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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We’re halfway through August and the temperatures are still soaring well into the hundreds. As I sit here ordering my ryegrass seed for the farms I figured it was a good time to put out a short blog on preparing your lawn for the fall.

The hot/humid weather is ideal for warm season grasses, especially with sod in Arizona and California. If you had any weak areas in your lawn you saw one of two things happen over the last couple weeks. You either saw the weak areas begin to grow in size or you saw your problem areas fill in as the stolons moved across the open ground.

If your weak areas are getting larger you should take a close look at your irrigation system. Sometimes it appears sprinklers are getting great coverage but when you put out bowls to check for water volume you often find that area is being missed. One of the most common areas for this is right in front of your pop up sprinklers. That triangular spot right below the sprinkler is the hardest spot to cover on the whole lawn. The easiest way to fix this issue is to put in a dual spray nozzle. These cost around $3-$4 and can be installed in under a minute. Read the rest of this entry »

West Coast Turf’s Platinum Paspalum sod

Check out this video of Mr. Wise Grass discussing the benefits of West Coast Turf’s Platinum Paspalum sod for your home.  This warm season sod can be an excellent choice in both California and Arizona.  It has beautiful color, the longest greening of all warm season varieties, and easy care.  For more info on the unique (but easy) care for Platinum Paspalum, check our care tips.

For most parts of the country spring means a return to warmer temperatures and usually some good rain storms. For the desert southwest this typically means hot temperatures and the occasional rain event. We were lucky enough to get some late season El Niño storms this month which will have a nice impact on our warm season grasses.

The transition season has officially begun and over the next month you will start to see your underlying warm season grass start to push out the winter ryegrass. The hot temperatures will start to take their toll on the ryegrass and it will start to die out. It’s not uncommon to start to see dry patches emerge in your lawn that looked perfect the week prior.

As much as it may pain you to see sections of your beautiful lawn start to die back remember this is a good thing. Sections of your lawn will always dry out before others areas simply because of the soil texture, compaction, or sprinkler coverage. It’s important to rule out sprinkler issues and if it is merely a transition dry spot rest easy. For these spots I recommend taking a hard toothed rake and rake up the dead ryegrass that lies on the surface. This dead material is shading out the bermudagrass down below and preventing it from getting water and sunlight. Keeping your lawn mowed below ¾” during this time of the year and power raking or verticutting will also help remove dead material from shading your summer grass.

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We have been hearing about El Nino for some time now and it’s finally upon us. To most of us it spells relief that the drought may finally come to an end. We have been battling one of the worst droughts in history the last few years, and snow and rain will allow many to breathe a sigh of relief. By no means are we out of the woods yet as a few days of snow and rain won’t take care of the problem.  It appears the weather models will be correct for this spring. It’s going to be wet spring which will bring back a lot of landscape areas that were put into seasonal dormancy to save water.

As I drove into work this morning I saw two common areas that had their sprinklers running while it was raining. It has been raining for the last four days and it doesn’t appear to be letting up until the weekend. While none of us want to interfere, it is important to let your homeowners association or city know that water is still running in these areas. There is only so much water we can save at our residences, but there are others areas we can step in. Most parks have the irrigation clocks set to run daily, and there is not enough man power to check the areas daily or even weekly. One way to fix this problem is the addition of rain sensors or gauges that attach to the irrigation clock to shut off the sprinklers. I know we can’t go back and fix all the parks that were put in past years, but we can make sure that all new areas are doing everything they can to save water. The majority of people are extremely responsible users of water and we need to encourage others to also use water wisely. Read the rest of this entry »

As we move through the fall season many of you will choose the option to forgo overseeding this season to save some water. With the prime growing season behind us you’re going to start to see your lawn start to slow down. The days are becoming shorter and your warm season grass is starting to need less inputs. There are a couple areas where you can cut back this winter to save yourself money. I will go into detail what you need to maintain a non-overseeded lawn during the winter, and go briefly over an overseeded lawn watering and fertilizer schedule.

My first suggestion for those that will not be overseeding is to turn your irrigation clock off except on the day you will be watering. Having your lawn set up to automatically run certain days and times during the fall/winter will cause you to use much more water than your lawn can utilize.

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The days are getting shorter and the heat is starting to die down a little as we enter the fall season. With fall comes the onset of overseeding in many parts of the country and the West Coast is no different. For those new to overseeding let me give you a brief definition. Overseeding is simply the process of seeding a cool season grass into your warm season turfgrass in order to maintain winter color. This is not a mandatory process if you have grass, but it is one of the options that are out there for homeowners and professionals.

There are a few options during the fall months to take care of your lawn, and without question the most popular is to overseed. Outside of overseeding you have the option of using turf colorant such as Endurant to give your dormant grass a nice green appearance.  Or you can just let your lawn go dormant for the winter months (brown can be the new green!). There is no right or wrong approach, so decide what you would like to do as the temperatures begin to drop over the coming weeks.

If you will be letting your lawn go dormant it will stay fairly green until the first hard frost which is around Thanksgiving and will start to green up in late March. If you have a paspalum lawn you can usually get through the month of December with a green lawn and it will start greening up in early March.

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Let’s face it–there is little one can do to escape the oppressive August heat in Arizona and California. But, did you know your property with grass is a good 30 degrees cooler than your neighbors’ with rocks, and 50 degrees cooler than the ones with artificial turf?  Natural turfgrass has some major benefits!

I thought I would start off today’s blog by giving you some light at the end of the dark tunnel we call “summer.” While we started the summer off with mild temperatures, they have quickly soared making it one of the hottest summers on record. In order to combat the temperatures most people try to stay inside or crank up their air conditioners, but what we should be doing is looking for ways to control the ambient temperature at our properties. Installing grass is one of the best ways for lowering the temperature around your house, and allowing you to stay cool when you’re out enjoying a beverage by the pool.

I know a lot of people are reading that first paragraph and saying we’re experiencing a historic drought–how can we put in a new lawn? Yes, we are experiencing a drought, but the media would have you believe all the water being used is by lawns and golf courses. How about hotels, pools, washing cars, long showers, fountains, air conditioners, increase in electricity usage, washing dishes, and on and on? It’s easy to blame turfgrass for using too much water, but we need to look ourselves in the mirror each day and realize all need to act responsibly during this drought. Some see grass as a luxury, and golf as a silly game that is using our water supply. What they don’t see are the positive effects turfgrass  has on the environment.

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