Preparing Your Grass for the Upcoming Months

Hi again everyone!

 Good to see you back again. Here it is September already, and we have a couple of busy months coming up. This month is the time to either get ready to do your seeding (with the cool season grasses) or to get ready to apply pre-emergent to your warm season turf. 

If you have a cool season lawn and you have some weeds in it, wait until we have finished the over-seeding process to work on them. We do not want any residual herbicides in the soil to slow down our seeding efforts. 

What you will need is the Fescue seed, which you can buy just about everywhere, some starter fertilizer, and the mental aptitude to water it once the work is done. I may have left out the aeration part where the hard work comes into play. But take heart, it is only once a year and it won't kill you, I promise!

This work should be done about the middle of this month.The leaves will be coming down in October fairly hard, and we want the new seedlings up if possible prior to that occurring.

You will need to either rent or have access to an aerator that will actually put a hole in the soil, not a slit or a little ding. The aeration will also need to have moisture present when it is done or you won't have good results. You need to do it after it has rained or you have thoroughly watered the lawn and there is good penetration with the aerator. Can't do that, don't do it at all. 

The fertilizer you will be using should be something like an 18-24-12 (a basic 3-4-2 mix is what we are looking for) so the seedlings will have a good booster (the 24-phosphorous) to really get it off and growing strong. 

On buying the seed: When you are looking at the seed buy a turf-type fescue that has as small of an amount of weed seed in the bag as you can find. Believe me, those little buggers will come up before your fescue does and will compete with the grass. So do some research prior to buying the seed please. 

If you are just doing a general over seeding, you will need about 5 lbs. of seed per 1,000 square feet. If it is more serious, you can go all the way up to 10 lbs. per 1,000 if you are talking about bare dirt or very serious renovation.

The best way to aerate is to go back and forth and once completely done then go diagonally. Just remember the more holes the better. After the aeration is completed, then put the seed down next. Once seed is down, you can apply the fertilizer. If you have a need or want to apply lime, do it right on top of the seed and fertilizer. 

No matter who tells you different, DO NOT PUT STRAW ON TOP OF THE SEEDING WORK! You will hear all kinds of stories about this, but trust me, no straw.

Now comes the extremely critical part—WATERING. You should water lightly on a daily basis until the seed germinates. In warmer weather this could be as short as seven days. But the watering is critical. Do not skip this! You only have to water enough to keep the soil moist. Do not let it run as it will take the seed with it. 

Once germination has taken place you can go to watering a little less often. That would be like 15 minutes per setting every two to three days. Stay off the lawn as much as possible. Almost anything will pull those little seedlings out of the ground as they are just barely attached.

The lawn should not be mowed again until the new seedlings are tall enough to cut, NOT THE OLDER GRASS! After the first mowing you should be in great shape. Also, don't use anything but a blower to get leaves off the turf. Raking will pull young seedlings up and you don't want that.

Getting on to the warm season turf now. Your Bermuda and Zoysia will need an application of pre-emergent applied in mid-month. This should be (as you already know) an application of Barricade.

I can't say for certain, but the formulation should be no real fertilizer and a mixture something like 0-0-7 with Barricade. That will protect the turf from being overrun with Poa Annua, which is commonly known as annual bluegrass. If you have began seeing any weeds, you can spray for those now as well.

That about covers it for now. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email and I will do my best to answer them for you. You can also visit my blog here. Have a great September! 

Chuck