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Hi! I'm Aaron Patton, Turf Grass Extension Specialist here at Purdue University.
Today we're going to take a look at this lawn here and
talk a little bit about how to recover our lawns after a stressful summer.
This lawn is pretty typical of the way many lawns look like after we have a stressful summer,
we get a lot of heat and maybe some drought in there.
Not all the turf can survive that drought.
The basic reason for that is most of the lawn species grown here in Indiana are cool season grasses.
They like cooler weather with adequate moisture and so on.
When we get a really hot summer or a really dry summer we can lose some of that turf.
This is maybe a severe situation. Some lawns may recover really well in the fall,
but sometimes you may have some loss of turf.
When you have that loss of turf you need to make some decisions on -
How am I going to recover this area?
How am I going to get my lawn back looking nice the way I want it and so on?
So let's take a look at this turf here and talk about it for a second.
What we see here is pretty typical of many lawns. We see a lot of different lawn species in here.
We see some Perennial Rye Grass, like we have here and it's a bunch type grass
it doesn't really spread from one area to another so
when lawns that have a lot of Perennial Rye Grass in them are damaged from the summer
heat and stress they don't really have the ability to recover from that damage.
Perennial Rye Grass in particular makes for excellent lawns in the spring and the fall
but it doesn't have quite as good a heat tolerance as let's say Kentucky Bluegrass or a Tall Fescue.
Not quite as good a heat and drought tolerance as those two species.
Over here we have some Kentucky Bluegrass. We see it is kind of thin too.
But one thing that's unique about Kentucky Bluegrass is
that it has the ability to spread and recover when it gets damaged.
We have Kentucky Bluegrass here and it spreads by some underground stems.
So here we see some Kentucky Bluegrass plants coming up and in some of these thin areas.
So it does have the ability to spread into those thin areas and recover the lawn that way.
Depending on how much of your lawn might be damaged from the summer stress
you need to make a decision on do I need to seed
or can I just fertilize my lawn and encourage it to recover that way?
The rule of thumb I like to use to help us with that decision is to determine how big are these dead areas
or these damaged spots and that helps us decide what we need to do next.
Generally what I like to say is if the area is bigger than your handprint
then that tells us that we probably need to seed that area in order to get it to recover.
If we take a look at some of these areas like here, we see I've got a big dead area,
a little bit bigger than the size of my hand and so that tells me
I will probably need to put some down in this area in order to get that to recover.
If I have some other areas of the property that maybe aren't as heavily damaged,
maybe I have some small thin areas like here, then I might able to just encourage those areas to recover
just from using some fertilizer, get that area to spread in naturally on it's own
and not have to buy some seed to put back in that area.
When you go to recover your lawn you'll find that you go to the store you want to buy some fertilizer,
you want to buy some seed, you'll find there are countless options.
Today we thought we would talk a little about some of the options you might have when you go to the store
as far as what seed and fertilizer to buy and
talk about what are some of the aspects of the product you might be looking for.
So let's take a look at some products we have.
Here we have some different products, a couple different fertilizers, some different seed options and a herbicide.
Let's take a look at these products and talk about, again
what you might be looking for in the store when you go to buy some products.
Now this fertilizer has mainly nitrogen in it.
Usually the print is pretty small on the fertilizers, but if you look it's going to have 3 numbers on it.
In this case it has a 30, a 0 and a 3. That first number is the amount of nitrogen in it.
Just in order to get your lawn to recover and grow a little bit more after a stressful summer
you're going to mainly be looking for a fertilizer that has a high first number.
That's the nitrogen, and that's the nutrient that helps plants grow the most.
There a re lot of different options, a lot of different fertilizers that
you can purchase that will have that as a primary nutrient.
If you have some spots in your lawn, some dead spots that are bigger than your hand as we discussed,
you're probably going to need to but some seed in these areas to get that turf to recover.
When you go to the store and you are looking for some products, some different seeds
you're going to find lots of options.
They can be a little bit confusing as far as to which one to choose.
One of the main things you need to consider when you are purchasing a seed are:
1. What are the species in my lawn? Do I have Kentucky Bluegrass of Tall Fescue or
maybe a mixture of grasses and
2. What kind of areas do I have in my lawn?
Is mainly sunny areas, mainly shady areas or maybe a little bit of both in your property.
When you go to look for seed usually the seed manufacturers will brand them in such a way
to help you as a homeowner figure out what you need to buy.
This one for example says it is for shady lawns.
Typically for turf species that do well in shaded areas are going to be some of the fine fescues,
like Chewing Fescue or Creeping Red Fescue.
The way you can what turf species are in these seed mixtures are to look at the back of the bag.
