Taking care of your lawn in early spring is key to having a healthy yard all season long. Best practices for building and maintaining a strong, resilient lawn while optimizing natural resources include core aeration, regular applications of Revive and humates, and top dressing with organic material, mowing at the right height and interval and watering the lawn correctly.
In this blog, we’ll focus on building a strong foundation for your grass. Subsequent blogs will address mowing and watering guidelines.
While Kentucky Blue grass is the predominate turf grass in our area, many lawns are combinations of blue grass, Perennial Rye grass and Turf Type Tall Fescue. These are considered “cool season” grasses because they thrive in the spring and early summer and in the fall. In the heat of summer, these grasses tend to go dormant; growth slows down and color may fade and there is a tendency to use more water to try and keep the grass looking good. The time to mitigate the effects of summer stress on the lawn is now, when the grass is going into an active growth stage.
Many lawn problems can be traced back to poor soil conditions including compacted, heavy clay content, poor water penetration and shallow root systems. One of the best ways to fix these issues with your lawn is to aerate twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall. Aerating twice a year will begin to break up heavy clay soils, reduce lawn thatch, allow water, air and nutrients to get down to the roots, help build stronger roots and make your lawn more stress resistant.
Core aeration or “plugging” as it’s often called, uses a machine to extract a plug from your lawn, leaving the remains on top of the grass as it goes. You can leave these cores in place. They will break down over time. If they bother you, rake them up and toss them in the compost pile.
Core aeration should not be confused with power raking. Sometimes called dethatching, power raking removes the material that builds up on top of the soil. It does nothing to help build the soil your grass is growing in. Power raking can be destructive and should not be employed; aerate instead.
For small lawns, consider a hand aerator such as this one. It’s a handy tool to have for spot treating chronically compacted areas.
Once the lawn has been aerated, the next step is to work on improving the soil your grass is growing in. We recommend a combination of humate, organic material and surfactants applied individually two to three times a year, every season.
Begin by adding a humate-based soil conditioner. Humates improve soil structure, strengthen utilization of fertilizers and encourage root development. Bigger roots mean the lawn is under less stress and capable of handling summer heat better.
In addition, top dressing your lawn with Earth Essentials Sheep, Peat and Compost and earth worm castings will add organic material and build soil quality.
Locally produced Revive acts as a surfactant to improve water penetration and utilization, reduce soil compaction and strengthen nutrient availability.
These products should be applied individually two to three times a year, starting with ferti•lome HuMic, then Revive, then organic material. Allow ten to fourteen days between each application and be sure to water in each product thoroughly.
To create the optimal growing conditions, whether it’s the vegetable garden or the lawn, building good soil is a continuous process.
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