I love lawns. Not big lawns, and they dont need to be pure Kentucky bluegrass, either. I love a little bit of mowed green that has some grass and clover; it can have a few dandelions or bluets or violets, too. I can live with Creeping Charlie (also called ground ivy or by its scientific name, Glechoma hederacea). Overall my philosophy is this: If its green and you can mow it, its a lawn. Only thistles and other sharp things need to be dug out, but never nuked with chemicals.

Despite that philosophy, people often remark on how lush and thick my lawn is, and how nice it feels underfoot. Having a nice lawn is easy if you follow a few simple rules.

First, stop worrying about it. And certainly never add any chemicals to it. Weed-n-feed formulas not only kill off the broad-leafed plants like dandelions, they also diminish the biological activity in the soil. I want a healthy soil full of microbes (including bacteria and fungi) and know that many microbes are killed or adversely affected by chemicals.

Chemical fertilizers are made of salts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These have the ability to dry out and kill microbes. And of course, if your product includes chemicals for killing moss, weeds, fungi or insects, all those chemicals add to the killing power. Your soil cringes when you load up the spreader with weed-n-feed.

If you want to have a good healthy lawn, you need good healthy soil. It needs about 6 inches of reasonably good soil that drains well (so as not to drown the lawn grasses), but is not so sandy that it dries out in an afternoon. Cut and peel back a one-foot square piece of sod after a rainstorm, and look at the soil. Grab a handful of soil. Does it form a cylinder in your hand when you squeeze it, and hold its shape when you open your fingers? If so, you have clay, or a clay-based soil.

If you perform the squeeze test on sandy soil, it will crumble apart when you open your fingers. When you rub the soil between your fingers, you will feel sharp grains of sand. But if you have a nice loam, the soil with be dark and the cylinder will fall apart if you touch it with a finger.

If you are not happy with your lawn, I suggest getting your soil tested. The Extension Service in most states will have online instructions on how to take a soil sample, and where to send it. Some garden centers have kits for sale. Find out what kind of soil you have, what it needs, and if your soil pH is in the right zone.

Soil pH is a measure of how acidic or alkaline your soil is. Lawns do best when the soil pH is near neutral (which is 7.0) or slightly acidic. Our rain is acidic, and neglected soils including most lawns have soil that is pretty acidic. You can fix this easily by adding limestone to the lawn, and a pH test will tell you how much to add to balance it out. If your soil is too far from neutral, some soil minerals will become unavailable to the grass plants, even if the minerals are there. You can add limestone at any time, though most lawn experts recommend the fall so that it will have time to do its work before spring growth begins.

The other additive that helps an anemic lawn is compost or organic matter. Good crumbly compost can be flung around the lawn with a shovel and then raked out to provide even coverage. Doing that now would help. Earthworms in a healthy lawn will be more than willing to eat that compost and then excrete the nutritious ingredients into the soil.

Earthworms, fungi and bacteria also will help you improve your lawn by breaking down your grass clippings. Those clippings will add organic matter and enrich your soil. So cut your lawn regularly, avoiding a thick layer of clippings that needs to be bagged or raked.

See the article here:
Notes From the Garden: Take It Easy When Taking Care of the Lawn

Maybe your first sighting of a sod webworm invasion is moths flitting about through your landscape. What are they doing and are they affecting the grass, shrubs or even your cloths? These brown dingy moths could give the cat something to chase and may set a few new residents in a bit of a tizzy but for most gardeners they are a well-known start of the summer lawn pest season. By the way, they do not affect shrubs or clothing.

Actually the arrival of sod webworm moths appears early this year. They are more likely Fourth of July arrivals but they are already here. You might blame it on the warm winter. Maybe they did not die back to South Florida as they normally do or maybe they just over wintered here.

First signs of these insects are the moth stages that move about in the yard in the late afternoon. They can be numerous and are about impossible to catch without a butterfly net. They flit about laying eggs that could produce the grass feeding larvae we call webworms. I say they could, because many eggs and young larvae are consumed by natural controls of bugs and spiders living in your lawn. So, you may never see the webworms or their damage.

Only when you notice the grass starting to disappear might you become a bit concerned sod webworms are at work. Now here is some good news. They like to feed in crabgrass the most. Just think they might only eat the crabgrass and leave the St. Augustine alone. Well that is wishful thinking.

If you do have sod webworms feeding, dont get too nervous. The voracious larvae seldom kill an otherwise healthy lawn. Still, most gardeners do not like to see their grass chewed down to nubbins. If you have sod webworms feeding, some natural controls are available as Dipel or spinosad containing insecticides found at local garden centers. Where needed many other good insecticides are ready to use too. Just follow the label for the product you choose. One treatment should be all you need.

