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Kansas City Lawns will soon be subjected to the ideal conditions for lawn diseases such as brown patch in tall fescue and summer patch in bluegrass lawns. The moist ground combined with 80 degrees plus will be like throwing a match on disease wildfire all across Kansas City’s grass.
If you are interested I have already wrote written an article on how to identify and deal with lawn diseases
If you need any help diagnosing or treating a lawn disease that shows up in your lawn I will be happy to come out and decide on the next best step.
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Kansas City has had a record snow storm this week. Gary Lezak reports that most areas received between 10 and 14 inches in Kansas City. Although snow can be a hassle for traveling and moving around in, it is GREAT for plants.
Not only does the snow insulate the plants crowns from widely swinging temperature extremes, it also will add important winter moisture applied slowly and evenly.
You can even help your plants out with extra moisture by choosing where you toss the snow when shoveling your walks and driveways. By piling it on flower gardens and around trees you will be giving them extra moisture. However, if you used any kind of deicer or snow melting product, be very careful as concentrating these in one area could be harmful. Here is a great article on using deicers around your plants.
About the only time snow can be damaging is if it stays around for weeks and weeks without melting it can cause some disease issues. However, in Kansas City we rarely see snow stick around for longer than a week before it melts away.
So enjoy the snow and rest well knowing that your plants are well taken care of while you enjoy them from the outside.
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Lawns all across Overland Park are suffering from a disease known as Brown Patch Rhizoctonia solani.
Brown Patch is a serious infection on Turf Type Tall Fescue lawns that often can be clearly identified by the large circular brown patches that quickly appear in a lawn. Unfortunately – what often happens when homeowners ere these patches appear they assume drought stress – since brown patchy usually appears during the first very hot humid stretch of the year. However, this usually will only help spread the disease further since Brown patch thrives in lawns that are moist for a prolonged amount of time when night time temps remain above 70 degrees.
The good news is that Brown patch rarely kills the entire plant and rather just causes leaf tissue damage and a thinning of the turf – which will recover once fall brings cooler temperatures and more vigorous grown back to Kansas City’s lawns.
Once Brown Patch is present follow these recommendations in order of importance:
- Stop all overhead watering except in the early morning hours.
- Bag grass clippings and dispose of them off site.
- Use a fungicide such as Prostar, Bayleton of Daconil. These are expensive and only somewhat useful as a curative.
- Once Brown Patch has stopped spreading – fertilize with a light .25#/n dose of nitrogen from an organic source such as Miloganite, Bradfield’s or Espoma.
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This year, Kansas City Landscaping has seen a Spring that was more gradual than in past years. This has been good for the plants and lawns in Kansas City . Consistently cool Kansas City temperatures with only rare and short warm-up have allowed us to gradually slip into Spring and avoid the landscaping pitfalls of moving too fast. Landscapers like slow springs because very few plants have been hurt by April freezes this year and although it has been fairly dry the plants have faired well. However, gradual will soon give way to rapid growth as soon as we get some heat. Lawn Mowing will soon be the most common weekend chore for most Kansas City homeowners.
Blue Grass and Fescue lawns have thrived in this slightly cooler temperature. They have been growing laterally and down for the last several weeks. The imminent heat will spur rapid upward growth – we will soon be mowing VERY often!
One of the negatives of this low soil temperature ahs been for any new spring lawn seeding. The grass has not grown much at all if any. That is again due to cooler than normal soil temps. This may not be a great thing for Spring seeded lawns since it simply will not have the time needed to grow before summer heat sets in. However, if my inside sources at NBC Action News are accurate, we may have a cooler than normal Summer which would be good for all of Kansas City’s lawns.
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A gift has been bequeathed to you. As part of this gift, each homeowner in Kansas City will be given over 200 pounds of this miracle product –guaranteed to revitalize your soil, allow it to store more moisture, improve soil structure and provide high grade fertilizer. The gift will fall from above and scatter itself over your lawn. Many of your neighbors will even freely share with you – some even purposely blowing this gift into your yard.
If you haven’t yet figured it out, this gift is the leaves from trees.
The sad thing is hundreds of people will throw this gift out. Collect it, bag it and put it on the curb.
Instead of raking and bagging those bulky leaves, save yourself some time and put them to good use as a natural mulch and soil amendment from your lawn.
I suggest two ways of utilizing this gift for your lawn based on your personality type. To determine your personality type, consider the cast of the popular TV sitcom Friends’. If your personality type mirrors the character of Monica, you are Type A. If you are more closely aligned with Joey, then you are type B. If you do not know what the show Friends is, you can assume you are Type A.
