Bahia Grass How To Control Weedy Grasses
Dealing with Bahia grass
When it comes to dealing with Bahia grass, or Paspalum, (note that paspalums include Bahia, and Dallas grass etc) you have a number of options:
Control options
- You can live with it, and mow it at least once a week during the growing season.
- You can control it by suppressing it’s growth with a number of different agents.
- You can kill it.
- You can prevent it
Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of each:
Living with Bahia grass
If you live with the problem, you will need to mow pretty often, since at certain times of the year this invasive grass will grow more than a foot in under a week! Mowing twice each week is what I would recommend. The advantage of this course of action is that it allows for doing nothing, the disadvantage is that you will need to mow more often, or learn to live with the tall grass.
Controlling Bahia grass
It is possible to control the growth rate of Bahia grass using chemicals. There are a number of chemicals which can accomplish this when used in combination with other chemicals, and some that are labeled specifically as preventative growth regulators. These “pgr’s” are expensive to use. There is however one chemical which will do the job with a low dose, and at minimal cost. It is glyphosate. Glyphosates are made under several brand names, many of which are labeled for the suppression of Bahia grass, and do a great job of doing just that. The dosage is generally 2 to 6 ounces of 41% glyphosate per acre. At this rate, damage to other grasses is minimal to non existent. This combination will give seed head suppression for several months. The lower level of treatment will require re treatment after a couple of months, but will give a lower level of phytotoxicity, or yellowing. The highest rate will give season long control, but will cause a higher level of yellowing. The advantage is, that you get to lower the number of times you mow, and avoid the problems of erosion, and weed invasion that can occur when you kill off the majority of your Bahia grass turf. The disadvantage, is that you do not kill the Bahia grass. This however is offset by the weakening of the Bahia which allows other grasses to catch up, which might later allow you to actually kill the invasive grass without totally destroying your turf.
Killing Bahia grass
Why not kill the Bahia and be done with it? Well, that is an option. If you plan to kill it, there are products available such as the metsulfuron ureas that will do the job selectively. If you plan to do this, I recommend extensive forethought. If you kill the Bahia grass, and do not replace it with another grass, and it is your primary turf, the result will be grass burs. You must take care to use only the proper ratio, over the exact area, or you run the risk of salting out the good grasses. You should plan on seeding, fertilizing, and irrigating as soon as the label directions allow, in order to prevent the growth of grass burs and other weeds. If you do not do this, you will have grass burs in areas that have become bare. It is a fact, grass burs won’t grow where there is competition. You must make the soil able to produce competition for them, to prevent them.
Preventing Bahia grass
The best way to deal with Bahia grass, or any other weedy grasses The best way to deal with any weeds, or for that matter, any pest is to prevent it from gaining a foothold! If you avoid, or prevent a problem, you don’t have to deal with it. How can you prevent Bahia from taking hold in your yard?
- The number one means of transporting weeds in lawns is dirty mowers. If you clean your mower before you mow your lawn, you can prevent the majority of seed transfer problems. If you have a Bahia grass right of way, mow your lawn while it is clean, and before you mow your right of way, or wash it between. This simple act will prevent the majority of transfers. It should be mentioned that you can not legally perform a chemical treatment on a highway right of way without a license in that category.
- The next thing that you can do, is to develop a healthy lawn. A healthy lawn will prevent a host of problems, and will prevent weeds from getting a foothold. Think of your lawn as an organism. If the organism is healthy, it resists disease and parasites. Weeds are parasites!
Is Your Lawn Suffering From BMB?
Is Your Lawn Suffering From BMB?
One of the problems I have seen more frequently over the past few years in lawn care is not a result of bugs, weeds, fungus, foot traffic or any other of the usual suspects. The symptoms are narrow shallow ruts, horizontal rows of compaction, and rows of balding areas in otherwise healthy lawns. These symptoms are often treated with chemicals, fungicides, extra fertilizer, or other common lawn care practices, and never solve the problem.
In most of the cases I have been called out because of these symptoms, I was able to identify the problem as BMB!
What is BMB?
BMB is short for “big mower blight”, a condition that occurs as a result of the use of over sized mowers in areas where they are not appropriate. This disease shows up first in areas such as slopes, edges and corners, especially where turns are made.
