SPRING LAWN CARE

As we enter springtime in Rochester Hills we are reminded of the usual lawn care routines ahead of us. If you had a lawn care service last year, or keep up with lawn fertilizing on your own, you should enjoy an early spring green up and a nice thick lawn. If, however, your lawn is off-color and thin you might want to start a lawn fertilization program in the early part of the spring.

In general, maintaining good healthy turf through monitoring problem areas in your lawn and proper management of fertility, irrigation, and mowing (yes mowing!) will reduce the potential for disease, insect, and weed problems in your lawn.

If your lawn has many bare spots and entire areas that require renovation and reestablishment, here are some suggestions. First of all, the spring is not the best time to establish grass seed due to the extensive weed competition. However, it is better to get started on the seeding now if it is needed rather than allow weeds to take over your lawn. If you are going to do seeding in the spring it’s also a good idea to apply a “starter” fertilizer to get the new grass seed off to a good start.

Kentucky bluegrass is the highest quality (and highest maintenance) grass used in Rochester Hills. However, turf-type tall fescues are enjoying wider acceptances as a medium maintenance turf species. Ryegrass and fine fescues germinate and establish quickly making them ideal for quick repair of bare spots. Just keep in mind that a patch of fine fescue will stand out if the rest of the lawn is all Kentucky bluegrass. Additionally, many ryegrass varieties and fine fescues contain an endophyte (a fungus that grows inside the plant) that provides some insect resistance and drought tolerance.

After the seed has been sown the most important task is keeping the seed, and new seedlings when they emerge, moist. For more information on watering new seed you can visit: http://www.owenlawncare.com/watering_new_seed.html

CRABGRASS PRE-EMERGENTS

Crabgrass pre-emergent is a component of almost all lawn care programs. The goal of using a crabgrass pre-emergent is to minimize the number of crabgrass plants that will germinate in your lawn.  It’s important to realize that no crabgrass pre-emergent will eliminate crabgrass; however 90 - 95% control is not out of the range of the crabgrass pre-emergent products available today. This does mean, though, that even if you achieve 95% control of crabgrass on a 5000 square foot lawn you could have 250 square feet of crabgrass.

One aspect of crabgrass pre-emergents that many people don’t know about is that crabgrass pre-emergents will also help minimize more than just crabgrass plants. To understand what to expect from crabgrass pre-emergent you need to know what type of weeds it can control.

Annual weeds (like crabgrass) reproduce from seed each year and are therefore controlled by pre-emergent herbicides. Biennial weeds reproduce from seed, but require two seasons to complete their life cycle. Therefore, pre-emergent herbicides will control germinating seeds of biennials, but will not control a vegetative top that established the previous year. As with the other weed types, germinating seeds of perennial weeds are also controlled by pre-emergent herbicides. However, pre-emergent herbicides will not control perennial weeds that have already germinated and are established.

Most crabgrass pre-emergents do not affect growth from vegetative structures such as rhizomes, stolons, fleshy roots, tubers, and bulbs. Pre-emergent herbicides kill plants by direct contact with living root tissue or through root absorption. If absorbed, the pre-emergent disrupts internal plant growth processes which results in seedling death.

Crabgrass pre-emergents today have about an 8 - 9 week effective residual in the soil, which allows for a pretty wide window of application timing in the spring. Given that most crabgrass germination in southeast Michigan occurs in mid-to late May, a crabgrass pre-emergent application anytime in April to mid-May should be pretty effective.

Can you apply crabgrass pre-emergent after crabgrass has germinated? The short answer is - yes. Just because crabgrass, in general, might start germinating in mid-May doesn’t mean all crabgrass plants are going to start germinating on the same day. In fact some crabgrass plants may not germinate until June, or even July. Additionally, there are few crabgrass pre-emergents that are even effective on controlling young, newly germinated crabgrass plants.