Recommended Fall Lawn Prep From Rohr’s, Including Overseeding
We have Mike in North Canton, who asks, ‘I’ve got crabgrass. I’ve got clover, bare spots, not a lot of real grass. I would like to know what I can do in the fall to prep for next year.’
So this is a perfect, perfect time of the year to do some overseeding. I’ve got a few spots in my own yard where my dog has made it so the grass does not grow. So I’ll put some pelletized lime down in those areas. I’ll water very well, and then we’re going to overseed.
If you’re doing a very large area, you can rent what’s called a slit seeder and put the seed inside this hopper, and it’ll actually cut it into the ground at the right depth. If you’re just doing some spot areas, that’s usually what I’m doing around my house, just some areas that are thin and I want to thicken it up, I’ll just broadcast on the surface and then make sure we either have a heavy rain or I’ll water it down in very well. And then this time of year, I’m going to use a Milorganite product, which is a very organic slow release fertilizer that has a lot of iron. It’ll make the grass a rich, dark green color, help it recover from the stress of summer.
Now, your crabgrass is an annual weed. It’s going to die here soon. So whether you try to treat that or not, it’s totally up to you. It’s going to go away on its own here very shortly as we get cold. The clover, a lot of times we’re going to use a weed be gone. And if it’s just patches of the clover, that’s a lot of times how clover grows. We’ll treat that in the evening hours, like six, seven o’clock in the evening, when we’re not expected to get rain that night, we’ll put like a weed be gone product on there and it won’t hurt the grass, but it will get rid of the broadleaf weeds.
In the spring time next year, you can use a product called step one and step one is a fertilizer product that will prevent seeds from germinating. That’s the best way to keep crabgrass from ever growing is to use a fertilizer that has a pre-emergent in it, because crabgrass as it’s grown through the summer, it’s dropped a lot of seeds this year, but it is going to die in the winter. But those seeds remain viable through the winter and they will germinate and grow the following Spring. We’ll use that step one for grass in the early spring and it kills all those seeds as they germinate, so all that grows is your grass.
If you ever have any questions like that, you can stop in with a picture of your yard or your shrubs to the nursery, and we’ll take a look at it and show you the exact product to use.
Germinating Grass Seed & Mowing
My neighbor does have a mowing business and he and I are always talking. And he said this time of year, a lot of times it’s an every other week thing, cutting their grass.
The last thing we want to do is when the grass is baked and the ground’s crazy hard, we want to drive out. We don’t really want to be driving over that a lot with our mowers because the weight of the mower can crush the stems and the crowns of the plant. And then we’re making it worse, not better.
Of course the weeds grow faster. In my backyard, I’ve got a bunch of oak trees. I came back from vacation this year. It looked like a forest of oak trees growing in my backyard because the squirrels had planted all these acorns last year. Now they’re germinating and growing with all the rain we had this year. A lot of times that doesn’t happen because the ground is so hard. It’s not a good environment, but this year with all the rain it’s not something that I have to go out and spray because as those trees grow up, I mow and it chops the top off of them. They kind of go away on their own after several mowings.
A weed be gone product would also work on them. I’m going to save the weed be gone for the clovers and the ground ivy and the hard to get rid of stuff. And that’s absolutely what people are looking at in their yards.
Like Mike said, he wants to fix some thin patches. This is a great time of year to do that. You do not want to wait too late in the year. So there’s different types of seeds in our grass seed blend. Your fescue germinates in seven to 10 days, your perennial rye 10 to 14 days, and your bluegrass sometimes 21 to 28 days. Now that’s 50 degree temperatures night and day. If you do it too late in the year, we don’t have a warm enough nighttime temperature to get that grass seed to still germinate. Now in August, like this, where we have a ton of rain, I’d say you’re fine. Go ahead and do it now.
Last year, I would not have recommended it in August because the ground was rock hard and you don’t want to be responsible for having to give that new grass that significant amount of moisture. But this year with the ground being wet, you know, sometimes depending on the environment, the recommendation will change. But this year I’d say I’d get it down now, anytime now, the first couple of weeks of September.
And that, understand that two weeks in, you’re only seeing about half the grass seed germinate. That second two weeks, so once we hit that 30 days, then that grass is really going to thicken up because you got the rest of the seed that’s germinating and starting to grow and really fill in. And leaving it a little bit longer does kind of keep the weeds from growing too.
Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).