Turning shifts the mowers weight to one side, causing one side to be heavier than the other, when this is done on slopes, or in tight areas, the effect is magnified. The effect is skidding, scalping, and compaction.
Big mowers are great for large flat prime lawns, they also work well in rougher areas, but in small areas with short turns, and slopes, the effect can be damaging and counter productive.
Steps to Prevent BMG
To relieve the compaction problems related to the use of large mowers, aerifying is the answer. For prevention, talk to your lawn care professional about using push mowers on your property instead of the larger deck mowers and stand on self propelled mowers. If they agree to do so, the problem is solved, if not, it may be time to change services. Of course, you can always do your own mowing if you have the time.
Bigger is not always better, and this is especially true when it comes to lawn mowers in small sloped lawns. Don’t let BMB destroy your lawn!
More about mower size and big mower blight
Lawn Care | Lawn Clippings What You Should Know
Clippings
Every year your lawn creates about a hundred pounds of nitrogen per acre. That is over two pounds of nitrogen per one thousand square feet, which is about two fertilizer applications per year.
It is estimated by many experts, that up to 60 percent of the fertilizer applied to your lawn is removed by removing the clippings.
When you bag, you are removing a significant amount of organic matter from your lawn.
The money saved can be substantial if you have a large lawn.
Now, there is work involved, if you wait too long between cuttings, the grass could grow so much that the cuttings do not break down quickly, but I know, if you are reading this, that you are interested in creating a healthy lawn, and would never allow that to happen. Mowing frequency is a big part of good lawn care, and on most of our grasses, the more frequently you mow, the better the quality of your lawn. This helps in a couple of ways:
It makes the clippings easier for nature to break down into nitrogen.
It causes the grass to grow laterally, thus getting thicker, and filling in the empty spaces, or as we say, it “tightens the turf”. This makes your lawn more wear tolerant.
I hope you will give this consideration when the time to begin mowing arrives. It is the most ecological, economical and aesthetic way to a better lawn!
Mowing The Single Most Effective Tool For Lawncare
Mowing The Single Most Effective Tool For Lawncare
When you start planning out your routine for lawn garden and landscape maintenance, give a little thought to the single most effective thing that you can do to improve your lawn. Increasing mowing frequency will help your lawn in ways you might not have thought about.
Here are 10 great reasons you should:
1. The more often you mow, the “tighter” your lawn will become, because the grass will start to grow laterally rather than upward.
2. Mowing more frequently will allow you to lower your mowing height, providing less cover for insects, and less cover means fewer bugs.
3. As a result of the tightening of the turf, it will be more durable as well. Mowing heavily trafficked areas more frequently can help to prevent those ugly bald spots in your lawn.
4. Since there is less leaf blade to transpire water, the lawn will need less water, and irrigation can become less frequent.
5. Less frequent irrigation will help to keep fungus from becoming a problem.
6. The clippings you have will be smaller, and will degrade more quickly, putting more nitrogen and organic matter back into the soil, so less fertilizer is needed to keep the lawn green.
7. Thatch will be less of a problem.
8. The need for bagging will disappear.
9. It will help your lawn to be more healthy, and healthy lawns ward off lawn disease and fungus, can withstand more traffic, and suffer less from insect damage, recovering more quickly when these problems do occur.
10.You will have fewer weed problems, because they can’t go to seed between mowing’s, and because the weeds will be competing with a healthy opponent.
Let’s recap.
Mowing more frequently saves money on fertilizer and irrigation, makes your lawn stronger, tighter, and more bug, weed, disease and fungus resistant.
There is another benefit of more frequent mowing. It provide exercise. If you want to tone up, or work off some extra weight, why not double the benefit? So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and mow, mow, mow!
Lawncare Winter Lawn Care
Lawncare Winter Lawn Care
Tyler Lawn And Garden: 8 Ways to Help Your Lawn Beat “The Winter Blues”
We are still basking in the remnants of summer in East Texas, but it is never to early to start thinking about the next season. No matter where, you are, or when you read this, these basics will help you get your lawn through winter.
1. To help your lawn through the winter months, there are several things you can do. You can increase your lawns cold hardiness by adding a little extra potassium, the third number on the fertilizer bag. Remember, your lawn grasses roots will continue to grow and store nutrients even when the tops are dormant.
