Talking Trees with Davey Tree

Top Five Lawn Mistakes + Fall Lawn Care PART ONE

The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 4 Episode 36

In part one of this two-part episode, Zane Raudenbush, turf and herbicide specialist within the Davey Institute, discusses the five common mistakes homeowners may be making with their lawns and what they can do instead.

In this episode we cover:  

  • Overview of common lawn mistakes (:58)
  • How summer weather has impacted lawns (1:59)
  • Improper mowing techniques (2:23)
  • Frequency of cutting a lawn (5:04)
  • Best safety practices with lawn tools (7:26)
  • Mechanical damage from ride-on lawn mowers (8:33)
  • Overuse of in-ground sprinkler systems (11:18) (14:07)
  • Importance of examining soil (14:51) (16:52)
  • Importance of recognizing the different areas of your lawn (17:52)

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 maintenance tips, read our blog, Seasonal Guide to Lawn Care.

To learn more about soil maintenance practices, read our blog, How to Fix Oversaturated Soil. 

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
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!

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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 more.

Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. He's back. Our favorite turfgrass and herbicide specialist for the Davey Institute, Zane Raudenbush, is going to talk to us today about the five biggest mistakes we make with our lawns. Zane, how are you?

Zane Raudenbush: I'm doing good, Doug. Thanks for having me back. It's good to see you.

Doug: Always great to talk to you. As usual, this will be part one of a two-part episode, because when Zane and I get going, we talked for 20 minutes before we even started recording.

Zane: It's always a good time.

Doug: Yes, so let's start talking about, with our lawns, some of the mistakes that we're making out there.

Zane: Yes, it's a timely topic because at Davey, we have an in-house diagnostic lab where our people in the field can submit samples. It's funny to see after being at Davey for three and a half years, the ebbs and flows of you start to see the same stuff at about the same times of year.

Right now, the samples that are coming in are just from turfgrass species that are tired, have succumbed to the heat and drought of summer, a lot of weedy grass species. These five things are timely because they're often what lead to the decline of turf when it's stressed.

Sometimes you get away with these improper practices when things are good, like in the spring when everything's growing vigorously. When you get into the stressful times, that's when doing these things improperly really can affect the quality of the turfgrass stands.

Doug: It's been very stressful with not a lot of rain and a high heat summer. Lawns have definitely taken a beating.

Zane: Yes. July and August have been really tough in our area. I can't speak for maybe listeners that are outside the Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio area, but it's been dry. Things really went downhill pretty quickly.

These five things are maybe in no particular order, but the first one I want to talk about is improper mowing practices. This is one, Doug, that I see as the most frequent offender. Now, for your listeners, mowing is the most common practice. It's the thing that you're going to do most frequently to your lawn.

You think about the other stuff, fertilizing, weed control, and aerification, you're going to mow your yard 25 to 35 times a year. If you're doing it improperly, that could be a repetitive stress. When I say improper mowing, there's a few things. The number one offender I see is improper mowing height.

There sometimes can be this desire to really mow the turf short and get that really manicured golf course look or sports field. What people don't appreciate is those are grasses specifically selected for those low mowing heights.

They're using certain pieces of equipment and they often too don't have the competition piece that we have in the landscape of trees and houses. We generally want to be mowing the turf close to three inches.

It's somewhat dictated by species. If you have Kentucky bluegrass, that's one that can be maintained a little bit tighter. Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass, two and a half to three inches. Things like tall fescue, they thrive at mowing heights of three to four inches. They can really be mowed a lot higher.

The benefit of mowing higher is you're going to have less weeds. That's well documented in the science that you mow shorter, more sunlight reaches the soil surface. You're just going to have more crabgrass, broadleaf weeds.

The big one, Doug, I see is a lot of these perennial stoloniferous grassy weeds are more of a problem at shorter mowing heights. For the listeners, stolons, those are plant structures that grow above the surface. They're lateral stems and they allow those plants to spread.

