Why Fall is the Best Season for Lawn Care PART 1

Zane Raudenbush, turf and herbicide specialist within the Davey Institute, talks about why fall is prime lawn care season and what to do during the fall to keep your lawn healthy.

In this episode we cover:  

• Why end of summer is best for lawn care(00:51)
• Which cool season grass is right for me? (2:58)
• How dry conditions impacted seeds planed in spring (5:52)
• Raking turf (7:46)
• Managing larger areas of turf (9:08)
• Using straw to protect growing turf (11:07)
• Fall lawn maintenance (15:24)
• Fall fertilization (16:42)
• The importance of following the directions on fertilizer (19:01)
• Where to get a soil test (22:22)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.  

To learn more about lawn care, read our blog, First-Time, New Homeowner’s Guide to Lawn Care.

To learn more about fall fertilization, read our blog, Should I Fertilize My Lawn In The Fall? Yes! Here’s Why And How.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
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LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!    

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

Well, I'm happy to welcome back to the podcast Zane Raudenbush. He is turf grass and herbicide specialist for the Davey Tree Expert Company. We've talked many times before, and I always thought, Zane, that this was supposed to be the podcast for spring, but you said that the end of the season is actually a better time to talk about improving the lawn, right?

Zane Raudenbush: That is correct.

Doug: Why is that? Why is now the time that we're thinking about moving forward with fixing up the turf and lawn?

Zane: The time we're about to enter here, the late summer, early fall, is the time I like to focus on for a few key reasons, but most importantly, it's the ideal time to seed cool season grasses. Bluegrasses, ryegrasses, fescues, they really are going to have the most chance for success to seed, starting pretty much in a couple of weeks, late August through September, and then you have to be careful once we get into October, but the reason for that is just that this time of year, we start to get cooler nighttime temperatures, but the soil's temperatures are still elevated.

Those warmer soil temperatures is really what drives the speed with which you can get grass to germinate. Conversely, you do that in the spring. A lot of people, there's sometimes a misconception that because we get all this rainfall in the spring that that's the ideal time to seed these grasses, and sometimes that's when it has to be done, but the problem with spring, while we might have the moisture, the soil temperatures are cool, could be in the upper 40s, low 50s, and so this time of year, you can get a lot of these cool season species to germinate within seven days, versus in the spring, it could be two, maybe even three weeks before those plants germinate.

In a two to three week window, if you have bare soils and we have heavy rainfall, some of your seed can get washed away. This is a time I like to focus on because it's the ideal time to seed, and then also it's just the grass is putting a lot of effort into growing roots and not as many shoots in the spring. We see that huge surge in shoot growth, where you can mow your yard every two days. It feels like in the fall, that's opposite.

The plant's putting a lot more effort into growing a strong root structure to prepare to overwinter. Fall is just a great time as a turf grass manager. It's when you set yourself up for success in the summer by what you do in the fall, no doubt.

Doug: Of those grasses that you were talking about, those cool season grasses, how do I know which one is right for me? It depends on my sun or soil or both. How do I decide?

Zane: Yes, I typically, when I'm trying to help someone determine which grass to pick, there's a few things I will ask about. One is certainly the amount of sunlight this area is going to receive. For me in my position at Davey Tree, a lot of our customers inherently have trees on their property. We often deal with properties that receive a lot of shade. I certainly want to know how many hours of direct sunlight are these grasses going to get?

If you have areas that receive less than four hours of direct sunlight, that's what I would start to consider to be a shaded environment. That's where you would look more towards the fescue species. Certainly, sunlight is one. Then I like to know, is the lawn irrigated? If there's somebody who is going to be irrigating the lawn regularly, I might choose a different species. Then last, I like to know about the use. Is this a lawn that's going to get used heavily?

By used, traffic. Is there going to be a lot of foot traffic on it? Animals, dogs, pets, things of that nature. If the lawn's going to receive a lot of traffic, that may shift what I decide. Then also just what is your expectation? Are you somebody that wants the lawn that's really green and you want to stripe it up or are you someone that says, I'm more of the minimalist. I don't really want to mow. I don't really want to fertilize. I just want cover.

One end of that spectrum would be high input. I really like a green lush lawn. I like to mow it regularly. That would be where your bluegrasses are. Kentucky bluegrass is the Cadillac. Kentucky bluegrass can be tough to establish from seed. Much easier to establish from sod. Then I get into the middle ground here where if you're somebody that may be a little bit lower maintenance, this is where like turf type tall fescue is. This is a grass that has moderate shade tolerance, easy to establish.

Then you get to more of the low input spectrum, which would be the fine fescues.

Doug: This is where I'm at now. No maintenance. What is the grass?

