Beginner's Guide to Idiot Proof Lawn

Are you a new homeowner eager for the satisfaction of working on your own lawn or maybe you're just not happy with your existing lawn service and ready to do-it-yourself? Taking care of that first lawn is a lot like changing a diaper for the first time. It can be a little intimidating, sometimes overwhelming and even a little messy, but once you get a little practice you eventually figure it out. Dealing with turf grass and weeds takes practice and with the help from Grass Pad’s Idiot Proof Lawn Care Program you’ll get it figured out faster than a Huggies Pull Up.

It’s April already, where do I start? The beginner’s guide to Grass Pad’s Idiot Proof Lawn Care Program starts with recognizing two different types of weeds we deal with in the mid-west and how to control those weeds. In addition, the relationship between those weeds, bare spots, and healthy turf grass.

Annual grassy weeds, like crabgrass and foxtail germinate from seed each spring. Low growing and prostrate to the ground forcing out weak, and summer stressed turfgrass for prime real estate in your front yard. Annual grassy weeds form seed heads in late summer then die at first frost leaving bare spots for winter hardy broadleaf weeds to move in and take hold. Allowing plenty of room for the next generation of grassy weed seeds to sprout next spring.

Control annual grassy weeds with Grass Pad PREVENT.  Preventing crabgrass starts in early spring before the soils start to warm, and dormant crabgrass seeds germinate. Apply PREVENT In Mid-March to Mid-April and again in Late May to early June. Grass Pad’s two application pre-emergent formula has been tested and proven to outperform other one-step pre-emergent formulas available at box stores and hardware stores. PREVENT contains slow-release spring turf food for green up plus crabgrass preventer. Apply ½” of water within 48 hours after application. A vapor barrier is created at soil level, controlling ugly summer grassy weeds before they emerge.

Related: Start Early to Prevent Crabgrass 

Broadleaf weeds, like dandelions, henbit, and plantain will survive the winter and are not controlled by PREVENT.  As soils warm in spring, broadleaf weeds fill in and stretch out in those same bare spots left by dead crabgrass. By eliminating crabgrass in spring, you will reduce the broadleaf weed invasion in the fall.

Control broadleaf weeds with Grass Pad WEED and FEED. Uncle calls them “the salad bar” weeds, having wide leaves make them an easy target for granular WEED and FEED, a professional strength broadleaf weed herbicide plus turf food. For best results, apply anytime April to June as needed, on a sunny day when temperatures are above 70°. Apply over a wet lawn or a morning dew. Do not apply if rain expected within 48 hours and no mowing 48 hours before or after application.

Related: Control Broadleaf Weeds in Cool Weather

A wise man once said, “Weeds don’t make a lawn bad, bad lawns make weeds.” Think about that statement and let it sink in, and it is precisely the truth. Weeds can only move into a lawn if there is room for the weed seeds to grow and spread. The best weed preventer for your lawn is thick, healthy vigorous grass. Eliminate the bare spots, and you will eliminate the weeds. The secret to an idiot proof lawn is to start early and get good turf grasses to fill the bare spots before the weeds do.

Related: Spring Spot Seeding and Preventing Crabgrass

 Grass Pad makes lawn care idiot proof. If you want your lawn to be thick, lush, and green with fewer weeds follow the Idiot Proof Lawn Care Program. Each application is formulated to help eliminate weeds and encourage healthy vigorous turf grass to resist weed pressure. 

Come on down to the Grass Pad and let our Green Shirt Team show you how Uncle’s Idiot Proof Lawn Care Program will make lawn care quick and easy. We’ve got all the tools to help you to be successful in maintaining a healthy lawn. You can’t screw it up; even your husband can do it.

Hardy Mums or Garden Chrysanthemums Care and Cultivation

Revive worn out planters and flower beds using colorful fall blooming garden mums. Fresh hardy garden mums in brilliant yellow, oranges, pinks, purples and reds are available. Mums planted now will have the best chance for winter survival.

Planting Instructions:

• Choose a well-drained location where the mums will receive at least five hours of sun per day.
• Dig a hole twice as wide and only as deep as the container. Space blooming garden mums in the fall based on plant size.
• Remove from the plastic container and place the mum into the hole onto undisturbed soil. The top of the root mass should be level with the soil grade.
• Backfill with a mixture of soil from the hole and Grass Pad’s Max Mix landscapers mix. Pack the soil mixture firmly around the root mass.
• Cover the planting area and the top of the root mass with mulch of your choice.
• Fertilize with Uncle’s Root Accelerator, every two weeks until buds crack open. Repeat monthly in the growing seasons.
• Water thoroughly at planting, amount and frequency will vary by size, weather and soil conditions.

Pinching
Encourage branching and development of a compact plant habit, it is critical to pinch back your garden mums in the following spring season. Soon as new growth is four to six inches tall, use your thumbnail and index finger to remove or pinch off about ½ of the new growth. Do this at the top of each and every shoot.

