Horticulture Hotline 11/27/17
By Bill Lamson-Scribner
One big question to answer this time of year is do I want to
grow ryegrass in my lawn, paint my lawn green, or let it go dormant? The football
fields, baseball fields, and golf courses look so nice this time of year. Green
grass all winter would be nice.
While driving through neighborhoods, I see a lot of houses
for sale. Ryegrass or green paint could separate your house from the multitude
of other houses that are on the market.
For the very low cost of seed and fertilizer or paint, if
you could sell your house one month earlier saving you a monthly payment,
wouldn’t it be worth it? What about a year earlier?
Ryegrass gets a bad reputation because people misapply it. I
often get asked, “doesn’t rye kill my centipede?” If you manage the rye
correctly, you should have no problems. The ryegrass question is like buying a
dog. If you base your decision on the few untrained pit bull stories and never
purchased or adopted a dog of any type because of these stories, it would be
too bad. I write this as my mixed, pound hound dog, Ol’ Boy, softly snores
under my desk at my feet.
The 3 biggest mistakes I see with rye grass that give it a
bad reputation are:
- Put out at too high of a rate, so it chokes permanent grass.
- Use cheap rye with lots of weed seeds and poor color. Light green grass and no additional fertilizer so dog urine spots (dark green grass) become your fertilizer program.
- Not managed in the spring chemically or culturally, so it competes with permanent grass.
If you decide you want to put out ryegrass, now is the time
to check your trusty application chart. Have you put out preemergent herbicide
this fall? If so, when and at what rate? If you have recently applied preemergent
products, you may want to try the paint or wait until next year. You could put
out something to deactivate the preemergent so you could rye, but that will
just add to your cost.
If you are painting or not using rye, you can attack some of
the nasty winter weeds that will compete with your turf grass next spring without
having to worry about the rye grass. Who wants to be “mowing weeds” late winter
/ early spring?
Chickweed and other winter weeds are visible now. Remember
it is easier to kill them now when they are young and actively growing than to
wait until they are flowering.
Always read, understand and
follow product label or hire a professional. The product label is a Federal
Law.
