Horticulture Hotline 02/21/22
Now is a great time to bring in a soil test and get ready for this year. Soil amendments often take months to affect the soil. If you take your tests now, you will be well on your way for 2022 with a custom program for a beautiful lawn. Here is what David Cebula had to say, “The soil test recommendations from Possum’s immediately rectified a cation exchange issue by identifying what amendments the lawn needed. My lawn greens up earliest and stays green the longest now that I followed their recommendations.”
I get a lot of questions from people that have moved here from areas where they grow cool season grasses (bluegrass, ryegrass, fescue) about de-thatching the lawn with a de-thatching machine. You want to de-thatch or aerate your grass when it is actively growing. Since warm season grasses grow on runners (cool season grasses grow in clumps), it is very traumatic to de-thatch a lawn in the Lowcountry. De-thatching rips up runners and makes a huge mess for you to clean up. I usually prefer to de-thatch by core aerating and leaving the cores with their micro-organisms on top of the grass to decompose the thatch. Top dressing with Cotton Burr Compost also aids in the decomposition of the thatch layer. Bio Grounds Keeper is a granular product that has thatch eating microbes is always good addition.
If your lawn has excessive amounts of thatch, you can use a de-thatcher in May when the grass is actively growing. After using this machine and raking up all the debris, you will understand why I like core aerating instead of de-thatching. The old saying is, “run de-thatcher for 10 minutes / rake up debris for 10 hours.” Core aerating will manage thatch and give you the extra benefit of lessening compaction and bring air to the roots. Aerating also helps with water, fertilizer and control products penetration into the soil. For the best affect, top dress with Cotton Burr Compost after aerating and add Bio Grounds Keeper. If you are fertilizing and mowing the correct amounts, you should be able to manage thatch easily.
Moles, preemergent weed control, soil test, fire ants, mole crickets, leaves, fleas, kill winter weeds before they seed, pruning (especially cold damaged and crepe myrtles), and soil for spring gardens seem to be the hot topics at Possum’s.