Bentgrasses are stoloniferous, rough stalk bluegrass, nimblewill, Bermuda grass. These are plants that will just keep creeping. The patches will get bigger and bigger each year and they really thrive when people mow the yard too short.

One of the most common things I see people can do is just take that mower and bump it up a notch. You'll be really pleased with the results. The other piece too is the turfgrass root system, the rooting depth is directly proportional to the mowing height.

If you mow your grass shorter, you're going to have a more shallow root system. You mow your grass higher, you're going to have a deeper root system. In the summer months, you want those plants to have a nice deep root system if possible.

Doug: Does frequency play into this, too?

Zane: Absolutely. The frequency of cut is another frequent offender, no pun intended, to [unintelligible 00:05:15] quality. Some people are like, "I mow it once a week. That's it. Doesn't matter what's going on."

In general, we want to try to remove no more than one third of the leaf tissue from any one cutting. Really, in the spring, when the grass is growing vigorously, you could mow your grass every four to five days. You really should.

If you're trying not to violate the one-third rule, not removing more than one-third of leaf material, you would need to mow every four to five days in the spring months. Then you get into the summer. If you're in a non-irrigated situation like my yard, I went almost three weeks, Doug, without mowing my front yard. It just was not growing.

Mowing it would have actually been a stress at that time. Don't get on the calendar-based mowing schedule if possible. Really, mowing frequency should mirror the growth of the grass. When the grass is growing vigorously, you need to mow more often. When the grass growth slows down, you can reduce the mowing frequency.

Doug: When we had that period of time where we didn't have any rain and it was really hot, that was my excuse. I'm just like, "Honey, you can't mow the lawn. Zane says that this is going to put stress on it." Now I've got some rain. That's one of my jobs today, Zane.

Zane: Get it cleaned up. It does look good. It's funny, you look around my neighborhood, and again, none of the yards are irrigated, but a lot of people will still be out there mowing the lawns when they're clearly drought-stressed.

You can see now that we've had some rain, that my yard's really bounced back quickly. Some of those lawns are struggling a little bit still. Yes, proper mowing height, proper mowing frequency.

I don't have this one on the list, but we'll throw it in there. That's just a good quality of cut, making sure that you got a sharp blade, that your mower deck, if you're using a mulching mower, the underside of the deck is properly cleaned out.

If it's just gummed up with grass, you'll see that you don't get a very good vacuum on the mower. It can be a poor quality of cut. Just proper mowing practices. Again, it's one that, for some people, it's a chore, but if you're going to do it, do it right. Proper height, proper frequency, and a good quality of cut.

Doug: Let's just talk safety real quick. If you don't know what you're doing, just take that whole mower into the shop and let them do this job, sharpen that blade and everything, because you have to be very careful.

Zane: Yes, I cannot emphasize that enough. If you're someone that has never sharpened a mower blade before and you don't have the tools, it can be difficult, one, to get the pin out that holds the mower blade on. They need to be sharpened and then the blade needs to be balanced.

If you take a bunch of material off one side of the blade, you'll see you throw it out of balance. That can create a lot of vibration, can work things loose. Know where your limits are. This is why they're small engine mechanics. If you just get it there, they'll do a real nice job for you.

Typically I like to make sure I start off the year with a sharp mower blade. Then you actually cut a lot of grass in the spring, when you think about total material. Once we get through the spring months, I like to get that blade freshened up so that during the stressful parts of the summer, I've got a nice sharp blade on there.

Doug: That sounds good. What's next on the list?

Zane: The second one is, I see this a lot on a lot of our properties where there's trees, is mechanical damage, Doug, from ride-on mowers. This is somewhat related to mowing, but particularly people that maybe have a mowing service.

I see a lot of times where there is just mechanical damage from where those people are turning mowers or yourself are turning mowers in the same spots all the time. That isn't always avoidable, right? Just depending on the shape of your landscape, you may find that you're turning in the same spots all the time.

Where this really rears its head is in the shade. I often get called into properties where there's shade. Again, at Davey Tree, we're often managing the trees. Now there's inherently shade on the property and grass is grown in the shade pretty intolerant of any mechanical stress.

