Gold Coast Gardener

October 29, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

If you take care of your own lawn so far as mowing, fertilizing and maintenance, you know that it always demands a lot of time and sometimes money. This month there’s a lot of things that need to be done for the upcoming winter season in home lawns and the most important is fertilizing. Most retail garden centers have a number of fertilizer products for turfgrass depending on what type of effect you want and if you have a lot of weeds you can also put out weed control and fertilizer combination products.

This time of year grass will be slowing down a little bit, but you don’t get the drastic slowdown in turfgrass until mid to late December. It’s still important though that it have plenty of nutrients to grow well up until the dormant season and you might notice too that you have to adjust your watering schedule since we’re well entrenched in our dry season and turfgrass doesn’t need large amounts of water this time of year.

In the next week or two if you want to put in a nice winter lawn of ryegrass. Usually we can seed ryegrass beginning in November and it will last until mid April before the heat burns it out. Ryegrass has a lot of advantages for many people. It gives the lawn a rich dark green color during the winter season and it fills in bare areas where you don’t get a lot of weed seeds able to germinate during the cooler months when grass is less vigorous.

Ryegrass is also very shade tolerant so it will give you a nice thick lawn underneath heavy foliaged trees or on the north side of buildings in the shadows which don’t see the sun until summertime again. Ryegrass does grow quickly though so you will have to maintain regular mowing schedules throughout the winter months if you put in ryegrass. Ryegrass seed is available from most garden centers and it’s applied at the rate of about 10 to 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet of turfgrass area.

This time of year in the turfgrass you might notice insect activity, especially below ground pests such as mole crickets and white grubs. If you see yellow streaking or yellow patches, this could be indications these pests are below ground doing their damage.

Products for controlling these can be purchased at most garden centers or if you don’t like to work with chemicals pest control companies offer lawn spraying at reasonable rates.

If you want to put in a new lawn, this is a good time for doing re-sodding or repair work on existing grass. Area sod dealers have good inventories at this time of year and grass should establish quickly in about 3 to 6 weeks.

When putting down sod make sure that you supply light frequent irrigation especially the first 2 to 3 weeks. Do not fertilize or mow new sod for at least 3 to 4 weeks though to give it time to get firmly rooted.

If you have questions about lawn maintenance procedures this time of year as we’re starting our fall slowdown, contact the Palm Beach County Extension office for free advice. The Extension Service also has a number of free publications on turfgrass management that can be picked up during normal business hours.

For information over the phone, dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.