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spring lawn care

Turf Training – Train your Lawn

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Welcome Friends! Glad you dropped in to learn about saving water and money by Turf Training.

Save Water and Money by training your lawn to grow deep roots

You can train your dog and train your lawn too!

You cannot teach a lawn to fetch the paper or to roll over. Even though some say that it can play dead, in the winter!  Now that your lawn is coming out of the dreary winter, it’s time for turf training. You can train your lawn to grow deep lawn roots, so that you can cut your water bill during the summer and your lawn can be happy during those hottest Utah summer weeks. Turf Training is more painful for the owner than the lawn itself, but by July, it is possible to be watering your lawn once every two weeks or less, depending on your soil type.  I know it works; I’ve lived it.  This plan is for established lawns; new turf requires other care.  Follow these steps and you too can have a well trained happy green lawn.

  1.  This month (April & into May), do not water your lawn!  Mother Nature is taking care of watering lawns for you.  DEEP INFREQUENT watering creates deep roots and thriving healthier plants.
  2. Aerate your lawn.  Perfect time is just before one of our spring rains.
  3.  Apply the proper spring fertilizer.  Follow the directions explicitly.  Again, the ideal time is just before a good rain to wash it into the turf.
  4. If you haven’t already, apply pre-emergent.
  5. Keep your finger OFF the automatic sprinkler system. Do NOT water your lawn.  You are in turf training mode.  I know it is painful because the sun is shining and spring is here, but don’t do it.  Your lawn is stretching its roots deep.  Let them go!
  6. In May, repeat #5 unless one of the following occurs…
    • Mother Nature hasn’t watered for 3 weeks. Time to water.
    • When you walk across your lawn, your footsteps don’t bounce back up.  Time to water.
    • When you look across your lawn, you notice a dull bluish green tone in spots.  Time to water.
  7. DEEP WATER – Put a good inch of water or so on your lawn.  Placing a tuna can on your grass will let you know when you’ve watered sufficiently.  All this water will soak down deep and you will train your lawn, by withholding watering cycle, to stretch deep for the water.  The roots will grow deeper and in the hot summer months of July & August, your lawn won’t get as stressed out.  Its roots will be cooler down deep.
  8. Repeat steps #6, #7 and #8.

As you can imagine, it will take time to train your lawn to grow deep roots.  That is why it is important to begin first thing in the spring.  For established Kentucky Blue grass, you may need to follow this method for two seasons, but it can be done. 

This method to train your lawn is not meant for flower beds, newly seeded lawns, newly placed sod, trees or shrubs.  Learn from our experts those proper watering techniques.

Watering Lawn Methods graphic by Texas Smartscape

http://www.txsmartscape.com/design_tools/water_conservation.asp

Watering your lawn in spring? Train your lawn to save water and money.

Article submitted by Wendy P

Snow Mold on Your Lawn – 8 Simple Ways to Solve

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Welcome Gardening Friends! Thanks for stopping by.

When the snow finally melted off our back lawn, my grass looked like it was dying. If yours does too, it could be a lawn fungus called SNOW MOLD. Don’t worry too much, snow mold seldom destroys the lawn; your lawn will recover.  This annoying disease can appear when the snow melts off the lawn in the spring.  Your turf will have circular type patches of matted straw-colored grass and can have a top layer of stringy mold.  (It reminded me of a salad mold that once grew in my refrigerator.) 

Here are 8 simple ways to solve SNOW MOLD on your lawn, and better yet, prevent it from happening.

8 ways solve snow mold on lawn

Current Problem Solutions to Snow Mold –

  • In the spring when you discover the mold, take action by gently raking the area.  This will help the air circulate through the lawn to dry it out and stop the mold from growing further.  Be careful not to rip up the grass.  The disease usually affects only the blade, so the crown of the plant is still good and will recover.  Throw away the grass you have raked up.rake grass to stop snow mold from growingbefore-and-after photos of raked lawn for snow mold
  • According to the proper schedule, regular fertilizing and mowing will help your lawn outgrow the fungus.  The lawn will green up and the damaged blades will eventually be cut off.
  • If your lawn has extreme snow mold, and you have tried the above solutions, a disease control product may need to be applied to the affected area.  See your local garden center, like the experts at Western Gardens, to obtain the correct product.  It’s always a good idea to take to the garden shop samples of the diseased plant and a photo of the area.

discard snow mold contaminated grass

Snow Mold Preventative Actions –

  • In the fall, be sure to rake leaves off the lawn. This can be annoying if you have trees that take all winter to lose their leaves, like a Sycamore.
  • In the fall, be careful not to use excessive nitrogen fertilizer. This will help slow down the growth of the grass before winter arrives.
  • In the fall, be sure to continue mowing until the lawn’s growth slows down.  Make sure your last mowing is a shorter cut.  The taller the blades of grass when winter hits, the more snow mold is encouraged to develop.  (I believe this was the culprit for our problems this spring. We put the lawnmower away and then had a mild fall.)bicycle lawn mower
  • If each year you have this problem in certain areas, apply a fungicide to the grass in the fall.  Be sure to talk with your local garden expert for the correct preventative product.
  • In the winter, if piles of snow build up where you or the street plows have worked, be sure to disperse the snow.  Where the snow is too deep on your lawn, it can take much longer in the spring to melt, inviting snow mold to grow with the warm spring temperatures. riding snow plow in cold winter
snow mold close up on lawn

SNOW MOLD on my Utah lawn

This warm weather signals time to dig in the dirt; but first, I’m going to walk barefoot through my recently raked and drying lawn.

barefoot in grass

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