Create the Best Lawn on the Block Local turf expert MARK DEDONDER outlines the practices and procedures for a healthy, beautiful lawn. It’s Time to Create the Best Lawn on the Block This Year As the sun warms up the ground and your lawn begins to return to shades of green, you may be thinking about how to create a lush, weed-free lawn you and your family will happily enjoy throughout the warm spring, summer and fall months. If you want your lawn to look the best on the block, it’s time to put together a game plan to maximize its health and beauty for the entire year. The first thing you have to think about is the overall health of your yard. Is your yard as thick as you would like it to be? Remember, tall fescue does not spread across the lawn. It grows in clumps. So, to fill in thin or damaged areas, you NEED to seed. Do you think you need to seed your lawn? Whether
or not you will be seeding this spring will determine what type of products and techniques will be needed in the early parts of spring. Seeding your lawn? Delay treatments. If you plan on seeding, the key is to make sure you get good seedto-soil contact. The best methods for ensuring seed-to-soil contact is to lightly rake the seed into the loose soil of bare spots or use power tools like a power rake or verticutter, or an aerator for larger areas. In the turf professional world, we will always use one or both of these machines while seeding large areas. For small areas, using a Garden Weasel Cultivator can be useful if you are seeding by hand. If you are going to seed your lawn, you will want to avoid or delay most weed control prod-
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ucts. Crabgrass preventers should not be applied to areas where you want to seed, and dandelion controls should not be applied to seedlings until you have mowed it two times. Give your lawn some aerating love. While aerating can help incorporate your grass seed, it is also exceptionally beneficial to your lawn. The cores the aerator pulls from the soil helps the lawn in many ways. The open channels increase oxygen levels to the root system, increase water absorption and overall loosens hard, compacted soils. Even if you are not seeding, you should consider aerating your yard either in the spring or fall to improve the root system growth of your grass which will ultimately make your lawn more drought-tolerant, disease-resistant and healthier. Remove the weeds, make room for lush grass. The main objective of having a beautiful lawn is to have as few weeds as you possibly can while maximizing the amount of turfgrass throughout your lawn. The first defense against weeds is to make your yard as thick as possible with healthy turfgrass. Throughout the Midwest, you will have the most success using a cool-season type of turfgrass. My favorite grass seed to use is a Tall Fescue/Kentucky Bluegrass blend which contains 97% Tall Fescue and 3% Kentucky Bluegrass. The tall fescue will be
able to tolerate more drought stress over the summer months while the Kentucky Bluegrass will be able to fill in any thin or damaged areas with its underground spreading structures called rhizomes. If you are buying grass seed, I would always recommend buying your seed from a reputable nursery or lawn care business. Most grass seed for sale at big box stores are full of weed seeds, not to mention the fact that the varieties are usually not tested to be the best varieties that are suitable for our climate. Using quality grass seed could make or break the overall success of your lawn. It is critical. You must buy quality seed. The old adage is true, you get what you pay for. Quality, clean seed, that contains varieties that perform well in our climate will cost more, but be worth the results you will see. Fertilizing for growth. Once you have seeded your lawn, apply a starter fertilizer with no crabgrass preventer/pre-emergence herbicide. Pre-emergence herbicides can stunt the growth of your newly planted grass seed. The best time to seed your lawn in the spring would be around mid/late March or whenever temperatures have consistently stopped freezing. The earlier you seed your lawn in the spring, the more you allow your grass to grow and mature as much as it can before the summertime. The more mature your turfgrass and its root system is, the more likely it will be able to survive the