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Hi, I am Dave Epstein, this is Growing Wisdom. I want to talk today about your lawn in the fall. Fall is a great time to line the lawn. It is also a great time to start a new lawn especially the beginning of fall. Now, those of you that get frost in early October, you probably want to put your new lawn in during the month of September. However, if you do not get a frost let us say, until later in November you can still plant grass during the month of October.
Fall is also a wonderful time to put down new sod, it is also a great time to put down fertilizer. Now, depending on where you are you want to fertilize earlier say in September for your final fertilization versus late October or early November further off towards the south and this mostly for northern types of grasses. If you are living down the southern states, Florida, Texas, portion of California, you can apply fertilization right through the entire calendar year.
Those of you who live in the coldest spot, say zone three, four and five, you do not want to be putting down that fertilization late in October or November just think of this way. You do not want to have a big meal right before you go to bed and you do not want to give your lawn a big meal before it goes to sleep. It will just sit there all winter long and it could contribute to problems like snow mold. The other thing you can do during the fall is plant new grass. Here in zone six, I like to start new grass by about the seventh of October. And you think later than that, if we have a colder second half of October, the grass tends not to germinate. You need the grass to germinate and to get some root systems going in order for you to survive the winter.
So if you do not want to start a new lawn, you can actually put sod down a little a bit later because the sod has the root systems already established in this area. Sod can go down right to the beginning of November and it will be fine. Those of you that have grubs that you need to control, milky spore and nematodes, there are great organic ways to control the grubs. However, I know some of you still use chemicals and if you have to please make sure to read the label carefully. Some grub product should not be applied in the fall.
Instead of three inches I have my lawn cut down to two inches in the fall. It just keeps it a little bit healthier going at the winter. Now, why the lawns do so well in the fall? They have a great combination of wonderful light, they also have relatively warm days and cool nights which really the ideal growing conditions for grass.
So that is why in fall we just like to maintain those lawns that are existing or start a new lawn or fill in some bare patches from any summer dieback or in this case, I pulled out a lot of crabgrass here, I wanted to start some new grass.
There you have it. Fall lawn care, great time of the year to take care the lawn. It will reward you, I promise you all next year. Come back every week for all our tips, hints and helps at growingwisdom.com.
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