Time for a lawn reawakening

It’s been a rare summer for lawns in Wichita: They haven’t gone dormant as usual.

The city of Wichita has had a hard time keeping parks groomed because the grass has kept on growing at a time when the dog days usually would have stopped it.

But there are still brown and bare patches here and there among the green lawns around town. And Scott Wise of the Gard’N-Wise distributor of lawn and garden products thinks that the previous years of drought are even now exacting a toll.

“I think people maybe haven’t put as much time in their yard as they used to,” Wise said this week. He figures they got tired trying to keep the lawn watered during the dry years.

“Walking around my neighborhood, there’s lawns that have been neglected, and it shows.”

But Wise has a rallying cry for planting fescue this fall:

“This is the time to get back in the spirit. Now we’re over that hump. There’s lots of ground moisture, so you’re not even fighting that. You’re not scratching up dust.”

And if you get a fresh start now, you can reap the benefits of fescue that you may not know exist.

“Fescues in particular are pretty drought tolerant by the nature of them,” Wise said, “but a lot of people overwater, and when you overwater, you don’t allow the fescue to develop that root system that they need to get through the drought. It gives the fescue a bad name, because it is really a very hardy grass in times of drought if it’s maintained properly to begin with.”

Gard’N-Wise has shaken up its Premium Fescue Blend grass seed that’s sold at garden centers to add to the latest K-State-tested varieties from the Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance that are known for their drought-tolerance. “We feel like it’s the best of both worlds: varieties that do well in Kansas as well as in times of drought,” Wise said.

If you’d like to wake up your tired lawn, here’s information to help you diagnose what may be wrong with it and to take steps to thicken it up to health this fall – the best time of year to plant and fertilize fescue and treat certain weeds.

Fill in brown, bare spots

Wichita didn’t have any 100-degree days this August. The average temperature was 77 – three degrees below normal – and we received 2.67 inches of rain above the average for the month. During the meteorological summer that ended Monday (the last day of August), we had only five 100-degree days this year.

But if lawns haven’t needed lots of supplemental water and haven’t gone dormant, what’s with all the brown you may be seeing? Some possibilities:

▪ Grub damage. Pull up handfuls of brown turf, and if it comes up like carpet, it’s because grubs have eaten the roots. Put down a grub killer (not preventer) and water it in immediately with 1/4 inch of water to get the poison to the grubbers. It won’t affect overseeding.

▪ Weeds. Areas where crabgrass and other weeds moved in and then died out as part of their life cycle mean bare spots.

▪ Brown patch. Moisture has contributed to the fungus this summer, extension agent Matthew McKernan said, though it is at the end of its life cycle now. It doesn’t require treatment.

▪ Environmental stress. “It’s not been overly hot or dry, but we’re still seeing some,” McKernan said. Grass has plenty of water, and then the rain stops and it needs water. “It’s a fine line.”

Core-aerating the lawn now can help the lawn overall, McKernan said.

“That’ll help alleviate compaction. It helps nutrients and water and air get down into the soil profile and stimulates root growth.” That’s especially important in clay soils or those that otherwise have poor drainage.

Core-aerate when the soil is just moist enough so that it crumbles easily when worked between the fingers. Make as many passes as it takes to space holes 2 to 3 inches apart. Ideally, the holes should be 2.5 to 3 inches deep. The cores will decompose in two or three weeks.

Overseed if necessary and fertilize after core-aerating.

Overseed or start over?

If 75 percent or more of the yard has green grass, you’ll just need to overseed the brown and bare parts. If only half the lawn or less looks good, till the whole thing up and reseed. Seeding should be done by mid-October. Bermuda should have been killed out by now.

You’ll need to prepare the soil in some way so that the seed and soil make solid contact for germination, even if it’s just raking at the soil to roughen it up.

You may need some equipment to do the job – a spreader, a core aerator, a verticutter, a tiller, depending on how you decide to proceed. Rent it if you don’t own it or can’t borrow it.

To start out, mow existing grass to about 1 1/2 inches high. Make sure the soil is moist but not saturated. Apply a lawn starter fertilizer or one without any weed killer. Then follow one of these steps:

▪ If you’re seeding only small areas, toss it down by hand as if you were seasoning a steak. Use a hard-tined rake or hoe to scratch up the soil and settle the seed. There’s no need to remove dead Bermuda or crabgrass.

