Its September Already?

This year is flying by, and it has been another hot and DRY summer. A lot of lawns have gone dormant and are storing their energy for the fall growing season, which is hopefully right around the corner.

The summer is not over- unfortunately but here at Preferred we are already gearing up for winter, well, what we living in the San Antonio area consider “winter”.  We are putting in orders for cool season color change outs, scheduling fall fertilizations and even putting up holiday lights! Which means it is getting close to the time we top dress the turf with organic compost, this is the equivalent to mulching your lawn. Like you would mulch your shrubs trees and flower beds, but naturally you wouldn’t apply the same type of mulch to the lawn, top dressing has many benefits to a healthy, disease resistant, and green lawn.

Benefits to top dressing lawns with organic compost:

• Moisture retention by improving the soils ability to hold water
•  Fewer required waterings
• Provide nutrients for plants, earth worms, microbes and other beneficial soil life
• Reduction in needed fertilizer applications
• Loosens compacted soil and improves aeration and drainage
• Nutrients are readily available in the soil come spring growing season
•  Reduces thatch build up – thatch can cause the perfect microenvironment for fungus (brown patch & take all patch)

Lawns are our biggest water consumers. For this reason lawns are the most important places to practice water conservation by mulching. Lawns with no crumb structure, no humus, no beneficial soil life or root colonizing microbes require more care. It is best to supply one-half inch of fine screened compost in the fall or early winter after the grass has stopped growing due to drop in temperature. In our area this is something usually scheduled from early November into early January because that is when our daytime temperatures typically drop below 70°.