Spring Lawn Care

Spring Lawn Care Tip #1: Raking

Raking will be your first task of spring lawn care. Okay, I can hear the groans coming from all lands near and far, wherever grassy carpets are cultivated: "But we already raked leaves in the fall!" Sorry, but raking is for more than just removing leaves: it's for controlling thatch, too.

A thatch build-up of more than 1/2 inch is considered excessive.

Thatch is the reason why I recommend that, when you rake leaves in the fall, you make the effort to rake deeply. Don't just skim the surface, so as to remove the leaves. A deep raking will remove thatch, too, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone. Even if you followed this advice in fall, I still recommend a spring raking: it will remove grass blades that died over the winter -- dead blades that are just waiting to become thatch!

But there's often another good reason for a spring raking. As you survey your lawn in spring, see if there are any matted patches, in which the grass blades are all stuck together. This can be caused by a disease known as "snow mold." New grass may have difficulty penetrating these matted patches. But a light raking will be sufficient to solve this problem.

When should you perform any of these spring lawn care tasks? Mother Nature provides palpable cues in some cases. For instance, when you're pretty sure the snow season  is over in your region, begin raking. Applying preemergent herbicides (see Tip #6) should be done sometime between the time the local forsythia bushes stop blooming and the time the local lilac bushes begin blooming.

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Spring Lawn Care Tip #2: Check for Compaction

If your lawn is subjected to high levels of traffic year after year, it may eventually start to show signs of decline. In such cases, your lawn is probably suffering from compaction. For instance, the presence of moss plants signals compaction (among other things).

Lawn aeration is the remedy for compaction. The good news is that lawn aerators can be rented at your local rental center. The bad news is that the experts recommend postponing lawn aeration until fall. But if, during your "spring lawn checkup," you become aware of compaction, at least you can plan on setting aside some time in the fall to take care of it.

Spring Lawn Care Tip #3: Liming

Besides compaction, the presence of moss plants also signals acidity. But grass likes a neutral soil pH. You can solve this problem by liming your soil. But don't expect a quick fix: the effects of liming are slow to take place.

But first send a soil sample to your local county extension to determine the extent of your soil's acidity. The county extension will also be able to advise you on how much lime per square foot you'll need. Apply the lime using a lawn spreader.

But if your lawn has been doing fine and shows no signs of suffering from acidity, don't apply lime. Liming is only a corrective measure, not a preventive measure. A soil that is too alkaline will also cause your lawn problems, so too much lime is as bad as not enough.

Spring Lawn Care Tip #4: Overseeding

Is your lawn riddled with bare patches due to dog spots, heavy traffic or neglect? If so, you may need to apply grass seed to fill in those bare patches. This solution is known as "overseeding lawns." Apply a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer when you overseed. Five weeks after the grass germinates, apply a quick-release nitrogen fertilizer.

However, spring isn't the very best time for overseeding lawns. Fall is the preferred time, when the new grass won't have to compete with crabgrass (see Page 2), which is killed off by autumn frosts. So postpone overseeding until fall, unless your situation is dire.

Spring Lawn Care Tip #5: Fertilizing

Lawns can be fertilized organically by using compost and mulching mowers. But for those who prefer chemical fertilizers, Scotts provides a lawn fertilizing schedule. Many experts, however, recommend a lighter feeding in spring and a heavier one in fall for cool-season grasses. Too much fertilizer in spring can lead to disease and weed problems.

In addition to the above tasks of spring lawn care, don't forget weed control and making sure your mower is ready for the mowing season.

Weed Prevention a Major Element of Spring Grass Care

For those who prefer weed-free lawns, spring grass care is as much about weed prevention as it is about fostering healthy lawn growth. Novices to spring grass care are often surprised to learn that not all lawn weeds are battled in the same manner. Depending upon whether a weed is an annual or a perennial, you will use a preemergent herbicide or a postemergent herbicide against it.

Spring Grass Care Tip #6: Applying Preemergent Herbicides

If you know that you have a problem with the annual weed, crabgrass, then fertilization in spring should go hand in hand with the application of preemergent herbicides. As their name suggests, preemergent herbicides address weed control not "after the fact," but before their seedlings can even emerge. Preemergent herbicides accomplish this by forming something of a "shield" that inhibits seed germination.