Repeat this procedure through the summer whenever new shoots are four to six inches long. Stop pinching around the Fourth of July.

Division
Chrysanthemums sometimes become crowded in the garden. The old, center portion of the plant dies back, and new growth occurs around the perimeter of the clump. Renovating chrysanthemum clumps every three or four years will encourage healthy growth, neat plant habit, and continued flowering.

When new shoots appear in the spring, dig the entire clump. Use a sharp spade or knife to cut the clump into wedge-shaped sections, like a pie. Remove and discard the point of the wedge (this is the oldest part of the clump). Plant the new plant (wedges) eighteen to twenty-four inches apart at the depth they were growing.

Beneficial Cover Crops Add Nutrients to Garden Soil

As the bounty of your spring planted garden winds down with the changing leaves and colors of autumn don’t forget your living soil. The living soil requires living plants and roots to maintain the diverse biological populations below the surface. In fact, the adage of “use it or lose it” applies when it comes to soil. Maintaining living roots in the soil for the microbes year round will produce healthier soil, less compaction, and higher water infiltration. Mother Nature is an excellent soil conservationist and when she sees a bare spot she fills it, with weeds. So keep your garden from filling with winter annual weeds like henbit, and chickweed by using a beneficial cover crop.

Cover crops in your garden will increase the available nutrients to your garden. Cover crops will mine or scavenge for nutrients in the soil. Nutrient mining is a concept of up taking nutrients from deep in the soil and depositing them closer to the surface for absorption by shallower rooted crops. Eco-Till, tillage radish, does this in spades with the very deep growing tap root of the radish penetrating the earth like a spear aerating the soil and loosening compacted soils at the same time. Groundhog radishes will pull these nutrients from deep in the soil and use them to grow leaves that cover the ground reducing erosion and preventing weeds. When groundhog radishes die, the leaves are deposited at the surface of the soil returning nutrients to the earth and the radish decomposes into a column of excellent organic material. That vertical column of decomposed organic material is the perfect highway for water to travel through and infiltrate our heavy clay soils.

Other crops are capable of pulling nutrients from the air. Nitrogen fixing is a biological activity that occurs with plants in the legume family. Winter peas and clover are plants capable of this activity. Using winter peas, and clover in your garden as a cover crop will pull nitrogen from the air and put it in the soil for other crops to use. Farmers have known this for years, and that is why they rotate crops between soybeans (a legume) and corn (a high nitrogen user). When it comes time to plant your tomatoes and peppers next Mother’s day just turn under the winter peas or clover with a shovel, and it becomes green manure under the surface of the soil. Anytime you can add organic material to the soil of your garden, increased yields will be your reward.

Don’t leave your garden soil a barren wasteland all winter; feed the living soil with a cover crop. Come on down to the Grass Pad your fall seeding headquarters and we can figure out what kind of cover crop suits your needs the best. By introducing crop rotation and the use of cover crops, you are creating diversity that will support the life beneath the soil. The time to plant is now, the longer the plant has to grow before winter sets in the more roots and foliage it can produce. Healthy soil is dark in color and crumbles in your hand, if your garden is not that way you need the added organic material that a cover crop can provide.

The Green Green Grass of Home

There seems to be something in human nature that attracts us to green grass. Ancient hunter-gatherers were attracted to abundant game on the vast grassy prairies, and the early herdsmen searched out the greenest valleys for their livestock.  Even the 23rd Psalm associates a sense of peace, protection and prosperity with lying down in green pastures.  While most of us no longer hunt or farm, other than for recreation, we are still instinctually drawn to green grass as it cools our environment, filters out pollution, and feels good between our toes.

Keeping a thick, healthy lawn is a great way to have a safer, natural surface for dogs and kids to play on, as well as reducing weeds and increasing curb appeal.  Understanding the basics of when, and how, grass grows, repairs and repopulates itself is critical to keeping your lawn healthy.  If we can mimic nature, we can use the grasses’ natural characteristics to maintain the lawn we desire more easily. 

Most Kansas City area grasses naturally reproduce through seed production.  If left uncut, grass plants come out of winter dormancy, using the rainy spring weather, and stored up energy, to quickly push up a seed head.  After this seed head matures in mid-summer, the seeds are then battered by late summer thunderstorms, knocking them to the ground, where they sprout in the warm moist soil.  The young plants focus on growing deep roots and storing up nutrients to help get through the winter, and to be strong enough to survive the heat that will be coming the next summer. Since we mow our lawns, the seeding cycle is interrupted, and we don’t get the advantage of young, vigorous plants, or the genetic diversity of cross-pollination.  That’s why we encourage planting HeatWave™ turf-type fescue blend, or BlueWave™ Kentucky bluegrass blend, in the late summer and early fall.  Grasses are genetically predisposed to sprout and establish quickly because of the warm soil, and by supplementing the fall rains. Frequent irrigation cycles and adding Loveland Renovator turf fertilizer your new grass will establish faster now, than any other time of the year. 

