Common Lawncare Mistakes-101

Sunbelt Turf Farm is happy to offer suggestions on how to avoid the most common mistakes homeowners make in regard to their lawn care.

Mowing

The most common mistake people make when mowing their lawn is cutting the grass too short. This encourages weed growth, increases heat stress during dry hot periods and will make your lawn more susceptible to insects and diseases.  A dull lawnmower blade will rip or tear the grass instead of providing a nice even cut.  The tearing of the plant tissue can create a breeding ground for disease and other problems for your lawn.

Advice

Set your mower blade to a height that cuts no more than the top third of the grass.  This will encourage stronger roots.  Always have sharp blades, a dull lawnmower blade is bad news for your lawn.  Have the blades sharpened by a professional to ensure a sharp blade for an even cut.  In our warm weather climate here in Alabama, it may be necessary to have the blades sharpened more than once a year.

Watering

We all know that water is essential to all living things.  Too much water and we drown, too little water and we die. Water makes up over 70% of the weight of our lawn grasses with clippings alone are almost 90% water. Most people worry about not watering their lawns enough but the fact is more lawns are damaged more by over watering than under watering.

Advice

For newly installed sod, you will need to water immediately to ensure the turf gets established.  The sod will need at least 1 inch of water within 1/2 of installation.  You will need to water daily to keep the turf moist until it is firmly rooted.  Then you can water less frequently but with a deeper watering.  For established lawns the amount of water needed is determined by the overall health, beauty and the ability to withstand use and drought. The average lawn needs 1 inch of water per week.  The appearance of your lawn can always be a sign of needing water.  Grass in need of water will have a grey-blue cast and footprints will be visible after about 30 minutes while footprints will disappear in just a few minutes on a well watered lawn.

Fertilizing

When it comes to fertilizing, you need to make sure you are using not only the right mixture, but the right quantity and applying it the right time of the year.  Too much fertilizer tends to increase thatch problems and leaves the lawn more prone to insects and disease. You could actually burn your lawn.  

Advice

Lawn fertilizers usually contain Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. The grass needs more nitrogen than any other nutrient.  It helps to give the lawn the beautiful green color since it is part of the chlorophyll molecule. Potassium helps with good cell wall development and the plant's ability to withstand stress, disease and damage from insects. Phosphorus is responsible for the energy transfer systems in the plant and is required in smaller amounts than nitrogen and potassium in established lawns.  Shop for slow release nitrogen, it is designed to meter-out the nitrogen over a longer period of time and it doesn't have to be applied as often.  Warm season grasses like we have in Alabama flourish during the warmer summer months. It is best in this area to apply a larger amount of nitrogen in the early-late spring applications and less nitrogen in the fall application. By leaving the grass clippings on your lawn, you are increasing nitrogen and can reduce the need for fertilizer by 25%.

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.

September 15 - A Very Important Date per Sunbelt Turf Farm

Sunbelt Turf Farm reminds you of an important date!

As the calendar turns through the month of September, Sunbelt Turf Farm would like to remind you that September 15 is an important date in your lawn care maintenance.

Pre-emergent herbicides for winter weeds should be applied to your lawn by September 15.  Pre-emergent herbicides are designed to be applied before the weeds germinate.  This is an effective method of controlling weeds.  Pre-emergent herbicides establish chemical barriers that prevent prevent weeds from growing but will not kill established plants.  The protective barriers break down in six to eight weeks, therefore proper timing of the application is important in order to be effective.

Remember to check all labels thoroughly, be sure that the product can be used on your specific turfgrass and that it will control the weeds you are trying to manage.

Call us at Sunbelt Turf Farm for more information on how to control pesky weeds in your turfgrass!

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.

Fall Turf Tune Up

Fall is the perfect time to tune up your lawn.  Sunbelt Turf Farms offers information on how to make your spring a little greener by preparing now.

At this time of year, your lawn may start to show signs of wear and tear.  Your lawn can take a beating in the summer with family gatherings, picnics, children and pets.  If your lawn can use a little TLC, fall is the best time to revitalize it so that next year’s lawn will be green and healthy.

Beginning by giving the lawn a good raking, this will improve the look and the health of the lawn.  Aerate the soil, this opens up air channels.  Aeration involves perforating the soil with small holes, this allows air, water and nutrients to penetrate the grass roots.  This will help the roots grow deeply and produce a stronger lawn. 