Crabgrass begins its assault on lawns in spring, when its seeds germinate. In fact, my suggestion on Page 1 that overseeding be carried out in autumn, rather than spring, is based in part on the threat posed by a spring crabgrass invasion. "So why not just begin by killing the crabgrass first with a preemergent herbicide?" perhaps you ask. Well, the trouble is that most preemergent herbicides work against not only weed seeds, but grass seeds, as well!

You can appreciate the dilemma here. Overseeding is incompatible with the application of most preemergent herbicides. Yet, faced with competition from crabgrass in spring, you may find it difficult to establish your new grass. So while it's still possible to overseed in spring, it's simply easier to do so in fall. There will be no competition from crabgrass then, because the fall frosts kill off crabgrass.

Spring Grass Care Tip #7: Applying Postemergent Herbicides -- Or Pulling Weeds

Keep an eye out for the emergence of the perennial weed, dandelion during the spring season, unless you find the presence of their cheerful yellow flowers in your lawn desirable. At the very least, you'll want to snap off their flower stems before they produce seed. If you're more ambitious, you can dig them out by the roots. Spraying dandelion weeds with postemergent herbicides is more effective in fall than in spring. If you do choose to spray, select an herbicide for broadleaf weeds.

If you prefer weed control without chemicals and have consistently practiced organic landscaping, you can harvest these "weeds" as dandelion greens and eat them!

By David Beaulieu
About.com

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Winterizing the Landscape in Fall

Tips for Fall Lawn Care, Winterizing Gardens

Once you're done carving pumpkins, there are a number of serious fall chores for the landscaper to complete before winter in order to ready the landscape for the next growing season. Let's take a look at some of the required chores, breaking them down by landscaping category.

Fall Lawn Care:

• Apply herbicides to broadleaf weeds.
• Correct pH. If a soil test should show a need to reduce acidity, apply lime now. If alkalinity needs to be reduced, apply sulphur.
• Thatch removal: dethatch your lawn, by raking; for bad cases of soil compaction, you may have to employ the technique known as core aeration.
• Rake leaves, lest the leaves smother your grass over the winter.
• Lawn mower care: make sure to drain old gas after last mowing.

Note: You should already have applied fertilizer to cool season grasses early in the fall. Since these grasses often grow most vigorously during periods of moderate weather (not too hot, not too cold), it is precisely at this time that they can best use the nutrients provided by a fertilizer. Fertilization helps the lawn recover from the summer heat and prepares it for the next growing season.

Winterizing Annual beds:

• After harvesting your fruits and flowers, remove old plant matter from the garden, placing it in your compost bin. Leaving it behind in the garden would invite plant diseases next growing season.
• Rototill your garden soil. Rototilling now may seem premature; but it will make your spring rototilling work go much easier. Make a habit of rototilling each year both in the fall and in the spring. Drain the old gas out of the rototiller afterwards.
• If you are going to rototill, this is the time to apply lime (if soil tests have indicated that your pH is too low). The effects of liming don't manifest themselves for several months, so liming in the spring is too late for next year's crop.
• Protect your topsoil from the rigors of winter. You have two options here:
1. You can plant a cover crop for large beds.
2. Or you can apply mulch. Mulching is more efficient for smaller beds. And landscapers have a ready source of mulch in the leaves that they rake.

• Some garden experts recommend spreading compost on the soil as well at this time. I personally disagree with this strategy, feeling that it is a waste of compost. I recommend keeping your compost protected in a compost bin during the winter, waiting until planting season to spread it in the garden.

Winterizing Trees and Shrubs:

• Winterize small deciduous shrubs that have fragile branches with a lean-to or some other sort of structure to keep heavy snows off their limbs. Deciduous shrubs provide no interest in winter anyways, so you are not losing anything visually by covering them. Evergreens, by contrast, are the cornerstone of winter landscaping aesthetics.
• To a great degree winterizing trees and larger shrubs can be achieved simply by watering them properly in the fall, since the winter damage that they sustain often stems from their inability to draw water from the frozen earth. "Avoid watering trees in late summer or early fall before the leaves fall so they can 'harden off' for winter," states Sherry Lajeunesse, in a Montana State University Extension article. "Then in late fall, after deciduous trees drop their leaves but before the ground freezes, give both evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs a final deep watering to last them through the winter." The same source also reminds us to "water under the entire canopy area and beyond," to cover the entire root area.