Zane: This would be a lot of the fine fescue species like chewing fescue, hard fescue, sheep's fescues, creeping red fescue. These are species that require very little maintenance, very little irrigation, very little mowing. The challenge for them can be that they can have poor traffic tolerance. If you're going to use the yard a lot, you could see that they potentially could begin to thin.

Doug: Before we move on to how to seed the lawn, I want to take a look back at spring in the east here. If you were seeding right before we had 22 days without rain, you were in trouble, brother. [laughs]

Zane: Doug, I have, I've been doing this for about, I guess it's almost 20 years now. I have never seen anything like that. That's typically-- if you would have blindfolded me and said, hey, look at the conditions right now, when do you think it is? I would have said, this is August or September. It was dry and it was really tough. We did-- I visited several job sites where they were construction sites that were finished in the spring and had to be seeded and they just-- it was a struggle.

A lot of weeds, a lot of grass that did not grow. Yes, if you're one of those people that, again, you don't love to seed in the spring, but sometimes you have to, it was a real challenge. A lot of that seed didn't come up, all the summer annual weeds did. Those individuals, if you're someone that this is resonating with right now, coming up is a good time to get back into those thin areas and get a hard rake out, scratch the soil up, so you get it loosened up, put some seed down.

I like to put a little bit of covering over mine, like a good garden compost or something of that nature, just to help hold a little bit of moisture. That was a-- I was very curious where this season was going to go, seeing the turf so stressed so early in the season. I'll be honest with you, I've been really surprised by how resilient a lot of the stands have been. It seems like a lot of them bounced back, but people who had to seed this spring, if you didn't have irrigation, you probably have a pretty good weed patch right now.

Doug: Besides those spots that we have, you said rake them up. Now, when you say rake them up, is it a springy rake, or is it like that tined garden rake?

Zane: I call that a hard rake, yes. Your leaf rake that's more springy. I like to use a hard rake, something that you're really going to be able to get in there and scratch the surface, loosen up the top half inch of soil. You don't have to go crazy, but you don't want those plants sitting on a hard pan surface. One, they're going to easily be washed away, potentially by heavy rainfall and it's hard for them to get that first root to penetrate down.

I like to always loosen the surface, put my seed down, and then you want to just lightly pat it into the ground to make sure you get good soil-to-seed contact. Then again, this isn't necessary, but you could use straw. I often like to try to use some type of garden compost for stuff like that, some of those dark good organic matter.

Doug: That's to keep that seed moist, is that the idea?

Zane: Yes, and if you're doing this in the spring, if you can get something that's brown, that also helps to retain some heat. It serves two effects. I mostly do it, Doug, to cover the seed and hold moisture.

Doug: If I have bigger areas, is it any different?

Zane: Depends how big of an area, but yes, bigger areas, you start doing 4,000 or 5,000 square foot areas, composting is not going to be as advantageous so it's going to be more difficult. That's where straw can come into play. If you're doing slopes, that's where straw blankets are very useful. I'm a big fan of straw blankets whenever you start to get areas of slopes or areas where there's a lot of wind.

I often see along roadways, like the Devil's Strip, the Eve Strip there between the sidewalk and the road. If you live somewhere where cars travel fast, that's a good place to use straw blankets as well, keep your straw from being blown all over. Again, straw is there strictly to help retain moisture. If you're going to plant turf grasses, I can't emphasize this enough, that water and irrigating properly might be the most important thing you do.

It definitely starts with the seed bed prep, but you can do the best seed bed prep, and if you don't irrigate it, you can end up with poor results. If you have the ability to do some form of irrigation, and like for me, I just did this at my house. I lost a few spots in my yard, so I scratched them out. These are just maybe, areas that are three, four feet in diameter. Just water them with my garden hose. I don't even get my sprinkler out. I just water it in the morning, water it in the evening and that stuff was up in seven days. That was turf type, tall fescue.

Doug: Do you live in a neighborhood where people can see your lawn?

Zane: This is in the backyard. I do, and people judge me pretty carefully, Doug. The people that know what I do are always-- they're quick to scrutinize. I have four daughters and so I live by that 80/20 rule. I do the 20% effort that gets me to 80% bang for my buck. People would think that I would have a crazy lawn. It's nice but I know what it takes to make a perfect lawn and I'm not willing to do that. [laughs]

Doug: Let's go back to the straw. First, straw blanket. Explain exactly what that is.

Zane: Yes, so a straw blanket, they can come in different forms, but they're typically straw that is woven into a degrading plastic. It looks like a plastic mat. The straw is woven into it and then it's sold in rolls. Usually in 50-foot rolls or 100-foot rolls. They're big. They're usually 10 to 8 feet wide, and you would just basically roll this roll-out like it was a roll of carpet, and then you have staples.