2. If you have dry winters in your area, check the moisture level of your lawn from time to time. Roots will still need some water. It is not good to allow the roots to freeze in a dry condition.
3. Mow your lawn as you normally would. Scalping your lawn for winter will only lead to erosion, or bare spots, where the winter weeds will find a new home. Scalping just generally leaves the lawn in bad condition.
4.If you have a lot of leaves, either rake them, or mulch them. Raked leaves can be recycled in your compost bin. Mulching them over your lawn, will add nutrients and organic matter to your lawn.
5. If you have winter and early spring lawn weeds, start planning now to get rid of them. When the lawn is dormant, it may be possible to remove the weeds manually, or chemically without doing any damage to your lawn. If you have complete dormancy, that is, no part of the grass has any green, you can apply a non selective herbicide such as a glyphosate product to any weeds or weedy grasses which spring up during that time. Be certain that you follow the label directions, because it is possible to “salt out” an area with almost any product, natural, or chemical.
6. If you plan to use a pre emergent herbicide, it would be good to have it on hand when the time comes to apply it in your area. Once again, follow those label directions.
7. Make sure that your irrigation system is protected from freezing, before you find out about it the hard way.
8. This will also be a good time to start thinking about your lawn equipment. It will need to be winterized before you put it away. This is a good time for such things as; oil changes, filter changes, new spark plugs, repairs, upgrades, to sharpen or buy more blades. If you can, sharpen several to have handy when spring comes. Be sure to balance the blades after sharpening, so they won’t vibrate, and affect your mowers longevity.
Lawn Care 3 Reasons Not to Bag Clippings
Lawn Care 3 Reasons Not to Bag Clippings
Most cities now have programs to encourage people not to bag their lawn clippings. This is done to slow the flow of spring and summer lawn refuse going into landfills. There are three good reasons not to bag your lawn clippings listed bellow, so read them, and do yourself, your lawn, and the environment a favor, and put that bagger away!
1. Unless you compost clippings, they are just landfill! No one wants to add more than necessary to our landfills, but there are other reasons for not bagging, that are of practical use to the homeowner.
2. Your lawn needs organic matter. Lawns need organic matter for rebuilding the soil, and the clippings help provide it.
3. Your lawn needs those clippings for nutrients. It needs nutrients for rebuilding the grass. When you leave the clippings on your lawn you provide both. In a years time, your lawn produces enough nutrients to equal several applications of fertilizer. Removing the clippings, robs your lawn of these nutrients, gradually weakening it, requiring you to buy and apply more fertilizer.
It has been demonstrated that removing lawn clippings removes as much as 60% of the fertilizer you apply on a yearly basis. If you have a fairly large lawn, the savings could be substantial.
The arguments for bagging, and why they are wrong.
1. “My lawn builds a lot of thatch if I don’t bag.”
True, you can have a thatch problem, but that is really a symptom of another problem. Thatch is usually a sign that something isn’t working right.
A. The lawn is not breaking the thatch down through microbial activity as it should, which is either because the lawn has very little microbial activity, probably because it is not being fed enough material due to previous bagging.
Or:
B. There is too much growth between cuttings. This can be a result of over fertilization and irrigation, or too much time between cuttings.
The clippings need to be kept short in order to be broken down and reused by the soil. The smaller the better. If you are mowing once every two weeks, that will not be enough. In this case, you don’t need a bagger, you need a hay rake!
If you have a thatch problem, you should aerify, or dethatch your lawn, and start over by mowing more often, and leaving the clippings to degrade.
2. “I need to bag, to pick up the weed seed.”
A. First of all, your bagger will not pick up all the weed seeds.
B. If weeds are going to seed in your lawn, it should be mowed more frequently.
In general, the more often you mow, the better the quality of the lawn. This works because the nutrients are broken down more quickly, and are available for the grass to recycle. It also helps because more frequent mowing causes the grass to grow laterally, and keeps weeds from growing to maturity and producing seed.
Leaving your clippings on your lawn, reduces the amount of waste going into landfills, adds nutrients and organic matter to your law, can help save money on fertilizer, and promotes a healthier lawn. It just makes good sense!