Putting Perennials to Bed in Fall Gardens

Below are some of the miscellaneous tasks that still to be done for winterizing fall gardens and more. Of course, you may have specific features on your landscape that will require additional winterizing in the autumn. For instance, owners of in-ground swimming pools or elaborate water gardens will have to engage in winterizing tasks specific to these features. Always follow manufacturers' recommendations.

• Perennial garden beds ideally should be cleaned up and mulched as part of your work in fall gardens. Remove old stalks and leaves -- you'll have to do so in the spring anyways, so you might as well be a step ahead. But if, for whatever reason, you are not able to mulch your perennial beds in the fall, then do not clean away the old stalks and leaves either -- they will serve as a makeshift mulch, affording some small degree of protection to the roots of your perennials.

In other words, the cleaning and the mulching go together: either do both or neither one. But it is best to do both, in order to keep your garden disease-free and well insulated.

• Winterizing your compost bin. You have worked hard all spring, summer and fall building up your compost pile and mixing it to achieve optimal decomposition. Don't let any of your work go to waste! You don't want precious nutrients eroding away or being swept off by wintery gusts. If your compost bin has no cover, then cover it with a tarp in the fall. To insulate it from winter freezing so as to hasten its usability in spring, apply a layer of raked leaves on top and all around the perimeter (bagging the leaves if necessary to hold them in place).
• Bring in the garden hose, too, and go down into the basement to turn off its water source in the fall. You don't want those pipes bursting when the temperatures fall into the teens, do you?
• Finally, with winter approaching, your "pampered beasts" are no longer going to be the lawn mower and rototiller. The snowblower is again ready to assume that honor. Snow is as much a reality of the northern landscape in winter as grass is in summer. Pamper your snowblower accordingly! The following tips on readying the snowblower for winter come courtesy of Chase-Pitkin Home and Garden:
  1. Change the oil
  2. Install a new spark plug
  3. Inspect belts for wear and replace if necessary
  4. Lube the drive and chasis
  5. Fill with fresh, clean gasoline

By David Beaulieu
About.com

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Tips for Landscaping With Dogs

Dog Urine and Lawn Care: What to Do About "Dog Spots"

Is your landscaping going to the dogs? Is your lawn riddled with "dog spots?" There's no reason that you can't have both dogs and attractive landscaping. But landscaping with dogs does present challenges that may require some compromises. The goal in this balancing act is to achieve an attractive, dog-friendly yard.

Effective landscaping with dogs begins with the recognition that a business-as-usual approach won't work. If your dogs are to be allowed to run about in your yard, you'll probably have to make adjustments to your landscaping. Landscaping with dogs primarily entails making concessions to the dogs, as you'll see from the strategies below. I do, however, offer one glimmer of hope that you can, instead, adjust the dogs to the landscaping. Either way, if you fail to make some sort of adjustment, then dogs will make a mess of your yard.

Worse still, they'll be continually dragging dirt into your house.

Landscaping With Dogs: Adjustments to Your Landscaping

Strategy #1: Hardscape

Dogs and lawn grass don't mix well. For small areas, consider switching from a grassy expanse to hardscape. The advantages of hardscape go beyond solutions to landscaping with dogs, since hardscape offers a low-maintenance alternative to grass that obviates lawn care. Stone and masonry are especially useful for landscaping with dogs, because they minimize the mess dogs make through urination, digging and plain old wear and tear.

Here are some ideas for incorporating hardscape into your landscaping:

• Make liberal use of crushed-stone mulch. If you grow plants in such mulch in a sunny area, select drought-tolerant plants, since stone gets hot in the summer. Don't place the stone mulch directly up against the plants.
• Build a brick patio, a concrete patio or a flagstone patio.

Strategy #2: Smarter Lawn Care -- Know Your Grass Types

But what if you reject the idea of incorporating hardscape, sticking stubbornly to your wish for a "green carpet" of grass? At the very least, consider switching to a different type of grass. Some grasses hold up better to foot traffic (and paw traffic!) than others. Among the warm-season grasses, Bermuda grass is among the toughest. If you need a cool-season grass for landscaping with dogs, try Kentucky bluegrass.

