Want your Wichita lawn to green up early in spring? What experts say to tackle this fall
Saturday marked the first day of fall, and the autumn season is a perfect time to start preparing your yard for a successful spring.
“The fall is really the most critical time of the year to take care of your ... lawn so that it looks good the rest of the year,” Matthew McKernan, a horticulture agent with the Sedgwick County Extension Education Center, told The Eagle last week.
The majority of lawns in the Wichita area are made up of tall fescue grass, McKernan said, and the best time to fertilize this type is September and November.
“September [is] the most important month, but November is also a great month to do it as well, because that’s going to help the lawn green up earlier in the spring,” McKernan said. “Oftentimes people think when they fertilize in the spring that’s going to help their lawn green up sooner, but it’s really that fall, November application that really helps that tall fescue green up earlier in the spring.”
While tall fescue is the most common in the area, McKernan said warm season grasses like zoysia, Bermuda and buffalo grasses can also be spotted. These lawns require a different type of maintenance.
“All three of those grasses are typically the type of grasses that go dormant during the winter months,” McKernan said. “So for those type of grasses, we really don’t want to do anything to them now because they are going to be best cared for in May, June [and] July, when it’s hot or warm.”
Fertilizing those grasses now would make them more likely to experience injury in the winter, the agent noted.
As for other lawn maintenance, now is also a good time to spray for weeds.
“Oftentimes those weeds will ... absorb that product through the leaves and carry it down to the roots,” McKernan said. “So we can get really good control over some of our tougher weeds in the fall.”
What gardening and planting is best done in the fall in Kansas?
While some people may think spring is the time to do your planting, McKernan said fall is actually the prime season to sow new seeds.
“Anything from planting new grass seed, all the way through planting new trees, shrubs and flowers in the garden,” McKernan said. “Now is a great time for planting because the soils are going to be warm.”
Sedgwick County is in agricultural zone 6b, which means planters should choose varieties that are able to survive low temperatures of at least 0 to -5 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the extension office’s website.
The horticulture agent said while many plants will do well if they are planted in the fall, a few will fare better if you wait until spring.
Better Homes & Garden recommends to plant spring bulbs, pansies and violas, turf grass and perennials in the fall. These are better planted in the fall as they need a period of cold temperatures to bloom.
As for what to avoid, Southern Living says to not plant summer-blooming bulbs, like cannas and dahlias, or any cold-sensitive shrub. But McKernan said in Kansas, more often than not plants can be put in the ground in fall.
“We would avoid planting things that are going to be cold sensitive, like our annual flowers or vegetable crops that aren’t necessarily going to be able to tolerate the cold,” McKernan said. “But even when we talk about vegetables, for example, there’ still a wide variety of cool season vegetables that can be planted in the fall to have a vegetable garden in the fall months.”
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, great vegetables for your fall produce garden include:
- Beets
- Cauliflower
- Mustard
- Spinach
- Cabbage
- Broccoli
- Kale
- Lettuce
How has the Kansas drought affected lawn care?
The prolonged Kansas drought has made lawn care more of a challenge this year. Due to the lack of rain, McKernan said more people will likely have to plant grass seed.
“It’s been a dry summer and so a lot of lawns have thinned out and so a lot of people need to .... plant some grass seed to help the lawns fill in,” McKernan said.
Called over-seeding, McKernan recommends applying 6 to 8 pounds of grass seed on bare parts of your lawn.
“But if it’s a thin area with some grass, we recommend half that amount,” he continued.
Note: This graphic will automatically update as new data becomes available.
Additionally, people should begin to deeply water their landscape, if possible, to prepare it for the winter season.
“Before we shut down our irrigation for the winter months, it’s a really good idea to try to water really deeply and get the water 12 inches deep at least, so plants have water they can use during the winter, at least the first few months of winter, when we don’t have any rain or snowfall,” McKernan said.
It’s even more important to deeply water plants while in a drought, but not to over-water them. Providing plants with too much water can set them up for failure. If you deeply water plants and let them dry out before watering them again, the roots will grow farther down, which will allow them to last longer without water in drought-like conditions.