Mowing Tips Lawns Lawn mowing Lawn mowing frequency
Tyler Lawn
Mowing Tips Lawns, lawn mowing, lawn mowing frequency
The most important lawn care practice.
Your lawn is important for more than aesthetics!
What is the first place in the great outdoors to which your children are exposed? Where do your pets play? Well, of course, your lawn! In most cases, this area comprises the largest part of a homeowners property. Providing a healthy safe, “bite free,” place for children and pets to play, offering a healthy, inviting pleasant place for family activities and neighborhood “get togethers” is your goal. In order to do this, there is one primary activity that you must perform, perform repeatedly, and perform properly to help you reach that goal:
Mowing.
Mowing is the one thing that if done properly, will yield the best bang for your buck where both your lawn, and pests are concerned. If all the other things are done reasonably well, this will make your lawn an oasis for you, and a hard target for pests.
Make sure that you start with a good mower, with sharp blades. Sharp blades cut the leaves of grass more smoothly, lessening the chance for disease, and adding to the overall appearance. A dull mower blade makes for a ragged cut, and makes mowing harder for you and your mower.
Since mowing is the most important part of lawn care, what is the most important part of a proper mowing program? That would be mowing frequency. You should mow as often as possible, at least once a week during the growing season.
Reasons for frequent mowing:
- The more often you mow, the “tighter” your lawn will become, because the grass will start to grow laterally rather than upward. This will create a more resilient lawn with more competition for weeds.
- Mowing more frequently will allow you to lower your mowing height, providing less cover for insects, and less cover means fewer bugs.
- As a result of the tightening of the turf, it will be more durable as well. Mowing heavily trafficked areas more frequently can help to prevent those ugly bald spots in your lawn.
- Since there is less leaf blade to transpire water, the lawn will need less water, and irrigation can become less frequent.
- Less frequent irrigation will help to keep fungus and bugs from becoming a problem.
- The clippings you have will be smaller, and will degrade more quickly, putting more nitrogen and organic matter back into the soil, so less fertilizer is needed to keep the lawn green and healthy.
- Thatch, and the insects that use it for cover, will be less of a problem.
- The need for bagging will disappear.
- It will help your lawn to be more healthy, and healthy lawns ward off lawn disease bugs, weeds, and fungus, can withstand more traffic, and suffer less from insect damage, recovering more quickly when these problems do occur.
- You will have fewer weed problems, because they can’t go to seed between mowing’s, and because the weeds will be competing with a healthy opponent.
The more frequently you mow, the smaller the clippings, so they become easily available for your lawn to recycle into nutrients, and organic matter. If you bag your lawns clippings, you are taking away as much as sixty percent of the lawns fertility, and depriving your lawn of organic matter and other benefits. Avoid bagging like your lawn depended on it. Leaving your clippings on your lawn, reduces the amount of waste going into landfills, adds nutrients and organic matter to your lawn, can help save money on fertilizer, and promotes a healthier lawn. It just makes good sense!
Frequent mowing discourages pests, disease and fungus. Fewer pests means a healthier lawn, a healthier lawn will discourage pests! See my point? All this means that you will need fewer pesticides, and that means a healthier you!
Lawncare Pest Control Tips And Advice
Tyler Lawn
Lawncare Pest Control Tips and Advice
Lawn care, there is more to it than you might think. You have to consider everything that’s involved, like mowing, fertilizing, irrigating, and even pest control. It turns out, that good lawn care, and good pest control go hand in hand. as a matter of fact, if you use proper lawn care techniques, you will have very few pests to have to control by other means!
Proper lawn care and pest control go hand in hand.
The list bellow gives a few details about good lawn maintenance, as it relates to the control of pests.
- Scalping your lawn, weakens the scalped area’s turf, and allows weed invaders to take the place of the weakened grass.
- Not mowing the grass at a low enough level, leaves cover for insects and allows some low growing weeds to reproduce seed under the mowing height
- Thatch hides insects, and should be removed or cultivated, and not allowed to build up. Good mowing practices will stop it from building.
- Waiting too long between mowing’s, can allow weeds time to reach seed head maturity, and plant themselves in your nice green lawn. Too much growth also provides cover for insects.
