commercial and residential » landscape services
Pictured above is turfgrass that has suffered winter injury due to foot traffic over the lawn while covered with ice and snow—clearly showing footprints where the damage occured. Although the turfgrass pictured above isn’t a common grass in this area and any damage done to southern turfgrasses won’t manifest until green-up begins; it demonstrates how easily damage can and will occur, if special care isn’t taken to keep traffic off of your lawn in periods of extreme and unusually cold weather.
Great start to the work week, so far… I’ve been able to get some extra cleaning done on most of the beds; have begun trimming shrubs—staying mostly to the tops. I’ll be pruning Crepe Myrtles beginning today. I’m not quite sure where I’ll start, but I should have all of them done by weeks end.
I have noticed a bit of winter injury throughout quite a few of the lawns. It is most noticeable in areas where the grass was stressed going into the colder weather (ie., areas with grub damage, summer drought stress and shaded areas) and I’m not sure yet what the full impact will be. So far, the worst I’ve seen would easily be replaceable with a few pieces of new sod. I’ll touch base with those with the damaged turf as Spring get’s a little closer.
It’s looking like we may get hit with a bit of snow and ice overnight—at least that’s what they’re saying—so I thought I’d take a moment and talk about Winter Injury.
Typically, we in the South, don’t have much to worry about when it comes to our turfgrass wintering; as the temperatures rarely get cold enough—or stay cold long enough—to cause any damage to our lawns. However, with the near zero temps of a couple of weeks ago and lower than average temps expected, combining that with snow and ice, there is a possibility for winter injury to occur. While the chances of it actually affecting your lawn are low; as a precaution, you should do your very best to minimize traffic of any sort on your lawn during the time it is covered with snow/ice. Obviously, thinning areas, shaded areas, areas with poor drainage and newer sod installations are most at risk; it’s a good idea to just keep to the sidewalks and driveways.
I recently spoke to a man at a sod farm who mentioned there was still frost in the ground as shallow as five inches—that five inches will freeze quickly, leaving a nice frozen base for the snow and ice to sit upon. Having a lot of traffic on the lawn in this state can cause irreparable damage to the turf.
I’m going to start scheduling mulch installations the first of February—hopefully to have them wrapped up by the end of April. I understand that some people will prefer to have their beds mulched towards the end of Spring; if you are one of them, please let me know ahead of time—it helps me to route everyone more efficiently.
After three days of killing myself trying to get the beds cleaned while still attempting to keep the lawn clean; I find myself having to priortize. Either I severely underestimated the amount of leaves that were still falling or the beds were just.that.deep! I’m gonna go with the latter… I spent almost four hours on one lawn today, trying to clean the beds and the lawn—in the end, I still wasn’t able to finish a couple of beds. I’ve decided I’m going to do front beds/areas first and work the rear beds in as I go. With some lawns, I am able to clean the entire lawn within a reasonable time frame—that won’t change. But, with those of you with larger beds and a tremendous amount of leaves—isn’t it weird how your lawn can be covered, three inches deep, while your neighbor has just a sprinkling of leaves—I’m going to focus on the front and work around the property until clean. My goal is to have the beds/areas clean and manageable by Thanksgiving.
I have been asked many times—more times than I can count—why I bring my lawns down to such a short height preceding the Winter months. There are are many reasons I do this; I will outline the most important reasons here…
Blowing leaves through 6″ Bermuda or Zoysiagrass is painstakingly slow. At that height, the turf has formed somewhat of an inverted canopy that essentially just traps leaves within the tillers; and once the turf has gone dormant, it becomes more like a well-worn straw broom. You know those dust bunnies you sweep from your floor, but you can never seem to shake from the end of your broom? It’s the same principle. By bringing the turf down to a shorter height—slowly, while transitioning into Autumn—it greatly enhances my ability to work more efficiently, and to keep the lawn looking cleaner. This is especially true while blowing wet leaves. A higher cut would make in near impossible to keep the lawn managed with a flat, compact appearance, because I would first have to blow them out of the turf, and then across the turf. Blowing leaves—wet or dry—across a shorter, more compact turf is a lot like blowing them across pavement.
And then the rain came… again, and again, and again. In the 10 years I’ve been doing lawncare, I can’t recall having seen more rain in such a short amount of time—and during this time of year. Sadly, with the amount of rain we’ve had, I’m also seeing a tremendous amount of soil erosion. Soil erosion is bad. To put it bluntly: there is nothing that can be done about losing areas of turf due to soil erosion, other than replacing it in the spring, or—preferrably—preventative measures (ie., French drains, gutter downspout relocation). I have have seen soil erosion in excess of 3″ this year alone; exposing tree roots and carving deep ruts along fence lines and pavement. We’ll need to address these problems before Spring arrives.
We will see a spike in turf diseases this Autumn as well… namely, Brown Patch. As a homeowner, the one thing you can do to lessen the likelihood of turf disease in your lawn, is to disable your irrigation… Now. Brown Patch disease thrives in cool temperatures and damp turfgrass. Additionally, if your lawn is chemically treated, the fertilization being applied during this time of year will increase the rate and spread of Brown Patch—this is especially true in Zoysiagrass and St. Augustine lawns. My advice for you, would be to to ask your lawn chemical specialist to delay application until your lawn has had adequate time to dry.
We have had an extraordinarily wet Summer and Autumn; which can lead to all types of lawn problems—let’s try to stay ahead of Mother Nature.
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