▪ For larger areas, a slit seeder or verticutter with a seed box slices into the soil and spreads the the seed at the same time. If a verticutter does not have a seed box, use a spreader afterward to put down the seed. Hand-seed small areas you may have missed or that are between the tracks of the verticutter if you don’t overlap your rows slightly.

▪ If you aerate as described above, use a spreader to drop the grass seed and then gently rake it in.

▪ A tiller can be used to work dead vegetation under the soil, which will improve soil texture and water retention. At the same time, you can work in organic matter such as peat moss, compost or dehydrated manure, 6 to 12 inches deep, before seeding. You don’t want to pulverize the soil; 1-inch clods are fine. Rake the soil before planting the seed.

Be sure you buy good grass seed that doesn’t introduce weeds into your lawn. Look at the label and look for the “other crop” to be 0 to 0.01 percent. The blue-tag-certified seed sold at garden centers is guaranteed to contain the varieties listed on the bag.

K-State’s highest-rated fescue cultivars this year – with not much difference between them – are 3rd Millennium, Braveheart, Bullseye, Catalyst, Cochise, Corona, Escalade, Faith, Falcon V, Firecracker, Firenza, Jamboree, LS 1200, Monet, Mustang, Raptor II, Rhambler SRP, RK5, Shenandoah III, Shenandoah Elite, Sidewinder, Spyder LS, Talladega, Turbo and Wolfpack II.

Mixes of several varieties may take advantage of differing strengths and do not need to contain only these varieties, says Ward Upham of K-State; there are many other good ones as well.

Err on the side of putting down less seed rather than too much and apply the seed uniformly. Spread half of the seed in one direction and then half at right angles to the first for better and more even coverage.

The application rate on bare ground in full sun or part shade is 6 to 8 pounds of seed per 1,000 square feet. If there is less than four hours of sun a day or less than 50 percent open sunlight in the planting area or if you are overseeding patches, seed at half that rate.

Follow-up care

Keep the soil moist using a gentle spray until some seeds start to germinate. You may have to water morning and afternoon, and maybe more often, depending on the weather. When the seed is up, water about once a day, then gradually every other day, until the plants can take more of a routine of an established lawn.

Get your lawnmower blade sharpened. When new grass reaches 3 inches, cut it to a height of 2 inches. Continue to mow at that height for the remainder of the season, never removing more than one-third of the blade at one time.

Four weeks after planting, fertilize again with 1 pound of high-nitrogen quick-release fertilizer per 1,000 square feet. Then repeat with another pound in another three to four weeks, at the end of October or in November. Fertilizing in the fall puts more nutrients in the ground than fertilizing in the spring, when most of the benefits come off in mowing.

For an established lawn, fertilize in September if you fertilize at no other time of the year, and then again in November if you are able.

Be careful treating weeds if you’re reseeding. Broadleaf weed killers such as 2,4-D, MCCP and dicamba (the ingredients in Trimec) cannot be used any closer to seeding than one month before and can’t be used afterward until the new grass has grown enough to be mowed three times. Trimec is your best defense against dandelions when applied in late October or early November.

Plan to apply a crabgrass preventer in April. Putting in a lawn usually brings up some crabgrass even if there wasn’t any there before.

Sod

You can skip the seeding and put down sod either in patches or for a whole new instant lawn. It doesn’t require watering as often as seeds and seedlings do; keep the soil underneath moist but not saturated. The ground does need to be prepared for sodding as well as for seeding. Sodding also can be done past the seeding deadline, into November and beyond.

Lawn alternatives

Fescue is the best grass to plant under trees (for the grass’ sake, not the trees; they do better mulched), but it often struggles in the summer because of a lack of sun when the trees are fully leafed out. You can increase the light by pruning up the lower branches of trees, plant a ground cover that takes shade such as vinca or English Ivy, or mulch under the tree. For other lawn alternatives, see the accompanying story on the FloraKansas native plant sale next week at Dyck Arboretum in Hesston.

To save money and water, the city of Wichita is letting any cool-season grasses in city parks revert to spreading warm-season grasses such as Bermuda, said David McGuire, superintendent of parks. And more medians are being planted in buffalograss, he said. “It’s native. It belongs here.”

This story was originally published September 3, 2015 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Time for a lawn reawakening."