- When you have waited too long to mow, change your mowing height, so that you take off less leaf blade, and then mow again in a few days at a lower cutting height. Do this in increments until you reach your desired cutting height.
- You should never remove more than one third of the top at a time. Taking too much off at once will leave your lawn in a weakened condition, inviting more bugs and weeds to take over.
- Avoid mowing weedy outside areas before you mow your lawn. If you have to do this for some reason, stop and thoroughly clean your mower between the two areas.
- Mow away from your landscape beds and garden to avoid throwing grass, weed clippings, and seed into them.
- Don’t “over water” your lawn and landscape beds. Many weed pests, and bug pests enjoy excess water, and may decide to take up residence in the new sea side resort in your landscape. Over watering fuels fungus, and bacteria as well.
- Over fertilization leads to most of the same problems as over watering.
- Don’t fertilize your lawn too late in the year. If you do, you may be fertilizing winter weeds instead of grass.
- Avoid aerifying late in the fall. Aerifying at that time, will plant the weed seeds that would have otherwise rotted on top of the ground.
- Avoid lawn compaction. Areas with heavy foot traffic, are likely to have poor quality turf, and are subject to invasion by weeds that like compacted areas. If you have compaction, loosen it by aerifying. If the area is getting so much traffic because it is convenient, you could make a paved foot path through the area, or you could plant or build a traffic barrier to make it less convenient.
Tyler Lawn Help: Cultivation Fertilization Irrigation
Tyler Lawn
Tyler Lawn Help Cultivation, fertilization, and irrigation.
Enjoy caring for your own lawn? That’s good, maybe we can offer some tips, advice, and “how to” help.
Mowing
Mowing is the biggest part of, and the primary activity in lawn care, but it is not the only thing. Not by a long shot! There are still plenty of other things that need to be done, so out of the easy chair, and into the sun!
Other lawncare activities
Your lawn needs air, water, nutrients, and an easy way to get them all into the root zone where those plants can make use of them. With that in mind, we will start with lawn cultivating. There is no need in fertilizing and irrigating if the ground is so compacted that it has no air space. Air, nutrients, and water can’t get into the root zone if there is no space for them to occupy. They will just run off into the roadway and drainage system. Cultivating will provide the needed space.
Lawn Cultivation.
Cultivating is not needed as often as the other items on our list, but it is highly important.
If you have a thatch build up, or compaction problems, aerifying, or verticutting will aid in keeping your lawn in good condition. Thatch hides insects and provides conditions which encourage insect reproduction. It also weakens the lawn grasses, deprives them of natural nutrients, and inhibits water intake.
If your lawn is in need of renovating, cultivation is essential. Top dressing could be a separate subject, but I mention it here because cultivation and top dressing are usually a collaborative efforts. Cultivating twice per year will have a positive impact on your law, and more frequent cultivation in high stress areas can work wonders. Avoid cultivating your lawn late in the fall. It will plant weed seed that would have otherwise rotted on the surface.
Fertilizing.
Getting the right amount of nutrients to your lawn is important. For the best fertilizer, mow more frequently, which will leave smaller, more easily broken down clippings, and don’t bag your clippings They can return as much as 60 percent of the nutrients to the soil. Of course, you will want to add more fertilizer, so start with something like one pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet of lawn space per application. Three applications per year should be sufficient.
Of course you will need to adjust this to the needs of your particular lawn. Most common lawn grasses can use as much as two pounds per thousand square feet, per application.
Some fertilizers use sulfur coated urea formaldehyde. The sulfur coating slows the release of nutrients, allowing for more time between applications. You can use these at higher levels, less frequently. If you use regular fertilizer, smaller doses at more frequent intervals are recommended.
Irrigating.
Keeping your grass healthy requires making the right amount of water available. Too little and it desiccates, to much and it will languish and invite fungus, pests, and disease. I am not going to go into the details of precipitation rates, or evapotranspiration rates (yes, they are real terms) but you should watch your lawn. If it is soggy two hours after watering, you should probably back off the water a little. If it is dry at a depth of one inch, you should increase the watering.
Pest Control.
If you have done everything else on the list right, the chances of having pest problems is greatly diminished. The best lawn pest control is a healthy lawn! There can still be problems due to weather conditions, and other natural phenomena, but even these will be diminished.
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