CALEB NICKERSON
Now that lawns around the region are seeing the light of day after being smothered for a winter, it’s prime time for some preventative maintenance for your patch of grass. The Equity caught up with Jared Hamilton of Mountainview Turf in Quyon to get an expert’s advice on spring lawn care.
“It’s always good to give it a light raking, just a scratch, you don’t have to be too aggressive,” Hamilton said. “Go over it lightly with a garden rake to try to get some air into that root zone.”
“If I were to put them in order of importance, fertilizer is number one and overseeding is number two, aeration is number three and top-dressing is number four,” he continued.
Hamilton advised holding off until the weather is consistently warm before fertilizing.
“There’s no point in putting down fertilizer or grass seed until the soil temperature is over 10 degrees because your roots don’t take up nutrients until the soil gets to that point,” he said, adding that homeowners should be fine now, with the recent spate of hot weather this region’s experienced. “If it’s plus 10 or more than five days in a row, you’re good … We only started fertilizing our sod fields here last week.”
On most fertilizer bags, there are NPK values denoting the percentage by weight of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, respectively. Hamilton recommends something high in nitrogen (in the 20-30 range) for the spring.
“In the spring time, you have a blend that kind of lasts for eight weeks, so it’s a little faster, little stronger, just gives the grass a good kick in the pants and gets it going,” he explained. “The summertime has a longer release rate for the nitrogen. The reason for that is, during the hot, dry months in July and August, you’re not burning your lawn, you’re just spoon-feeding it.”
While some people like to seed their lawn every spring to fill in bare patches and bolster existing growth, Hamilton said that it might not be necessary.
“It’s kind of as needed, you don’t have to overseed every year,” he said. “As long as your lawn is healthy, you can overseed every second or third year.”
As far as mowing, he recommends a height of around 2.5” most of the year, and longer in the summer.
“If you’re going with a lower height, like 1.5” to 2”, do so when it’s cooler out, spring and fall, because in the summertime when it’s hot and dry you usually want to raise it up to 3”, 3.5”,” he said, adding that he would recommend bagging or not bagging depending on the lawn. “If you leave too many clippings you build up a thatch layer. Thatch is kind of that sponge layer between the roots and the crown of the plant. If that’s too thick, you get insects, you get disease, you get drought … A small amount of thatch is healthy, but it’s all about that balance.”
Aeration is a technique that can counteract thatch buildup and increase drainage, by punching small holes in the grass.
“You want to aerate, one, if your thatch layer is too thick, or two, if you’re seeing a lot of compaction,” Hamilton said.
Top-dressing is the process of adding soil mix to the top of the lawn to encourage decomposition of thatch, among other purposes. Hamilton said that it can be beneficial, if done in conjunction with other methods.
Hamilton recommended the natural weed-killer Fiesta, since herbicides for cosmetic use are heavily regulated, but said that the best defense is to keep your grass well-fed and healthy.
“That’s pretty much turf basics 101,” he concluded.