The Monica Personalities
Since you are very concerned with every detail of your lawn, the best way for you to use your leaves is by regularly mowing your lawn with the bag attached. Use a lawn mower with a bag attachment to quickly gather your leaves and shred them into mulch. This will vacuum and clean your lawn as well as shred the leaves at the same time. These shredded leaves are more valuable than gold for all the plants in your landscape. They can be piled in vegetable gardens to be tilled in later or they can be added as mulch in perennial gardens. Then spread these leaves up to 12" deep in your gardens. Mulching with leaves conserves moisture, controls weeds and grasses, protects against extreme heat and cold, and prevents soil erosion. Additionally, they can be composted in a compost pile to be used later.
The Joey Personalities
As a Type B personality you are focused on long term results of your lawn. You are willing to deal with a little bit of shredded leaf clutter on the lawn knowing that in the long run your lawn will look better and be healthier. Mow your lawn with a mulching lawn mower regularly. The mulching mower will shred the leaves into fine particles which will filter down through the blades of grass onto your lawn where they will disappear and benefit the soil. With regular mulch mowing, many homeowners would never have to rake their lawns as an acre of lawn can recycle the leaves of 60 trees.
Either of these methods is paramount to the old standby of raking and trashing your leaves. By raking and trashing you are adding immense amounts of waste to our landfills and depriving your lawn of necessary nutrients and organic matter. But more importantly, at least to all of us TYPE B’s in the world; it is a whole lot less work! There is only one reason I can see where raking is ever necessary. If you have small children, it is imperative that you rake the largest pile of leaves you can possibly assemble in the middle of the yard. Then, spend at least 3 hours jumping in and redistributing them all over your yard before mowing them by one of the methods mentioned above.
Enjoy the gifts that fall from the sky this autumn and make sure you fully utilize them to make your lawn more healthy and lush.
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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.
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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.
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Kansas City’s Lawns and Landscapes will benefit dramatically if you know how to properly water them. There is no other homeowner controlled aspect of caring for your plants more critical than proper irrigation. It is also the number one mistake I see Kansas City homeowners doing
It is essential to first understand what your plants want in an ideal world. Most of our lawns and landscapes in Kansas City will thrive on 1.5” of water per week. This can come from either rainfall or irrigation. Ideally 1.5 inches would be applied in one long and slow watering. However, in Kansas City, our clay based soils have a hard time absorbing more than ½ inch of water per hour before water begins to run off the surface so we have to water very slowly – hard for sprinklers to do – or water on multiple days in smaller amounts. Counter intuitively, we want these watering cycles to be on successive days, not spread evenly through out the week since our goal is to water deep into the ground and not to keep the surface moist.
Knowing how much water we need is the first step – the next step is knowing how to apply that water and for how long. Most homeowners will either be applying water by manual sprinklers or an automatic irrigation system. Both require you to know how much water is applied in a given amount of time by your system.
To measure the output of your sprinkler heads…
- Set a container with straight sides (I use a butter dish) in the middle of the sprinklers path. a Turn on the sprinkler and monitor the amount of water in the container.
- Turn off the sprinkler when the amount of water in the can has reached one inch (measure with a ruler – it can be deceiving)
- This is how much water that sprinkler system puts out in one hour.
Now, I know most of you will not take the time to accurately measure out your sprinklers output – despite its importance. So here are some rules of thumb for determining your sprinklers output. For automatic irrigation systems – spray heads (the ones that pop up and don’t move) typically need about 45 mins to put down 1” of water and rotors (the ones that sweep back and forth) need about 2 hours. So a generic program that I suggest for my customers is designed to put down 1.5” of water spread between 3 separate watering cycles. I set it so that the lawn gets watered Monday, Tuesday and Friday. This is a good compromise of watering deeply but also making sure that the water does not run off.. I set zones with spray heads to come on for 30 mins and zones with rotors to come on for 60 mins. This is adjusted if the soil is unable to absorb this amount of water. Also, all watering should be done to supplement mother nature. If she gives us ½” of rain then you can reduce watering by that amount.
For those of us unlucky souls who do not have automatic irrigation it takes a much longer to water our lawns. Most of the typical impact sprinklers used if set on full circle put out about 1/3 of an inch per hour. Since they water slower they can be left on longer. I usually suggest you water twice a week for 2 hours before moving the sprinkler. If you are only using the sprinkler in a half circle then you can cut that in half
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Quick, look out your window! Your Kansas City lawn is inhabited by exotic residents from faraway lands. They have come from all corners of the globe and they plan on staying. They will require you to take care of them. No use complaining, after all, you not only invited them, you planted them. If you are like most homeowners in Kansas City, you have a landscape full of exotic plants. Your bluegrass lawn is from Europe, your beautiful Dogwood is from Japan, your lush impatiens can trace their roots back to Africa and even Kansas City’s favorite plant, the yew, can trace its lineage back to Ireland. Although all these plants can survive Kansas City’s heat and cold, they need supplemental watering to thrive. Watering each plant can seem overwhelming, but with a little knowledge and a few tips you can have a beautiful, well-watered landscape.