We take a look at the back of the bag we see there is a label on he back of the bag and that tells
you what turf species are in this particular bag of seed and tells you how much of each species are in there.
Let''s take a look at another option for us.
Many of you probably have full sun areas in your lawn
so you'll probably look for some type of Kentucky Bluegrass or maybe some Tall Fescue.
Tall Fescue has gained a lot of popularity over the last few years
in the fact that it is a little more drought tolerant. That can be real crucial in picking a mix.
Here I have a mixture that says high traffic and so I read little bit about it and it has a lot of neat things,
but I don't really know what it has in it until I take look at the back of the bag.
This particular mixture has mostly Tall Fescue and little bit of Kentucky Bluegrass.
This would be a mixture we would recommend for homeowners to have good traffic tolerance,
good heat and drought tolerance and just give you a nice overall look to your lawn.
Good summer performance and a mixture that has a lot of Tall Fescue.
Some mixtures we've branded in such that have applications for both sun and shade.
If you have a lawn that is half sun, half shade this would be a particularly good option for you.
You do have a back yard that really shady and front lawn that is really sunny,
I wouldn't recommend something like this.
I'd rather you buy a product for shady lawn to go in the back yard
and something for sunny areas to go in the front lawn.
One thing I would avoid when you go buy your turf seed is
avoid buying products that talk about how quick they establish.
Here we have something called a Quick Lawn. It's meant to rapidly establish the turf.
Typically these mixtures, if we take a look again at the back of the seed bag and
look at the label there, we're going to find it has a lot of Annual Rye Grass in it.
Annual Rye Grass is not very cold hardy, it's not very heat tolerant or drought tolerant.
It's not going to be a very good long term species for your lawn.
It might be something we would use in a newly constructed area to stabilize the soil and so on,
but it wouldn't be something we'd want to have long-term in our lawn or would make a nice long-term lawn.
So just be real careful when you're buying the seed to get the right turf species.
One other thing to say about seeding is when we go to seed sometimes we want to use a special fertilizer.
Here we have a product called a starter fertilizer.
What is special about a starter fertilizer is it is mainly high in phosphorous.
Phosphorous is particularly important when we establish lawns from seed.
It helps that newly seeded lawn to develop it's root system and grow strong.
Now what's different about a starter fertilizer from a normal fertilizer is again, it's high in phosphorous.
When you take a look at the label and you find the numbers on the bag to describe
what nutrients are in there, those three numbers, you're gong to look for a high middle number.
That's going to tell you that it's high in phosphorous.
After as stressful summer when the turf is thinned out, that gives an opportunity for
weeds to germinate and get established in lawns.
So you'll likely be wanting to apply a herbicide to get rid of some of those weeds like
dandelions, clover and so on that might get established in those thin areas of the lawn.
Now I caution you a little bit when you go apply a herbicide to a lawn, especially
when you've seeded it recently because there are some label restrictions that caution you
about you might injure the turf seedlings if you apply the herbicide too soon after establishment.
The way that you can tell whether or not or how soon you can apply this herbicide,
this seedling is actually, look at the back of the product.
They provide some information on how to use them.
It is actually a little pamphlet that is stuck on the back of the jug here.
If we read through this language, in this example it actually tells us that we need to wait until
after we have mown the new seedlings three times before it would be safe to apply this product.
Each product is going to be a little but different so if you buy herbicide to control dandelions and other
weeds in your lawn and you have just seeded the lawn recently, make sure you read these directions
so you know just how soon you can get out and apply this product.
Now the good thing. for this product for example, if we had seeded our lawn between August 15 and September 15
that would be the prime window to seed lawns here in the Midwest, then this product is
going to actually do its best job of controlling weeds if we applied it in the month of October.
So typically if we seed in between the middle of August and the middle of September
by the time we get to October our seedlings have matured enough, it's safe to apply herbicide and
that's the best time to control perennial broadleaf weeds, like this particular product controls.
When you go to seed your lawn and try to get some of these thin bare areas to fill in,
one of things you are going to need to do first is to prep the site.
After a tough summer you're going to have a lot of debris and
dead plant tissues and residues on top of the ground.
It's important to get some of those removed in order to help the seed establish.
It's best to get out here with some kind of a steel rake or garden rake and try to rake this up,
so you get down to the bare soil.
Once we get down to the bare soil if we can get our seed down in that area
it'd a much better chance of getting established.
You can do this manually, as I mentioned with a rake or so on,
you can also do it with some equipment.
Things such as a power rake or some type of a core aerator,
do a great job of removing some of this, exposing some bare soil.
And that provides a great environment for that seed to get established.
For more information on turf grass management and how to respond to drought,
visit the Purdue drought page, the Purdue Education Store, and the Purdue Turf Home Page.