With the recent heavy rains and slightly cooler temperatures no doubt people are thinking about overseeding their California and Arizona lawns. While the calendar says September 18th and you will surely see people overseeding, I suggest you wait a few weeks. Follow my California and Arizona sod tips for a beautiful lawn. Overseeding does not need to be a one day process. You can begin the process a little early. Then, when temperatures are in the 60’s at night, you will just need to give your lawn one last haircut, drop the seed and begin watering.

Preparing to Overseed

Prepping for overseed is often a large ordeal. By starting the process gradually you can eliminate the headaches associated with trying to do it all in one afternoon. I want to reiterate something I have been saying for the past few years. The height of the grass is not associated with a quality overseed. In other words scalping the grass down to the dirt does not guarantee good results. Opening up the turf canopy does.

The shorter you mow your lawn the tighter the leaf blades become. This makes it harder to get the ryegrass seed into the plant. If the seed is lying on the surface it will be slow to germinate and much of the seed will be lost. The seed needs a base to grow out of. Getting inside the grass plant allows for perfect moisture, heat, and a solid growing medium. By looking at my last statement you can now understand why I say without a good warm season grass base (used on popular California and Arizona lawns) you will most likely have a poor ryegrass season. The seed will establish much faster inside a healthy grass stand than it will on bare dirt.

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Summer is wrapping up, the kids are heading back to school, and I’m sure you’re ready to come out of hibernation. While the summer heat is far from over in Arizona and California, it’s starting to become tolerable outside. With the slightly cooler mornings it’s time to get back outside and get your lawn ready for fall. Most people start thinking about overseeding their California and Arizona sod in September, but ideally you wouldn’t start the process until October when nighttime temperatures get into the 60’s. Between now and then there are some important steps you need to do to get your lawn ready and to save some headaches down the road.

Between May and September you probably noticed your lawn has grown at twice the rate it does during the winter months. Warm season grasses love the warm, wet weather. Most people thought the hot weather would keep the grass from growing well, but remember warm season grasses optimal growing temperatures are between 90-105 degrees. During this season any of your weaker areas should have filled in with the warm season grasses runners. These spots can be slow to fill in during the dry, hot days but as soon as the humidity kicks in the grass really takes off. If you still have large open spots I would suggest picking up a few rolls of sod and patching them prior to overseed. You don’t want to seed directly into the soil.

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Is your Lawn Ready for Summer?

Now that the clouds of winter have parted and Spring has arrived, it’s time to start preparing your lawn for the imminent heat of summer. If you haven’t already started your seasonal spring cleaning, then your lawn is the best place to start. The secret to keeping your lawn lush and green throughout the summer lies in the lawn care techniques you implement now.

Don’t risk the chance of sparse, unhealthy and patchy grass by not taking the simple steps needed to transition your lawn for the summer. Instead take the time to cultivate a resilient lawn that can withstand the effects of the sun and heavy foot traffic by following these steps. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring has sprung and your warm season sod might need a little help with the transition in California and Arizona. Mr. Wise Grass is here to help!  Check out his latest video for tips on how to keep your lawn looking the best in the neighborhood!

IMPORTANT! FOLLOW THESE STEPS FOR A BEAUTIFUL, LUSH LAWN:

Step By Step Transitioning for California and Arizona Sod

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No one likes a brown lawn! Are you taking the necessary steps to keep your lawn green year-round?

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as simply laying new sod, watering it and hoping for the best. Proper sod care and maintenance requires a year-round commitment to your lawn. Lucky for you, our sod experts have compiled a seasonal guide to provide you with some easy steps you can take throughout the year to ensure your sod stays healthy and green even in the harshest weather.

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You might have noticed that the temperatures have been in the high 90’s in Arizona, and have even hit the 100’s in California!  No one wants to see that in late March unless you’re a sod producer or looking to get your warm season lawn to green up. While it is great for lawn color, it is still too early to know if this weather will stay or if we will get a minor cold snap. If we were assured that the 90’s were here to stay I would tell you to really start pushing your warm season turf, but it is best to ease into the season until soil temperatures reach 64 degrees.

