Now is the ideal time to improve your lawns for the fall which will give you a head start on spring of 2015. The following is a short list of things to be done to improve any lawn.
Aerate. Aeration is always good as it helps to breakdown thatch that can promote damaging insects. It helps to turn in organic matter into the soil, improving moisture absorption and oxygen penetration to the roots, it also improves fertility retention, along with improving the physical soil structure allowing grass plant roots to spread and grass to fill in bare areas.
Over seed. Spreading some new seed on any lawn helps to increase the genetic diversity of the existing turf grass improving things like disease and insect resistance, drought tolerance, its color and fill in bare areas before spring. For larger bare areas use products like Penn Mulch to help get good seed to soil contact.
Apply gypsum. Gypsum helps to break the molecular bonds that hold compacted soils together and when used in combination with products like M-roots spectacular results can be achieved even on the most devastated lawns. Gypsum also adds calcium without changing soil pH.
Broad leaf weed control. If broad leaf weeds have been an issue NOW is the time to take them out with products like Lock-Up or Trimec. The days are becoming shorter signaling these weeds to send carbohydrates down to their roots to prepare for winter. If you apply an herbicide now you will get really good results as a large percentage of the herbicide will make it to the root eliminating the weed from your lawn. Remember to apply these products when weeds are actively growing and to apply when damp so the product sticks to the leaf of the weed.
Insect control. Its not to late to control devastating insects like chinch bug, grubs, sod webworm and others using products like Acelepryn, Dylox, and Bifenthrin.
Do a soil test. Doing a soil test is always money well spent. It will tell you if you need lime and how much lime to apply. Anything else is at best an educated guess and can actually cause adverse problems that can be costly to fix and make the lawn perform poorly... quite the opposite of what you are trying to do in the first place!
Iron. Consider iron supplements or fertilizers with iron to improve color and carbohydrate manufacturing to help build roots. Iron is involved in the process for making chlorophyll. So fall fertilizer and others like 10-20-15 with 1% Iron and 9-2-5 with 6% Iron can really give your lawns an edge getting through the winter.
As always read, understand, and follow all product labels and instructions and if you have questions give me a call!