Some grasses also spread with runners called rhizomes.  These runners are sent out by the parent plant when it senses a bare spot nearby.  BlueWave™ Kentucky bluegrass blend has these runners and will create the prettiest lawn in Kansas City. The varieties selected for BlueWave™ have a deep blue-green color, and fine texture, which make it very desirable for those seeking a distinctively luxurious lawn. Do not dismiss bluegrass as being too ‘delicate’ in the heat of the summer. Decades of plant breeding and selection  have created varieties that are more vigorous, heat and drought tolerant, disease resistant and visually appealing.   Because of its spreading capability, and the fact that there are about 2 million seeds in every pound (10 times more than a pound of fescue), BlueWave™ Kentucky bluegrass blend is one of the most economical grasses to grow in our area. 

In areas that expect a lot of traffic, like sports fields, and lawns with dogs and kids, we like to mix the BlueWave™ with sports turf ryegrass, creating Estate Mix™.  This mix gives you all the benefits of the runners in BlueWave™, and adds the quick starting, dark green, and fine texture of the same sports turf ryegrasses that are used to repair golf course fairways and athletic fields.

See Related: Uncle's Best - Top Rated Grass Seed

Come on down to the Grass Pad, and ask Uncle about upgrading your lawn with BlueWave™ Kentucky bluegrass blend along with his Fall Renovator Program.  It’s not too late! Yesterday was better than today, but today is better than tomorrow!

Turf Type Tall Fescue vs. Kentucky Tall Fescue

What is a “Tall Fescue”? Tall fescue is a cool season grass widely used as pasture grass. One of the oldest varieties of tall fescue was found in 1931 on a farm in Kentucky where it had been grown for 50 years. Fast growing and drought tolerant Kentucky tall fescue performs well as a forage grass however; coarse blades and heavy clumping will result in a very poor quality turf lawn.

What is a “Turf-Type” tall fescue? In the 1970’s, tall fescues were being developed specifically for turf grasses.  Advances in breeding science lead to improved "turf-type" tall fescues retaining good color during winter months providing a year-round green lawn. These new turf-type tall fescues had finer leaf texture, greener in color, superior disease resistance and denser habit than the old pasture type Kentucky tall fescue.

130 years ago Kentucky tall fescue was state of the art, as was the Bell Telephone. Today we have over 80 years of genetic research and technology to advance the tall fescues into a whole new next generation. Improved turf-type tall fescues of today are the Smart Phones of grass seed, state of the art and continuing to upgrade. Todays improved turf-type fescues are so much more advanced for performance, why not use state of the art grass seed in your lawn?

Get a return on your investment. Uncle taught us, “You always get what you pay for.” The lower cost and the ready supply of Kentucky tall fescue can coax unaware homeowners to use it in their lawns. Expect a higher price per pound for turf-type tall fescues over Kentucky tall fescue, and you can also expect a return on your investment far greater than the difference of a few pennies. Improved turf-type fescues will be slower growing that mean less mowing. The dense growth habit means fewer weeds. Darker color means less fertilizer to keep that deep green. Improved disease resistance mean less fungicides. Drought tolerance means a lower water bill. Less mowing, less fertilizer, less weeds, less fungicides, less water; that's a pretty good return.

Grass Pad is all about grass. The Mid-West’s largest distributor of turf-type fescues, bluegrass and perennial sports turf rye is right in your own back yard. If you need to buy an electric drill, don't go to the Grass Pad, but if you need high performance grass seed then come on down to the Grass Pad. Taking pride in their grass seed and proud in their service, the knowledgeable staff at every Grass Pad can help you with all your lawn questions. Every Grass Pad seed variety is University tested for performance and laboratory tested for purity. If you need one pound or 10,000 lbs come to the Grass Pad. Discover the newest and best performing grass seed available for the mid-west. If you have a lawn service maintaining your yard, tell them to use only Grass Pad seed and don’t be afraid to ask to see the seed tag from the bag and NEVER let them use Kentucky tall fescue in your lawn.

Buyers Beware 
Grassy weeds will be hiding in Kentucky tall fescue. Much of the Kentucky tall fescue today is grown in Kansas, Missouri, and Texas. These are all areas where perennial orchard grass is widespread. Orchardgrass is even more coarse bladed and faster growing than Kentucky tall fescue. Unfortunately, orchard grass is not considered a “weed” and can be listed under “other seed” on the seed inspection tag required by law on all lawn seed bags. Even the smallest of percentage of “weeds” or “other seed” can turn your lawn into a weedy pasture. Always read the seed analysis tag. If you don’t know how to read the tag, ask a salesperson and if they don’t know how to read it, you’re not at the Grass Pad, so leave quickly!