You can get metal staples that will just degrade in the soil, or they make ones that are made out of wood that will degrade. You do have to somehow staple it down. If you just roll the straw blanket out and don't staple it down, you get a good wind event, it'll just lift that straw blanket up. Then they make other straw blankets that are made out of other degradable material, more like a straw weave, something that isn't plastic.

For people that aren't interested in putting degradable plastic into their lawn, they do make other, like Futura is another degradable mat. You have to be careful. Definitely, I have seen issues at times with straw blankets, particularly Doug, when it comes to purchasing sod. One thing that the sod producers will do is they sometimes will lay this plastic netting out on the sod as they seed it.

You can picture they've prepped this field, they seed it, and then they lay this blanket down. The reason they do that is so that when they cut the sod, it holds together good that it's got a good sod strength but the problem is if the netting doesn't break down, come back in and you aerify it can get in your equipment, so on and so forth. Yes, straw blankets are really useful. Definitely, on slopes, they're a go-to piece. That's a place I use them regularly is on when we seed slopes.

Doug: When I'm doing my normal straw after the grass comes up, do I need to rake it out of there or do I just keep cutting and it decomposes? What's the best thing to do?

Zane: Depends on how thick you put it down. If you didn't put it down real heavy, I like to leave it. It will eventually break down, but I often see where the homeowner will put it on really heavy and they just need to-- once you get those plants up and you've mowed them a couple of times, if you can get in there with your leaf rake and your springy leaf rake and just gently pull some of that straw out, that will be beneficial.

I've been to places, Doug, where years later there was still a dense mat of straw down there underneath the canopy, which can create problems of its own. You don't need a ton of it. I always tell people that when you straw it, when you look down, you should maybe be able to see about 25% of the soil. It doesn't need to coat every inch of the soil. Again, it's just there to help preserve some moisture.

Doug: I guess like other homeowners when I'm putting mine down, I'm so worried that that seed is not going to stay moist. That's what I think we do. We overdo it on the straw just because you're going to all that work, you want it to sprout, especially here in the fall, if you are doing it in September and you're getting to where it's colder and it doesn't sprout, so that's why I think homeowners and myself, we put down way too much straw.

Zane: Hey, if a little's good, more is better kind of scenario for sure, but the only challenge of seeding this time of year, like Ohio, September is actually one of our driest months. When you look at our actual annual precipitation, September can be a dry month and so don't ever underestimate the ability to just put a little bit of water. Again when you're trying to keep a moist seed bed, that's all you're doing is just trying to keep that very upper surface moist.

It's not like irrigating turf where you're trying to get this deep water to penetrate inches down into the profile. Little bit just enough to moisten the surface is all you're trying to do when you're irrigating recently seeded areas.

Doug: I want to get into a little bit of fall maintenance. What is the first thing that comes to mind for you? I got a nice-looking lawn out there. I seeded a couple of patches. What else should I be doing?

Zane: This is a good time of year. If you've never taken a soil test to get a soil test completed. That's a pretty stock answer, but it's the truth, Doug. If you've never had a soil test done, then you really don't know what type of fertilizer you should be applying. You might find that you've got adequate amounts of phosphorous potassium in your soil and you really just need to focus on the nitrogen component or you might find that you have some really acidic pH and this is a good time of the year to be liming.

I'll tell you what I find most often is people who lime regularly and I look at their soil pHs and they're up above seven, so they don't need to be applying any lime to their lawns, but they just do it continuously just as a standard practice. Then when I look at a soil test, it's like, no, we no longer need to be liming. In fact, you start to drive the pH up, you understand you can start to encounter other issues.

A lot of our soilborne pathogens like summer patch, they thrive in these higher pH soils. At this time of year, good time to collect a soil test and then fall fertilization, if there was one time of the year if you're someone that says, you know what? I don't want to be fertilizing my yard three, four, five times a year, I just want to do it one time. Now is the time. The month of September, October, this is the time of year to put down fertilization again because the plant is really focusing on sending a lot of its energy down.

Fertilizing in the spring, they're all about producing shoots. They're trying to create a canopy so that they can crowd out the plants around them. This time of the year is all about surviving the winter. They're prepping and sending a lot of reserves down to fill up a strong crown, strong root structure. This is the time of year, Doug, where I like to use readily available nitrogen sources.

Selecting a fertilizer that maybe the first number is somewhere between 25 to 15 and we don't need a ton of slow-release components to it. There are different thrills, but for the most part, I really focus on that nitrogen number this time of year. My profession has spent a lot of time here trying to understand what's going on in the fall. That big practice was to apply a winterizer. You've probably heard of this. A winterizer fertilizer.