By dividing your landscape into four categories, you will better able to manage your watering needs.
Turf
Your lawn is one of the thirstiest parts of your landscape. Most lawns require 1” of water per week. This can either come from rainfall or supplemental watering. The most important (and most often broken) rule of lawn watering is to water deeply and infrequently. Kansas City’s most proud gardeners, with their spirits blinded by the glory of our lush spring, begin watering their lawns religiously. Convincing themselves that if they can get their lawns green enough now – they will stay green through the summer. Unfortunately, every ounce of excess water they throw on the grass in the early spring is deadly. If the soil in the lawn is not allowed to dry between watering, the roots of the plant grow very shallow, encouraged by the ample water and warmth at the surface. However, Kansas City’s glorious spring is only the opening act to our reliable, but dastardly summers. Shallow roots are a death sentence to your lawn. By watering only when the top 6” of soil have dried out, you will be dispensing some tough love that will result in your lawn being able to survive the summer.
For irrigation systems in Overland Park and other cities, you should be watering every as little as possible but as deep as possible. I usually start by suggesting that homeowners try to water 3/4″ for each zone on two consecutive days. So they will water on Monday and Tuesday and not again for the rest of the week. This long deep and infrequent watering si the kept to healthy grass all summer long. If you grass cannot quite make it through the whole week without looking wilted then you can give another 3/4 inch on Friday. To get 3/4″ of water from an irrigation system usually requires atleast 40 minutes on rotors and 20 minutes on spray heads. However, every sytem is differnt and you should ideally measure how long it takes for yuor sytem to apply that amount of water. Use a straight sided container placed out in the middle of the sprinklers zone and turn it on and let it run until it has fille dup with 3/4″ of water. That is how long it will need to run.
Trees/shrubs
Trees and shrubs are often ignored when it comes to watering because of the perception that such a large plant must be able to pull water from deep down in the soil. However, most of a tree’s roots are in the top 3 feet of the soil. Although trees can and will survive in Kansas City, supplementing their water just few times through the year will reward you with increased growth, enhanced beauty and bolstered resistance to disease and stress. Typically, trees will need a little extra water in the middle of the winter and a couple times during the hottest part of the summer. Watering for trees should be done by observation, not a schedule. When you see signs of stress such as wilted or dropping leaves, apply 3” of water to the area under the braches. This can be done with a well-adjusted impact sprinkler or a soaker hose. The method of application is not as important as making sure ample water is applied where and when the plant needs it.
Perennials
Perennials have widely varying watering needs based on species and type. It is important to know the specifics for your plants when watering. These can generally be learned by talking to your favorite landscaper or nursery. However, there is still a guideline that will lead you to the healthiest and most beautiful flowers – water only as much as your plants need and not a drop more.
Annuals
Watering annuals is different than watering other types of plants. Annuals tend to be shallow-rooted and need ample watering to thrive. Annuals should be watered when they first show signs of stress. In the heat of the summer, may mean every day. If you water annuals from overhead, do so early in the day. this This allows the leaves to dry out preventing disease from hurting your plants.
Water is the most important gift you can give the exotic residents of your landscape. You will be rewarded with beautiful, healthy plants that can thrive year round in Kansas’ foreign landscape.
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It is time for Kansas City Landscapers to prepare for the heat. Weather forecasts are showing that Kansas City will soon be hitting 90 degrees for the first time this year. This tends to be a tipping point for the lawns and landscapes.
You can help your landscaper and lawn care service by taking care of your lawns watering needs.
New Trees or Plants
Water new trees or plants when the top 3″ of the soil dries out completely. Water the plants slowly and deeply allowing the entire root system to become soaked. larger plants take more time.
This is very important. You cannot give a time to water because every soil will absorb water at a different rate. The goal is to water the plants entire root system and then let the entire roots ystem dry out just before adding new water.
Lawns
Lawns should be water with 1″ of water per week. This is best done with one long slow watering if your soil will absorb that much water. Most Kansas City lawns will do just fine with one long irrigation. Depending on the type of sprinkler being used — This may require up to 1 hour of watering. It is best to measure the water rather than guessing. I use a straight sided margarine tub placed int he middle of the sprinklers path to tell.
Watering is an essential part of maintaining your landscapes. It does not have to be difficult but it does have to be consistent and done correctly. If you have any watering questions feel free to leave a comment to this post and I would be happy o help you out.
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