You want a recipe to really have a thin lawn? It's to turn a zero-turn mower in shaded environments, is a really good scenario to really have the turf thinned out. Some things you can do in those particular environments, maybe you're in a position where you could walk mow those areas or be very careful about the pattern that you're mowing in there.

Maybe there's a way to mow it where you don't have to make as many turns. Maybe striping that area in the shade that nobody sees really isn't necessary and it's just creating more damage, or it maybe gets mowed every other time.

That's one thing I also observe is those areas in the shade often don't put on a lot of growth and the full sun areas, yes, they can get mowed every time. Maybe the area in the shade gets mowed every other time.

I often see a lot of thin turf is directly caused by the use of ride-on mowing equipment where there's poor turning techniques or they're just going in the same spots every single time. I recognize we're not all in a position to walk mow our yards. If you're going to use that equipment, make sure that you're having good turning technique and good patterns.

Doug: That's a good one. That's one that I wouldn't think of. You see those, especially right across the street from me, they have a commercial company that comes in.

Those things are moving fast. They just want to get done, and you're right, just doing the same pattern and turning the same spot. You can see it on the lawn, what's going on there.

Zane: Yes, you can clearly see every place where they've turned, where they drag that inner wheel, and you often can see the ring around every tree, where their both tire marks are. Those are little things, but for people who are really particular about their lawn, that can be a stress that the plants can't recover from.

Doug: What's number three? I like this podcast, Zane, because all I have to do is just say, "Okay, what's number three?"

Zane: You're liking this format?

Doug: Yes. I actually got up, went and got some coffee and came back, and you were done talking.

Zane: I like it too, because normally you're just firing them out of a can and I'm like, "What's coming next?" I had a little time to prepare. The third one probably doesn't apply to all your viewers, but it will apply to some of them.

This is related to the samples we're getting into the lab now, is people who have in-ground sprinkler systems, Doug, I often see that those are overused.

It's not the opposite. It's not that they apply them too infrequently, it's actually the opposite, where people with in-ground sprinkler systems, a common trend that I see is that they're used too often, where they might be, during periods of drought, they're watering every single day.

There is only a few scenarios in turfgrass management where you would water every single day. That's typically going to be when you're trying to grow in seed. For an established lawn, I would argue every third day is probably plentiful.

What happens when you start watering every single day? There needs to be air in the soil. When you think about a soil, 50% of it is pore space. You think of some volume of soil, 50% of that would actually be space. In that space should be about half water, half air.

When you're watering all the time, all that pore space just begins to be filled with water. There's no oxygen in the root zone. That can lead to a bunch of problems. Bad microbial activity can cause a lot of root decay. It's a really good environment for a lot of different root-infecting fungi.

That's what we're getting into the lab right now, is a lot of Kentucky bluegrass lawns are coming in with a disease called summer patch. It's a root disease, really only goes after Kentucky bluegrass, and it's pretty devastating.

It's one that almost every time we see, we have a submittal form that they're irrigated lawns. If you're someone that has an irrigation system, don't use the set it and forget it mentality. Really pay attention to what is going on with the weather forecast.

They make a lot of these Wi-Fi units that can go between your controller. With a phone app, you can be programming or turning it on and off if you're not there. Don't underestimate the amount of damage that can be caused by actually overwatering. Many people think underwatering. I'd rather see you underwater than overwater. I can always put more down, but we can't take it back.

Doug: It drives me nuts when I see sprinklers running during the rain. That happens all the time because it's set it and forget it. As we know, that's not a good thing for your turf.

Zane: No, and we've really reached a pretty cool time, Doug, where most of these companies are making in-ground soil moisture sensors that can communicate directly with the controller. They won't let you water if they see that there's adequate soil moisture.

There's a lot of tools. If you're someone who's really into your yard and you have an in-ground sprinkler system, there are some tools that can really help you take your quality to the next level.

Doug: Okay, are we up for number four?