If you look, usually those fertilizers have a lot of potassium in them. For the listeners on a bag of fertilizer, the three numbers represent nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. That last number you would often see would be elevated for a fertilizer that was marketed as a winterizer, but there has been a lot of data that has been coming out that has shown some turf grass diseases, particularly snow mold can be much more prevalent under high potassium fertilization in the late fall.

Why that's happening? There's some different theories about, but it's just another reason to question, do we need to apply potassium to the lawn if the soil test says that it's adequate? I'm under the assumption that no, if these nutrients are adequate in the soil, then we don't necessarily need to be applying them.

Doug: Talk about the importance of following the label instructions on how much fertilizer to put on because you know how people are and it's the same with the straw. It's like, hey if a half bag is good, a whole bag must be great, even though that's more than the lawn needs.

Zane: Yes. This is where you need a little bit of training to be able to interpret these numbers. We, as professional perfect turf grass managers, we usually speak in the pounds of nitrogen per 1000 square feet. We'll just focus on one element for right now. When you look at a bag of fertilizer, that's going to tell you the pounds of products. The actual amount of fertilizer to apply per 1000 square feet, but we as turf grass managers, we don't speak on it in the pounds of product because all these fertilizers have different analysis.

We like to speak in a common language and we would speak on the pounds of nitrogen per 1000 square feet.

A good rule of thumb is to never apply more than 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet. The way that we do this calculation is we do what's called the rate over the analysis. Let's just for the listener's sake, let's say we have a bag of 2,500 and we want to apply that at 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet. 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet, that's going to give you an immediate greeting response and it's going to stimulate some growth.

This is on the upper end of the rates. This would be a good rate for someone who's got a pretty thin stand of turf, maybe the yard was really beat up, it needs to recover. You're going to elevate the rate a little bit so you can stimulate some growth and recovery. We want to use that formula rate over analysis. I want my rate to be 1.0, 1 pound of nitrogen over my analysis, which was 25.

This would be 0.25, 25% of that bag is nitrogen. 1/0.25 would tell us that you have to apply 4 pounds of that 25 00 per 1000 square feet. For a homeowner, you need to have a rough idea of how many square feet you have in your yard. There are a lot of services online now, you can jump on Google Maps, you can trace polygons and it will spit out what the square footage is.

I often will just paste them. I will just paste a lawn and get the square footage. If you don't know your square footage, then you might not know how much to apply. If I go over to Doug's house and I see he's got a 10,000 square foot lawn and he wants to apply that 25 00, at 1 pound per 1000, I know he's going to put four pounds of product down for every thousand square feet. He's got 10,000 square feet in his yard. He's going to need 40 pounds of fertilizer.

If Doug spreads 40 pounds and only gets half the yard done, we know you've put out a pretty high rate. That's a lot of math for the listeners I apologize for that but really, Doug, it comes down to looking at the analysis, looking at the rate you want to apply, and then knowing what the square footage is of your yard.

Doug: Back to the analysis you're talking about there, where do I get that done? What is the best place to get a soil test that's going to give me everything that I need for my state?

Zane: For where your listeners are, I certainly would look to the Penn State Soil Testing Lab. Pretty much any land grant institute is going to have a soil testing lab. They usually have instructions for how to collect the sample, package the sample up, and send them in. Sometimes they use private labs.

Doug: I'd be Penn State. You would probably be Ohio State. Every state has their extension office. Is that the best place to get it?

Zane: Definitely starting at your extension office. They're going to know, one, does my land grant university do soil testing? If not, they're going to direct you to a lab that they would recommend. Certainly starting at the local extension office. There are private labs too that can certainly do that for you. A quick call to a county extension agent is going to let where to start.

Then for collecting the samples, you need to make sure, if you're going to go through the effort to collect a soil test, that you need to make sure that you get a quality sample. I can't tell you how many times that we get samples in and they're not quality. The way you want to sample a yard is you want to take about 10 to 12 random samples from across the property. I use a soil probe.

For someone at home, maybe who doesn't have access to soil probe, I would use a small garden trowel you would use for planting flowers. You want to sample down to a depth of about 3 to 4 inches. There's no reason to go past the 4 inch mark. Most of the turf grass roots are going to be growing right in the upper parts of the surface. If you were doing this for soil testing for a tree or a landscape bed, plants whose roots grow far into the soil profile, then maybe you would sample at a deeper depth.

Doug: Zane, believe it or not, we're out of time for our first of two segments. As always, we've got to do a two-parter because there's so much great information. We'll end it there and then be back next week with more great information. Thanks again.

Zane: Yes, thank you, Doug.

Doug: It's always great to talk with Zane. We've still got a lot to cover next week. Did you get all that math for fertilizing? Just listen back. It's actually pretty easy. Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oster. Do me a big favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss an episode. If you have an idea for a show or maybe a comment, send me an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.