Sod webworms are easy to control. There is no reason to let them mow down your lawn.

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Sod Webworms Are Back In Town

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SACRAMENTO (CBS13) Do you let the grass turn brown, or keep watering the fields and hope the plants make it through the summer?

Thats the balancing act maintenance crews at local parks are going through during this years drought.

The iconic Rose Garden at McKinley park may be safe, but the fields are fading fast.

We are not going to let the roses die, said Sacramento parks director Jim Combs. Two days of water is not enough to keep the parks green. They will go brown but they shouldnt die because they are still going to be getting water.

The city is left deciding which plants, trees and grass get more water than others.

The important thing is yes they are going to be stressed, they probably arent going to be real healthy but they should still be recoverable, Combs said.

Park goers like Greg White say the choice is easy.

I think if you had to make a choice is go for the trees its hard to renew those, he said. Grass you can seed and sod and bring back pretty quickly.

Read the rest here:
Trees Or Fields? Parks Directors Face Tough Choices In California Drought

Proper mowing of your lawn can kill weeds and chinch bugs, cure disease, save water and provide fertilizer. However, improper mowing can be harmful.

Mowing is stressful to grass because it is meant to grow tall, mature and make seeds. Man decided that lawns look good when freshly mowed and most people feel the shorter the better. But a close cut doesnt do much for your lawn or your water bill.

Grasses are basal-growing plants. The growing point is at the crown (the area between the root and the blade) of the plant near the soil line. The tips are the oldest part of the blade which means you can cut off their tops without killing them. When you cut the tips, new growth pushes up from the crown. When the mower cuts off those grass tips, it causes severe shock to the grass plant.

Grass lives primarily on food manufactured in its blades not on what is drawn up through the roots. Cutting the blades reduces the ability of the plant to manufacture food. That food is used for both top and root growth so the shorter you cut the grass the less root growth you will have.

A plant with deep roots will be better able to withstand drought, fight off disease and insects and store food manufactured in the leaves. So the longer the root the healthier the grass. Every time the grass is cut the root system is weakened to some degree. When cut too severely, the roots stop growing. Mowing tears the plant and creates ports of entry for disease. Sharp mower blades give a cleaner cut which heals faster.

Mowing has actually tamed the wild grasses of our past. Mowing grass before it sets seeds prevents sexual reproduction and many grasses respond by reproducing asexually by spreading stolons and rhizomes creating a thicker lawn. How high you mow will also influence the spread of the grass. A higher cut makes healthier grass with deeper roots, more mass for photosynthesis and more stolons and rhizomes for a thicker sod which means less weed invasion.

You should also take into account that grass grows at different rates throughout the seasons. The summer months require more frequent mowing than our cold winter and dry spring months when you should not cut as often. The cold weather will slow the growth and bi-weekly mowing will be all that is needed. Some lawns could go three weeks or a month without mowing during a really cold winter. If the grass doesnt need to be mowed save it from the extra stress and dont mow it. Then we move into the dry spring months and grasses will be stressed by heat and drought so care must be taken to properly irrigate to help ease the stress of mowing. We are now moving into the growing season of summer when weekly mowing will be needed again.

In past years drought required the city to reduce our allowed watering to once a week. The fact is our lawns could easily survive on this schedule and be healthier for it. We should practice horticultural practices every day which produce deep-rooted lawns that dont require excessive water to keep them green. All lawns, properly cared for, could be conditioned to require no more than once a week watering all year. The exception would be during the cold winter months when once every two or three weeks will do.

Check your irrigation system to be sure of proper coverage. It may seem that the sprinklers are reaching all areas but if you have dry spots on the edge of your sprinkler pattern you may not be getting adequate water at the edges of the sprinkler pattern.

It was once believed that grass clippings were the cause of thatch accumulation in the lawn. It is now known that they do not accumulate unless the clippings are exceptionally long. They break down soon after they hit the ground. In the process they return a lot of nitrogen to the soil.

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Gardening: A lush, green lawn is a beautiful thing

Stadium sod removed

Rolls of turf removed from the field of Notre Dame Stadium this morning are loaded onto a semi trailer, as the University of Notre Dame prepares to install artificial turf in the football stadium. The university is selling the sod online for $149.95 per 5-by-2 foot roll. (SBT Photo/MARGARET FOSMOE)

Crews are working to remove the grass playing surface from Notre Dame Stadium in preparation for new FieldTurf to be installed later this summer. (SBT Photo/SANTIAGO FLORES)

Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 12:00 am | Updated: 5:17 pm, Wed May 21, 2014.

Sod removal under way at Notre Dame Stadium MARGARET FOSMOE South Bend Tribune mfosmoe@sbtinfo.com SouthBendTribune.com

SOUTH BEND Rolls of grass being removed today from the field of Notre Dame Stadium are being neatly stacked on a semi-trailer near the stadiums north gate.