Grass can benefit from fertilizing in the early fall.  Combination lawn fertilizers are a good choice since they contain fast-release nitrogen, which provides a fast “green-up” and a larger amount of slow-release nitrogen, which feeds the lawn slowly and gently.  Be sure to read all directions and recommendations on the label of your fertilizer.  A natural way to fertilize is to leave your grass clippings on the lawn, as they decompose they will release nitrogen into the turf.  Cutting your grass with a mulching mower will speed up the process.

The fall is a great time to patch dead or damaged spots in your lawn.  Always patch with the same type of grass as the existing lawn.  Remove the damaged turf, loosen the top few inches of soil in the bare section, work in compost to improve the soil and level out the surface.  You are ready now to insert a fresh piece of sod in the damaged area.

You should continue mowing as necessary, but wait on mowing as growth slows so the grass goes into the winter months well insulated.  Set your mower at the highest setting, which should leave the grass less than 1.5 inches tall.

If you take these few steps in the fall, you will reap the benefits in the spring. 

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.

Mowing Your Leaves = A Healthier Lawn

With the calendar turning toward the fall months, Sunbelt Turf Farm suggests mowing your leaves for a healthier lawn.

As the temperature begins to cool down and the leaves begin to fall, our honey do list becomes longer.  The new addition to our list of chores will include raking leaves, removing leaves from the yard and disposing of these leaves.  Leaf removal is a big chore for many homeowners and people have come up with creative ways to make this easier, you may see your neighbors raking, blowing or even vacuuming leaves to remove them from the lawn!  And it is very important to remove them from the top of the lawn.  If left to sit on the lawn, these leaves will block the sunlight that the grass needs, and damp leaves will become a breeding ground for fungus that can damage your turfgrass.

Once you have these leaves removed from the lawn, what do you do with them?  Some homeowners live in areas where the city may remove the leaves along with other yard waste to a compost site, some homeowners may have their own compost pile. Composting is a great use for organic matter, it can be used later for flower beds, gardens or even spread over your lawn.  Composting helps our environment in many ways and one is keeping the raked leaves out of landfills.

The easiest way in our opinion to take care of your leaves is to mow them!  Mulching your leaves has many benefits.  It is a great method for weed control and studies show that mulching leaves into the turf helps the soil and the grass.  The microbial activity increases in soils with mulched leaves and water infiltration is better.  A study at Michigan State University showed that lawns that had leaves mulched into the turfgrass had greener grass faster and fewer dandelions in the spring.  They also discovered that mulched leaves breakdown quicker if a fall fertilizer is applied.  The repeated mowing needed to mulch the leaves also has benefits, it actually thickens the grass by encouraging lateral growth.  People often thought that mulching leaves would thin your lawn, but studies have shown repeatedly that it will build a healthier lawn for the next year.  So as you see the leaves falling don't worry about the added chores, just hang up the rake and use the mower to mulch those tree leaves into a healthier lawn!

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.

Turfgrass and the Environment

While industry and technology have provided goods and services to make our lives easier, the effect on the environment has been substantial.  Being a true environmentalist begins right under our feet.  The earth has been good to us, but we haven’t always been good to it.

Scientific research has documented many benefits of turfgrass to our environment.  Our turfgrass lawns, parks and open spaces provide a natural, comfortable, and safe setting for fun and games.  Turfgrass releases oxygen and cools the air, helps to control pollution and reduce soil erosion. 

Grass is known as Nature’s air conditioner.  While trees get a lot of the credit for cooling the air by giving shade, grass does this through “evapotraspiration”.  This is a process that is similar to that used by old fashioned evaporative coolers for home air conditioning units.  On a hot day in the summer, lawns will be 30 degrees cooler than asphalt and 14 degrees cooler than soil and a whopping 35 degrees cooler than artificial turf.  The front lawns of eight houses will have the same cooling effect of 70 tons of air conditioning.  Remember the average home’s air conditioning unit has just a three or four ton capacity!

Turfgrass acts as a natural filter.  It reduces pollution by purifying the water that passes through the root system.  Turfgrass also helps to purify the air by trapping and removing dust and dirt.  Turfgrass reduce greenhouse gases, 2,500 square foot of lawn absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releases enough oxygen to sustain a family of four!

Along with the environmental benefits of turfgrass, it adds beauty to our lives which is positive to our mental and physical well being.  Studies show that people recover faster in a hospital that has a landscape view rather than a view of adjoining buildings.  We love to enjoy our ball games, picnics and backyard games on a lush green cushion of turfgrass.

With the benefits of turfgrass working their wonders for us, we will be able to share a beautiful and healthy planet with our future generations.

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.

To Water or Not to Water...we attempt to answer that question!

