Horticulture Hotline 11/05/18
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. If you are a little apprehensive,
instead of doing the front yard where the whole world can see, try the back
yard or a side yard. If you have active children or dogs (the other children),
ryegrass can lessen the damage from traffic. Ryegrass does very good under the
canopy of oak trees – just ride by White Point Gardens (AKA The Battery) during
the winter.
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 (St. Augustine)?” 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, lays 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. Painting will also capture heat
that will help your grass “green up” sooner in the spring. Who wants to be
“mowing weeds” late winter / early spring? Florida Betony 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.
3 Possum’s Store hot topic reports – vicious late season
mosquitoes, winterizing fertilizers, brown patch / large patch, moles (of
course), and mole crickets.
Always read, understand and
follow product label or hire a professional. The product label is a Federal
Law.