Zane: We are up for number four. Another common theme that I see is that people don't address the root cause of why the turf is struggling. We're quick to want to put more fertilizer down, put more seed down, but we're really not addressing what the true problem is. Most of the time, that's directly what's under your feet, and that's the soil.

My yard has been here for 40 years. It's a well-established lawn, but some of you might be living in new developments where the soil was recently disturbed. Maybe you didn't necessarily get the highest quality topsoil pushback over your property. That's going to cause the plant material to struggle.

That's what can make things look chlorotic and thin, require more inputs. You have to get the soil fixed, and you don't know that unless you look. Conduct a soil test and then get some recommendations.

That could involve amending the soil with different amendments, whether it's compost or the type of fertilizers you're going to apply, may require aeration. Then if you have a sprinkler system, again, not overwatering. Overwatering is a great way to help compact the soil and just have decreased rooting.

One thing, Doug, that's beautiful about what I do is turfgrass plants are like natural soil amendments, right? They're producing all these roots that are going down into the soil. Those roots are going to break down, turn into food for the microbes.

Really, with a little bit of time, a turfgrass stand is going to make huge improvements to the quality of the soil. If you can get the plant material going, particularly turfgrass, they're just going to be organic matter factories, adding organic matter into your soil. Organic matter is what microbes are going to break down into nutrients for your plants to then take up in the soil.

Doug: Zane, I love that one because when you think about it, that's true for almost everything that we grow. The soil is the key in improving it. I'm always telling people that about their lawns. You know how it is. You go out there and you look at it. You dig down in there even before you do a soil test and you're like, "Whoa." They didn't do you any favors here when they threw the seed over this.

Zane: No. Again, you could keep throwing good money on top of bad. If you don't really fix that piece, that's a hard pill sometimes to swallow because it's invasive to fix it. That's really what it takes to fix some of these areas, is to amend the soil.

You fix the soil and you really are going to be addressing the root cause, no pun intended, of the problem. Number four for me is not addressing the root cause of the problem, which many times is just poor quality soil.

Doug: That's a good one. Number five, what is it?

Zane: Number five, last but not least, is somewhat related to number four. I often observe where people want to treat their entire yard the same. You can imagine that your yard has little unique spots that are different. It could be different. I often observe that the soil is one thing that can be very different.

Maybe a customer says, "The front yard looks great, but my backyard looks terrible. What are you doing or not doing?" It's like, let's look at the soil. Up front, you have really nice dark material. We go in the back, it's very light in color, high clay content, very little top soil. That's one thing.

Then also just the shade is another piece where maybe one part of your yard really receives a lot of direct sunlight and another part of your yard may not receive any direct sunlight. If you have a part of your property that does not receive any direct sunlight, that will be an area that's very hard to maintain quality turf. It's an area that you have to keep traffic off of, really requires specific grasses like the fine fescues.

If you're someone who's really into your yard and you've got mature plant material, trees and things of that nature, you're going to have to treat different parts of your property differently. You can't treat it all the same. If you do, you will have different quality for sure.

Doug: Zane, believe it or not, we're out of time for part one. That went by so quickly. Like I said, that's the easiest podcast I've ever hosted in my life, Zane.

Zane: Hey, I'm glad I could be of service.

Doug: All right. For part two, I'm going to pick your brain about all the things we should be doing in the fall for our lawn. That's something that you've schooled me on before, that I had-- It changed my whole outlook on dealing with lawns and how important our fall jobs are.

Zane, again, as always, it was great to talk to you. Next week, it's going to be all about everything we should be doing for fall for our lawns. Thanks again.

Zane: Thank you, Doug.

Doug: I love talking to Zane. You can tell, I'm sure. Join us next week for part two. Also, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host, Doug Oster, and I want you to do me a big favor. Subscribe to this podcast so you'll never miss a show.

If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, we've got two ways for you to get ahold of us. Send us an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message.

Your ideas might be on a future podcast. We'd love to hear from you. As always, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

[00:21:01] [END OF AUDIO]