The subject of watering your lawn can be very confusing, there are many different ideas and variations on the right way to accomplish this task!  You can debate the best time to water, the amount of water you need, the type of sprinklers that work best, a soaking watering or a light watering and many other topics!  Sunbelt Turf Farms wants to educate you about this confusing topic.

How Much Water Does A Lawn REALLY Need?

A healthy mature lawn does not need watering every day or even every other day.

The lawn simply does not need this amount of water and can’t use it either!  Underneath your sod is soil that is a combined with silt, clay particles and sand.  There are porous spaces in this soil that fills up with water each time it rains.  As these spaces fill up with water, air is forced out.  If watering daily, the space is being filled with water, rather than   oxygen that is needed to encourage plant growth.  As the grass gets more and more water and less and less oxygen, the roots of the sod began to become choked and will die.  This results in a very shallow root system when a deep strong system is desired. 

Waste Not - Want Not

Overwatering is wasteful.  It is a waste of water and a waste of time!  It can also be a contributor to pollution.

One of the greatest natural resource available to us is ground water.  Wasting water on a lawn that isn’t in need doesn’t make sense.  Established lawns go dormant when dry in a drought situation, it will begin to grow again after a rain. So, your lawn will not die if you underwater it, it just goes dormant.  If you apply fertilizer to an overwatered lawn it is washed past the roots before it can be absorbed by the plant.  This will ultimately cause nitrate pollution in the ground water.

Sunbelt Turf Farms has a few tips for watering that will help you have a pretty lawn while being friendly to our environment:

• Water when your lawn's color is a dull green and footprints remain visible in the grass.
• Water between the hours of 6 am to 10 am or 4 pm to 7 pm.
• If you chose to use sprinklers, apply about 1/2 inch twice a week.
• Check the weather forecast for rain before you water, Mother Nature is always our best sprinkler system!

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.

What is Thatch?

Thatch is a combination of grass stems, roots, clippings, and debris that lies between green vegetation and the soil surface. Thatch becomes a problem if it reaches over ½ to ¾  inch in thickness.  The thick layer of thatch keeps air, water and nutrients from breaking through.  This means your water is wasted since it runs off and doesn’t reach the roots, helping weeds to thrive.  Fertilizer is also wasted since it only reaches the top layer and doesn’t penetrate to the roots.

Thatch is most common in warm weather climates and is most commonly found in lawns where grass has grown tall, mulch is frequently left and lawns that haven’t been aerated.  It is extremely common in creeping grasses such as Bermuda and Zoysia.  If you have these grasses, you will usually have to de-thatch more often than with other grasses.  De-thatching is the process of removing the thatch from your lawn.

Prevent lawn thatch by keeping leaves raked and remove some of the grass clippings after mowing.  Although, they don’t directly contribute to the thatch it does add a layer of material on the lawn.  If this material accumulates faster than it decays, it will cause thatch to build up.

Sunbelt Farms recommends performing the tests listed below to determine if your lawn needs de-thatching.

Touch Test-feel your lawn, if it is spongy or bouncy underfoot, it often has a thick thatch layer. Push your finger through the grass, is it impenetrable?  A thatch layer that is difficult to push your finger through needs to be thinned.

Sight Test-visually examine your lawn.  Can you see soil between turf crowns? If you can’t see the soil, you are most likely looking through a thatch layer.

Yardstick Test-Remove a wedge-shaped layer of grass that is about 3 inches thick using a trowel or spade, or simply pry up a small section of the turf.  Measure the thickness and if the result is more than ¾ of an inch you need to de-thatch.

To remove thatch from your lawn doesn’t have to be a complicated task.  You can use a power rake if it is a small job, a larger job may require a vertical mower.  If this is the first time you have de-thatched, you will likely rake up a lot of material.  Keep in mind that you may be removing live turf grass also.  Be mindful to not de-thatch if the turf is weak or under stress or in a drought situation.  De-thatch cool season grass in the fall and warm season grass in the spring.

If your lawn measures less than ¾ inch of thatch, there isn’t a need to de-thatch at this time, just aerate and keep on eye on the thickness.  Keep your lawn healthy, happy and thatch free!

Sunbelt Turf Farm began in St. Clair County. Over 30 years have perfected the art of growing, selling and the delivery of quality turf grass. Customer satisfaction is paramount and we stand behind our turf grass. Expansions into Shelby and Talladega Counties successfully turned cotton fields and pasture land into beautiful green turf. Commercial and retail opportunities, pick-up or delivery, free estimates, fast turnaround and remaining environmentally friendly separate us from the rest.