The fall season is a great time to put a little work into your lawn before the winter snowfall. Autumn turf tasks include targeting broadleaf weeds, like dandelions, and reseeding shady areas.
There’s a sweet spot for lawn chores like seeding, said Doug Soldat, a professor and turfgrass extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If you wait too long, you run the risk of a hard frost coming and killing some of the seeds that you planted,” Soldat said.
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Soldat joined WPR’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to talk about what you can do this fall to set your turfgrass up for success.
The following was edited for brevity and clarity.
Larry Meiller: We had a pretty humid summer. What effect does that have on our lawns?
Doug Soldat: We saw more lawn diseases than I can remember in quite some time. It was humid. It was hot. We didn’t get much relief in most parts of Wisconsin from the rain, and we saw all kinds of diseases that we normally don’t even see at all. Or if we do see them, they’re in smaller, isolated areas.
LM: How destructive are those?
DS: They’re really not. I think that’s the good news here. We do see occasional diseases, but very rarely will these kill the crown of the plant, which is the growing point.
You might have brown spots for a while, but as soon as the weather conditions return to normal, which we’re seeing right now, with a little bit drier, cooler nights, you get regrowth. This is the perfect time for recovery from the damage that may have occurred from diseases.
LM: When is it necessary to reseed?
DS: One of the great things about the main grasses that we have in Wisconsin, Kentucky bluegrass and in fine fescues, is that they can recover. They can regrow into spots where they’ve thinned out.
If you have a full-sun grass, like Kentucky bluegrass in a really shaded area, that’s an opportunity to reseed to a fine fescue that’s more tolerant of the shade. But if it’s just regular wear and tear, or like a disease that we just talked about that’s created some damage, just proper lawn care, irrigation and fertilization can bring that density back up without the need for reseeding. It’s kind of a case-by-case basis.
LM: And how do you prepare the lawn?
DS: One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with seeding is that they’ll just put the seed right on top of the soil with very little preparation. The No. 1 reason for failure is poor seed-to-soil contact.
You want to work up the soil, remove the dead vegetation, loosen it up to an inch or two, plant that seed, rake the seed in to bury it about a quarter inch or so, and then step it down really nice. And that seed-to-soil contact is going to give you the good conditions the grass needs for germination.
LM: Weed control: Let’s talk about that for a minute. Should we use it in the fall? And if so, what should be applied?
DS: Right now is when they’re most susceptible to the herbicides. They’ll translocate the herbicide to the roots.
In our research studies, we get the most effective control when we apply around the first frost, when some of the leaves are changing color in October.
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