Mike Hogan
| Special to The Columbus Dispatch
Improve your lawn health this fall
Dan Reinhart of DR Power Equipment shares the best tips to care for your lawn during the fall season as the leaves pile up on the ground.
If I had told you six weeks ago that your lawn would be completely brown and the soil would be as hard as rock in a few weeks, you likely would have questioned that prediction given the wet weather and lush green grass we had earlier this summer.
Yet, here we are, just six weeks later, and those are the exact conditions we are experiencing in central Ohio.
August was one of the driest Augusts on record since 1895, with most locations in Greater Columbus receiving less than half an inch of precipitation for the entire month. September hasn’t been much better with less than one-fourth of an inch of precipitation reported in most locations.
While September is typically the best time of year for homeowners to invest some time and sweat into improving their lawns to get them ready for winter and next spring’s flush of green growth, many of these tasks may need to be put on hold thanks to the dry weather. Unless your lawn is irrigated, cool season turf grasses have stopped growing and gone completely dormant.
Postpone reseeding turfgrass
While many homeowners like to reseed turfgrass in the spring, the ideal time to reseed turfgrass in Ohio is in late summer and early fall, from Aug. 15 through Sept. 30. This is because soil moisture levels and air temperatures during the fall are typically more conducive to germination and root development of seedlings before the soil freezes than they are in late spring and summer.
However, because of the current dry conditions, we do not recommend reseeding turfgrass right now, unless supplemental irrigation can be provided from now through late fall. There simply is not enough soil moisture present in Greater Columbus for turfgrass seed to germinate and develop root systems before the soil freezes.
An additional challenge is that turfgrass plants in non-irrigated lawns are brown and dormant right now, making it impossible to know exactly where reseeding will be needed. Once soil moisture returns, many of these dormant grass plants will start to regrow and green up, but some plants, or even entire lawns, may not survive if they were stressed in some way before soil moisture levels dried up last month.
Consider drought-tolerant species
Whenever soil moisture improves and you reseed, likely early next spring, you may want to consider planting turfgrass species which are more tolerant to drought and hot weather, especially given the weather pattern we have experienced two years in a row. While many lawns in Ohio consist primarily of Kentucky bluegrass, seeding a mixture of bluegrass and fescues will result in a turfgrass stand which will be more resilient to drought and hot, dry conditions.
Varieties of both tall fescue and fine fescue are more drought tolerant than bluegrass varieties. Tall fescue varieties are more resilient than fine fescue varieties in high-traffic areas of the lawn. You can review the performance of different turfgrass species and varieties online at buckeyeturf.osu.edu/turfgrass-establishment-series. This website also contains fact sheets, videos, blog posts and other resources related to all aspects of establishing and maintaining a high-quality lawn.
Park the fertilizer spreader
While we normally recommend applying needed fertilizer to lawns in the fall, such applications should not be made this fall unless soil moisture is replenished. In fact, most lawn maintenance tasks such as dethatching, aeration and even mowing can damage dormant turf plants and should not occur until soil moisture is replenished. If rainfall becomes more frequent later this month and in October, fertilizer applications and other lawn maintenance tasks can be completed at that time.
For many years, we recommended applying a late fall application of fertilizer to lawns in late November or even early December. Several years of research has now shown that turf plants cannot uptake much nitrogen fertilizer when their metabolism slows in late fall and winter. For this reason, the current research-based recommendation is to complete quick-release nitrogen fertilizer applications to lawns before mid-October.
Some weeds actively growing
Thanks to evolution and natural selection, many weeds seem to survive quite well during periods of drought and hot weather. While desirable turfgrass species are brown and dormant right now, some weed species including crabgrass are green and growing. While it is too late to apply an herbicide to clean up crabgrass escapes, you should map areas of your lawn where crabgrass is present now and plan to treat those areas next spring and summer with a preemergent crabgrass herbicide.
Winter annual weeds such as chickweed, henbit and bittercress have begun to germinate recently even in dry soils. These winter annual weeds can be controlled with a spot treatment of a post-emergent herbicide in September and October as they emerge.
Mike Hogan is Extension Educator, Agriculture and Natural Resources and associate professor with Ohio State University Extension.
hogan.1@osu.edu
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