Either way, transition time is upon us and it is time to start easing into the summer grass season. For people with non-overseeded turf this weather is great news for their lawn, and for others transition can bring a few headaches. I have outlined some simple steps to help you get your lawn to go from ryegrass to bermudagrass without any anxiety.

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Ideally the best time to lay sod is from April to October, but sometimes waiting until those months simply isn’t an option. If you find yourself in this position, don’t panic. Although laying California sod in the winter is not ideal, it’s still possible and can have some advantages when done with care.

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2017 has started out nicely with some timely rainfalls to keep most of you from having to water your lawn. It has also helped us move closer to getting out of the drought we’ve been suffering from for the last few years. The winter storms are helping us replenish our water supplies but they’re also helping germinate all of those of those summer annual weeds in the soil. The good news is weeds are relatively easy to contain. There are some types such as annual bluegrass, crabgrass, and nutsedge that are a little more complicated but timing pre-emergent herbicide applications can save you a lot of headaches with weed control. In this blog I will go over various weeds and some ways to control them as well as discuss herbicide timing.

Weed control management is a function of several different factors but some of the things you can do to keep your lawn healthy are maintain the proper mowing height, don’t overwater your lawn, fertilize monthly, and aerate the turf when the soil becomes compacted. These items right here can be the difference between weeds slowly emerging in your lawn and taking over your lawn. A healthy lawn will push out weeds and keep them to a minimum. If you have very few weeds emerge during the year chemical application is unnecessary and weeds can be pulled by hand as they appear.

Crabgrass

Nutsedge

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Cold temperatures have arrived in California and Arizona, and those of you with overseeded sod may begin to see your lawn go in a little shock. One of the things you will notice first is bermudagrass going dormant in the turf causing small quarter sized yellow spots in your lawn. This is nothing to be concerned about as today we will discuss getting those spots to fill in. If you didn’t overseed your lawn for the winter it’s most likely dormant at this point and you can sit back and let your lawn sleep for a few months.

I’m sure many of you have seen the small yellow spots over the years in your overseeded lawn. The question is what is causing it and what can you do about it? First, this isn’t something to be concerned about. It’s actually a sign that you had a very healthy lawn going into the overseed season. Since many people overseed in late September/early October you’re still fighting with warm season growth. By supplying water and fertilizer to overseed the bermudagrass continues to grow and has a tendency to out compete your newly seeded ryegrass. When you’re overseeded lawn first start growing it looks immaculate, but it’s good to remember some of this is bermudagrass. The bermudagrass/ryegrass combination looks incredible and when it’s growing in it can be tough to distinguish the two.

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It appears fall is never going to arrive as we’ve hit 90+ degrees twenty-three days in a row in the Phoenix area. The nighttime temperatures have slowly begun to cool but surprisingly they have yet to fall into the optimum range to overseed. For those who may have thought they were too late to drop seed, you still have a couple weeks to get your lawn going. Most people have already overseeded their lawns so I want to give some tips to assist your ryegrass while your warm season grass continues to grow.

If you overseeded anytime during the month of October I’m sure your lawn looks absolutely beautiful right now. It’s important to keep in mind that some of your grass is probably bermudagrass that bounced back from being scalped. How could this happen you ask? With daytime temperatures in the 90’s and nights in the 70’s it has allowed for an extended growing season. Many people including our sod farms use a turfgrass regulator such as Primo prior to scalping to help keep the bermudagrass in check. While this does help with a lot of the grow back it can’t prevent everything from coming back to life. Now that the ryegrass is up and growing strong it’s also a good time to put down a first or second application of Primo or other growth regulator. These products will greatly increase the density of your ryegrass and keep the bermudagrass from growing back. Why do you want to keep the bermudagrass out? If the bermudagrass is actively growing it is preventing your ryegrass from filling in completely. This is usually first observed after the first frost and the lawn will have small quarter size dormant turf spots throughout the turf. This is not a big deal as the ryegrass will eventually fill it in but something to keep in mind.

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