Kansas City Landscaping and Lawn Care Ideas

Summer is still burning strong and we surely have several weeks left of stifling heat in Kansas City. Many of the lawns in the city are showing the stresses of surviving yet another brutal summer of heat and dryness. If your lawn no longer looks thick and healthy or has more weeds than grass, it is time to renovate. Renovating your lawn involves removing all unwanted weeds and grass types and then reseeding with improved varieties of your choice of turf. Timing is critical for successfully renovating your lawn – late enough to avoid the worst of the summer heat yet early enough to allow ample time for growth before the freezing weather arrives. 

In Kansas City, the first week of September is usually the ideal time to seed. 

To seed your lawn properly requires a broad knowledge of grass, several different pieces of specialized equipment and a large commitment of time.  For these reasons, I suggest that homeowners contact a qualified professional who specializes in growing quality turf.  Although cost is a consideration, when you look at the time, supplies and rental fees you might quickly realize that using a pro will pay off. Every year, I am disheartened by the dozens of calls I get in late fall from homeowners who have spent hundreds of dollars and lots of hard work seeding their lawns with poor results. I have to tell these customers that we have missed the ideal time for seeding and the repair will require considerable extra time and cost without the guarantee of superior results.

Of all the lawn care tasks needed each year, I strongly believe that lawn seeding is the most important one to be done by a professional.

When you hire a lawn care company, you will want to check their license, insurance and references to make sure you are working with a professional.  Then ask them about their seeding process.  The highest quality lawn will come from a professional who includes all of the following steps:

• Soil Test - imperative to start by fixing and soil chemistry problems (4 weeks prior)
• Spray Herbicide - important to control weeds prior to seeding (4 weeks prior)
• Spray with Growth Regulator - slows down growth of existing turf so it does not compete with new grass (2 weeks prior)
• Plant seed - prepared by first aerating and then followed with a slit seeder that will slice precise grooves into the soil creating ideal areas for seed to grow
• Starter fertilizer and Rooting stimulant - applied to the soil to provide nutrients to emerging seedlings

Now, the professional’s work is done and it’s time to care for your newly planted lawn.  You will need to moisten the ground daily for two weeks to promote germination and then to pamper the young seedlings.  As the grass grows stronger, you will begin to establish a regular schedule of deep, thorough watering.  Proper watering is essential to your lawns success and it involves quite a commitment – however, it is the last step to the lush, healthy lawn you envisioned when you started the renovation process. Soon you will be walking barefoot through your lawn enjoying the thick green carpet, underfoot.

Stop worrying about your grass and start worrying about your dirt. As a professional turf grass manager, I am actually fairly uninterested in turf. I spend all of my time managing soil. I know that by creating fertile soil, my customers will have the nicest lawns in town.

Managing dirt is a complex task that even people with degrees in Soil Science will admit having more to learn. Volumes of books and scientific articles have been written on the subject and I would never be able to disclose everything you would need to know in this article. However, I do hope to reveal enough information to convey the importance of soil to you in growing quality turf.

There are three important factors to consider when evaluating your soil: Soil Texture, Nutrients and Chemistry. Each of these factors needs to be evaluated independently and actions taken to create the ideal growing environment for your turf.

SOIL TEXTURE

Soil is a mixture of sand, silt and clay. The percentage of each element determines the type of soil your lawn has. Ideal soil is composed of 40% sand, 40% clay and 20% silt. In Kansas City, the ideal soil texture is usually nothing but a dream as we have a much higher percentage of clay. However, this can be improved. First, you have to determine your soil makeup. This requires getting your hands dirty. Take a handful of dirt and roll the soil in your hand until it’s about the size of a golf ball. Then, gently squeeze the soil between your thumb and index finger. Sand feels gritty, silt feels more like talcum powder and clay feels slippery. Now squeeze the ball in your hand. If it crumbles, it has a well-balanced texture. If it holds its shape, it has a fair amount of clay. And if you can roll it into a snake, it has more clay than you want. This method can only act as an indicator. A soil test performed by a qualified laboratory will give you more accurate and scientific results. However, if your soil has too much clay, you will need to alleviate the problem with aeration and topdressing or completely renovating the area and adding organic matter.

NUTRIENTS

Soil holds nutrients which are then used by the turf to grow thick and lush. Evaluating the nutrient status of your soil is an important step in developing a quality turf. The best way to find out what your soil needs to nourish healthy turf is to have it tested by a professional laboratory. This can either be done by our local extension office or at a private lab.

Any fertilizing done by a homeowner or professional without a soil test is a shot in the dark at best. Short term results can be gained. However, you will not get the long term results desired by most homeowners. Additionally, you will be wasting nutrients as you dump excess nutrients on your lawn just to assure all your bases are covered. A soil test will cost you less than $20 and will give you benefits many times that. A good soil test will give you quantities of Organic Matter, Available Phosphorus, Exchangeable Potassium, Magnesium, Calcium, Iron and Soluble Salts. Based on these results, a knowledgeable professional will be able to create a nutrition program for your lawn.

SOIL CHEMISTRY

In addition to soil nutrition and texture, a good soil test will also provide you with information about the chemistry of your soil. The process of transferring the nutrients into soil requires a complex chain of chemical reactions that can only happen if several elements are in balance. The most important of these is pH. In Kansas City, our soils tend to be alkaline and need to be amended with Lime to provide an ideal growing environment. How lime and other chemicals react with the soil requires knowledge of cation exchange sites, particle attractions and base saturations. All of these come into play just to grow the grass you like to look at from your window.

This month, when you see your neighbors playing in the dirt making muddy snakes and dirty golf balls, you will know they are on their way to having a beautiful lawn.