Strategy #3: Green Alternatives to Grass

But installing a tougher type of grass will solve only one lawn-care problem encountered in landscaping with dogs: namely, wear and tear on grass. It will do nothing to solve the problem of "dog spots." Dog spots are the unsightly yellow spots on grass caused by the nitrogen and salts in dog urine.

But there is a type of "green carpet" that solves the problem of dog spots: clover. Clover lawns have many advantages over grass lawns. If you're landscaping with dogs, you'll especially appreciate the fact that clover doesn't stain the way grass does after being subjected to dog urine.

Strategy #4: Emergency Lawn Care -- Diluting Dog Urine

If you can't bring yourself to renounce grass, you can still prevent dog spots by vigilance. When you see your dog urinating on the grass, rush to the garden hose. Turn it on and bring it over to the area where your dog has just urinated. Douse the area with water, thereby flushing it and diluting the harmful elements in the dog urine.

This strategy won't be very appealing if you "have a life." I know I wouldn't want my day to revolve around the urinary habits of my dog! But hey, different strokes for different folks.

Coexisting With Dogs in Your Yard

Strategy #5: Fences for Dog-Friendly Yards

One way to keep dogs away from the delicate plants in your yard is by building fences around them. Wood picket fences are especially attractive. Plant some perennial flowers behind a white picket fence, and you're well on your way to creating an English country garden.

Strategy #6: Wire Cages

Place wire cages around trees and shrubs to prevent dog urine from reaching their trunks and roots and damaging them. That way, dogs can go about their business and you can relax, secure in the knowledge that Fido's urine won't be killing your favorite specimen. Wire cages are fairly simple to build:

• Buy a roll of chicken-wire, tall enough that your dogs can't jump over it.
• Drive 4 stakes into the ground around the tree or shrub, about 2 feet away from any foliage or bark. Now measure the perimeter of the square area formed by the stakes.
• Using that measurement, cut off a length of the wire.
• Now run the length of wire from stake to stake, tying the wire to the stakes (e.g., with twist-ties).
• The result is an enclosure that will keep Fido at bay.

Note, however, that this strategy represents a severe compromise for your landscaping. Use it only as a last resort. Chicken-wire is not especially attractive. But you could dress up such a wire cage by using decorative posts for your stakes.

Strategy #7: The Path of Least Resistance to Dog-Friendly Yards

If a fence surrounds your property, do not try to grow any plants in the area immediately adjacent to the fence. Dogs are territorial, and their favorite path in a fenced-in yard will be right along the fence. Unsightly "dog paths" are the result of this predictable behavior.

Rather than fighting it, plan your yard around your dog's predictability. Install stone walkways over existing dog paths. Now everyone will be happy: the dog still has its path, and you get to have a better looking yard. Stone walkways exude charm and are a desirable addition to your landscaping regardless of dog problems.

Landscaping With Dogs: Adjustments to Your Dogs

Finally, consider a strategy that attacks the problem at the dogs' end of it. The following strategy can help with the problem of "dog spots":

Strategy #8: Dog Behavior Modification

Another option is to train your dogs so as to restrict their "toilet space" to a designated area. To facilitate clean-up, make sure that designated area has a surface of dirt or gravel.

Some have suggested that a change in a dog's diet (for instance, mixing a bit of tomato juice into dog food) may neutralize the harmful elements in dog urine before it ever has a chance to harm your grass. As far as I know, however, the evidence that this strategy works is merely anecdotal.

A Final Consideration for Dog-Friendly Yards

If the plantings in your yard possess any significant degree of diversity, there's a good chance that you're growing poisonous plants -- without even knowing it. You'd be surprised at how many of the most common landscape plants and native volunteers contain at least some parts (leaves, berries, etc.) that are toxic. Personally, this doesn't worry me, as I rarely feel the temptation to nibble on my plants as I stroll through my yard. However, if you have dogs, cats, small children, or an uncontrollable appetite, it behooves you to learn more about poisonous plants.

By David Beaulieu
About.com

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