By 8:30 a.m., the bed of the trailer was half filled.

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Sod removal underway at Notre Dame Stadium

Published: Thursday, May 22, 2014, 12:01 a.m.

It's not that we can't see the advantages, but we're wondering if walk-in clinics are going to see a rash of 7- to 12-year-olds with blown-out knees and turf toe.

Wasn't that a breakfast cereal? Washington State University has named a new variety of apple that should be available in stores by 2019. Focus groups helped pick the new apple's name, Cosmic Crisp.

Although the name suggests otherwise, it's a cross of Enterprise and Honeycrisp apples; not a cross between an apple and marijuana.

Something to sniff at: Dog owners can choose from a number of canine-related apps for their smartphones, including ones that locate dog parks, connect them with other dog lovers and monitor the dog's health using an electronic collar.

Most popular with the dogs themselves is a Yelp-like app that allows dogs, on a scale of one to five sniffs, to review and rate trees, fence posts and fire hydrants.

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Yard lines and endzones are extra

Stadium sod removed

Rolls of turf removed from the field of Notre Dame Stadium this morning are loaded onto a semi trailer, as the University of Notre Dame prepares to install artificial turf in the football stadium. The university is selling the sod online for $149.95 per 5-by-2 foot roll. (SBT Photo/MARGARET FOSMOE)

Crews are working to remove the grass playing surface from Notre Dame Stadium in preparation for new FieldTurf to be installed later this summer. (SBT Photo/SANTIAGO FLORES)

Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 12:00 am | Updated: 6:49 am, Wed May 21, 2014.

Sod removal under way at Notre Dame Stadium MARGARET FOSMOE South Bend Tribune mfosmoe@sbtinfo.com SouthBendTribune.com

SOUTH BEND Rolls of grass being removed today from the field of Notre Dame Stadium are being neatly stacked on a semi-trailer near the stadiums north gate.

By 8:30 a.m., the bed of the trailer was half filled.

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Sod removal under way at Notre Dame Stadium

by SEBASTIAN ROBERTSON

WFAA

Posted on May 19, 2014 at 6:39 PM

Updated today at 6:39 PM

DALLAS -- Staff at Kylde Warren Park are calling it a good problem to have -- the grass has been "loved to death."

Constant use of the grass combined with drought conditions are causing crews to tear out the lawn and replace it with fresh sod.

The west side of the park will be closed for a few weeks.

The park has survived and thrived through it's inaugural year in Dallas. The grass hasn't.

The lawn at Kylde Warren isn't alone. Residents across Dallas have watched their lawns turn from green to brown, and despite the warmer weather, they're staying brown.

"There are a lot of factors caused by this cold that have set our lawns back," said Bryan Hutson of Calloway's Nursery.

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Drought, constant use damages grass at Klyde Warren Park

AP

As my colleagues at CSNChicago wrote about over the weekend, if youre a die-hard Notre Dame fan feeling nostalgic about natural grass at Notre Dame Stadium, you can now buy a two-by-five foot piece of grass turf from the stadium for $149.95.

Notre Dame sent a release out Monday morning with more details on the sale: The sod will be removed from Notre Dame Stadium by Tuesday, May 20, shipped on May 21 and delivered by May 23 (the $149.95 includes two-day shipping). The cuts of grass will come from the least-worn areas of the stadium some sections were in pretty awful shape by the end of the 2013 season, and in even worse shape during the Blue-Gold game last month.

Notre Dame has played football on natural grass for every season of the programs existence, but will switch to artificial turf for the coming 2014 season. Issues with the field grew over the last few years, with 2013s regular season home finale against BYU a pretty egregious example of how bad the turf got (there were about 10 instances of a player being tackled after slipping and falling on a dead patch of grass).

Natural or artificial turf became a sticking point with a lot of Notre Dame fans hoping the school would continue to do things differently than other college programs. But tradition only goes so far when it becomes impossible to maintain a passable quality in natural grass.

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You can now buy grass from Notre Dame Stadium

Published: Monday, 5/19/2014

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Notre Dame is selling rolls of grass from its football stadium to the public as it prepares to install an artificial surface before the upcoming season.

The school announced today it is selling 2-foot-by-5-foot sections of grass from Notre Dame Stadium for $149.95, which includes two-day shipping and a certificate of authenticity.

The school says the grass will be removed from the stadium Tuesday and be shipped on Wednesday.

Notre Dame announced last month it was switching to FieldTurf because of problems with the playing surface in recent seasons. The university installed new sod at the stadium four times last year, including twice during the season.

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick says the change could allow the stadium to be used for other events.

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Notre Dame selling stadium grass turf