Horticulture Hotline 11/28/22
By Bill Lamson-Scribner
Great weather, Cassia blooming, Tea Olive fragrance, Camellias blooming, Holly berries, fall leaf color – what a good time to visit on of our local gardens / plantations. We are still having great weather and football seasons are coming to an end, so still a good time to get outside in the yard.
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. Many people living in Charleston now grew up with green grass in the winter and the that can still happen.
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 (or 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.
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.
- No fertilizer programs. 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. Even with ryegrass you can spray out weeds, just read and follow product label as always.
3 Possum’s Stores hot topic reports – vicious late season
mosquitoes, winterizing fertilizers (stay away from winter fertilizers for
fescue and blue grass), brown patch / large patch, moles (of course), fire
ants, and mole crickets.Take soil test and apply SeaHume for a better lawn in 2023.
Always read, understand and follow product label or hire a professional. The product label is a Federal Law.
