You can also use our bio-enhanced Formula 16-4-8 for a winterizer. (For southern lawns that go dormant over the winter, make your fall fertilizer application your last for the year!)

Late fall is a good time to put on other soil amendments. Aside from additional Aerify PLUS for heavy clay soils, here are two other amendments you might want to consider:

NATURE’S MAGIC. This is a great organic addition to your lawn and to your garden beds as well. It provides organic matter, trace elements and numerous other benefits for plant health, deep rooting and stress handling. It helps all soil types, and is vital for sandy soils. It helps buffer poor pH situations and also helps with salt build-up and dog spots.

LIQUID LIME. Lime (Calcium) is a very important plant nutrient as well as a soil amendment in areas of the country where soils tend to be acidic, compacted or claylike. Turf grass grows best with a pH between 6.5 and 6.8, and earthworms also like a pH near neutral. Lime helps improve acidic, low pH soils, improves soil structure, and, since beneficial microbes need calcium to survive, soil bio-activity is enhanced when this product is used. Our Liquid Lime Formula is sugar-chelated, and instantly available.

If you have had a professional soil test taken, or plan to get one, we would be very happy to review the results with you at no charge. Just email or fax them to us at 716-681-7796.

Fall Lawn Care Tips

Lawn care routines change with the weather and the seasons. Here are just a few quick tips to keep in mind as we enter fall.

Gradually start lowering your mowing height once the grass growth starts to slow down or if taller grass is making leaf clean up difficult.
Don’t allow leaves to accumulate in piles that would smother the lawn.
Seed now! Overseeding is a great option this time of year, but be sure not to fertilize again until the new grass has grown enough to be mowed at least once.
Water if needed. Dry conditions in the fall will affect lawn health. You want the grass and other plants to be strong going into the winter. Many people put their hoses away far too early.
MOVE YOUR LIQUID PRODUCTS TO A WARMER PLACE. Most liquid fertilizers and soil amendments need to be stored in temperatures over 40 degrees, so it is time to move your products out of the shed or other unprotected area and put them in a warmer place.
Handle thatch before it’s too late! Getting rid of any thatch conditions you may have now will help your lawn spring back when the snow melts next spring.

That’s it for now!

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