Rejuvenate Your Lawn This Fall
What can you do to improve your landscape after summer heat and stress? We offer tips to growing gorgeous landscapes.
Summer is coming to a close and fall is only days away. With temperatures cooling, now is the time to keep an eye on fungal diseases in the lawn and relieve summer heat stress. Smart watering, mowing and weed control can help you get a stressed lawn back on track.
Heal your heat stressed landscape, and soil, to grow better plants!
Look out for gray mold, brown patch and Take-All Root Rot disease. What is Take-All Root Rot? See our short video to learn how to identify it in your lawn, what causes it and how to treat it.
When to water?
While the cooler temperatures feel great, couple them with the extra humidity we’ve been experiencing and lawn fungal diseases can thrive. If you’ve been watering your lawn in the evening, you’ll definitely want to switch to early morning watering to cut down on fungal issues. Watering in the morning will allow leave blades to dry before the cooler night comes on. Wet leaves at night encourages fungal disease to set in.
How much to water?
Now that the overall temperatures are cooling, lawns will lose less moisture. That means you can start cutting back on your supplemental watering. Watering the lawn once per week is sufficient. If you have an automatic sprinkler system, now would be a good time to schedule an irrigation audit to ensure everything is working properly before we head into winter.
Revive the Soil
Summer heat and drought are tough on our soils. Intense heat, compaction and less water all impact soils by killing beneficial organisms and depleting organic matter. Fall is a great time to rejuvenate the soil by aerating compacted soil to reduce water runoff and improve air and water flow to roots. Adding organic compost and earthworm castings will increase microbial activity which aids in plant roots receiving the nutrients they need directly from the soil. The healthier your soil, the stronger your plants.
Spring weed control
Cooling fall temperatures also mean that cool-season weeds are germinating. These weeds will grow from now through winter and be quite the nuisance come spring when they really take off. The best way to control spring weeds is to prevent them now. Pre-emergents can be put down in lawns and garden beds. Keeping weeds in the lawn mowed before they ever go to seed will also help you naturally reduce the spread of weeds. Pull and spot treat any weeds that have already sprouted to keep them from growing and spreading.
Questions about your fall lawn and how to revive it? Email questions through our site.
Soils Alive,lawn care,soil,fungal disease,watering
