Laying down the lawn By ALONZO WESTON
W St. Joseph News-Press
hen the temperatures drop and the leaves begin to turn, it doesn’t mean your lawn care chores are over. It’s quite the opposite according to some lawn care officials. Fall is the time to weed and seed and prepare your yard for winter and next summer. The condition of your lawn determines your priorities, says Craig Hayes, manager at Earl May Nursery and Garden Center. “Probably the big determiner is to decide how much damage you have in the yard or how many weeds you have, whether you need to seed or if you don’t need to seed, maybe you need to still attack and kill weeds,” he says. But for the most part, people usually seed in the fall and kill weeds in the spring, Hayes adds. Fall also is a good time to aerate your lawn. The act of punching holes and extracting plugs of dirt in your yard allows oxygen and water to better reach the roots. You also need to decide whether to use a warm weather grass seed like fescue or cool weather grass seed like blue or rye grass, Mr. Hayes says. “A fescue is a more heat-tolerant grass. It takes heavier traffic, it’s going to root deeper, it’s going to hold up
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better in the summer. Cool-weather grass is going to come out earlier in the spring and hold on later in the fall when it’s cooler,” he says. Hayes says fescue and the other warm-weather grass seeds can be more costly than the cooler-weather types. Cooler-weather grasses don’t require the amount of seeding as warm-weather ones. Fall also is the time to treat your lawn for grub and other pests, according to the Lawn Doctor website. Lawn Doctor experts also suggest fall as the time to winterize your lawnmower. Make sure it’s cleaned and stored properly. Hayes says fall also is the time to add lime and gypsum to your yard. It should be done every three to five years. “The lime helps keep a normal pH balance in the yard, and the gypsum actually helps loosen the clay soil that’s usually in our area,” he says. Finally, you should water the new grass seed to get it started. When the new grass gets high enough, Hayes advises mowing it at least twice. The grass actually becomes stronger by being mowed. “You don’t want to start doing any type of weed control on young grass until it’s been mowed twice,” he says. Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzo.weston@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @SJNPWeston.
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FALL HOME IMPROVEMENT GUIDE | October 2013 19