Brown Lawn Lessons

By Joyce Rosencrans

Be glad if it’s finally raining in your neighborhood today. You remember rain, that funny wet stuff that falls in droplets from a gray sky right after you wash the car. Splash down. These rain droplets will leave dusty-looking splotches on vehicles.

We’ve waited so long for gray clouds, while those north of us in Ohio had way too much rain in too short a time. Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky lawns have been giving up the last vestiges of “green,” while flood victims elsewhere were losing their belongings, and autos floated away. The only natural green left here is crabgrass edging our pitiful lawns. That scourge soon takes hold wherever grass blades have grown thin or given up.

Notably green exceptions are the manicured golf courses and those few, lush residential lawns with built-in irrigation systems. They stand out now like emeralds in a drawerful of fake jewels.

Meanwhile, the rest of the thirsty tri-state is no longer suffering from a mere “severe” drought. Oh no, we’re officially living in an “extreme” drought area — that’s a big step down the rain gauge.

Without enough rainy weather this weekend and in coming days, we get to worry about wild grass fires, concrete cracks and soil shrinking away from the foundations of formerly stable basement walls.

Last Thursday, Connie Smith said her husband was out “watering” their foundation because the ground had pulled away from the old concrete block walls of the basement. Also, some plaster cracks in walls had showed up inside, thankfully, in just one room. Smith’s husband knows foundations; he’s spent 30 years running the W.L. Smith Concrete Construction company in Independence, Ky., (859) 356- 5993.

Smith even had to take some locks apart and adjust their fit because wood doors have shrunk so much this summer.

What now? Fall is normally a dry season. Late-summer leaves are already falling as trees shut down prematurely to protect themselves. The leaves crackle beneath our feet. Can we possibly have enough rain this autumn to catch up?

What if we don’t? And, whatever happened to a rainy day? You know, one entire day of drizzle alternating with gentle, soaking rains? Enough with the widely scattered showers that never seem to materialize above one’s own roof.

This summer has led to empathy for the movie characters in “The Rainmaker,” starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn. It may even be time to rewatch a young Henry Fonda go west with other Okies in “Grapes of Wrath,” set in Dust Bowl days. This national tragedy brought about by plowing the prairie meant that drought during the Great Depression caused dust storms and the loss of valuable top soil forever.

The good news is that most of our totally brown lawns here are not lost forever. That’s because tall fescue long ago replaced blue grass and other varieties more susceptible to drought and diseases.

According to Wes Duren, our tall fescue lawns are dormant, not dead, and could withstand another couple of dry months. He’s an Ohio State University grad in horticultural science, with years of practical experience at his father’s Warren County nursery, Marvin’s Organic Gardens, (513) 932-3319. Duren also observed research on drought effects during his student years.

Duren reinforces the point that fall is always the best time to seed or overseed a lawn, be it brown or green. He says there’s a lot we can do to organically to alleviate the stress our lawns are under.

“A seed slitter is a great tool that you can rent for about $45 or $50 a day,” he says. “Our nursery does this service, but I know some people to rent the seed slitter and share it (and the cost) with neighbors.

“Make sure you crisscross the lawn, and don’t use the dispenser on the seed slitter. It can get jammed and you won’t be able to see if the seed’s coming out or not. We broadcast the seed and then use a seed slitter to put it in contact with the soil.

“Weeds soon come into a weak lawn, providing plenty of turf competition. So selection of the right type of seed is really important — tall fescue is best — and plant it with a seed slitter during the optimal time: mid-September through late October.”

Duren emphasized that it’s best to mix three to five varieties of tall fescue. “Otherwise a disease might come in and wipe out just one variety.” The point is to be left with several other varieties of tall fescue in that event.

He highly recommends a compost top dressing — about 1/2 inch of processed compost put through a screener to get rid of any small rocks or bigger debris.

He says, “Fill a wheelbarrow with compost and fan streaks of it on the lawn, using a shovel and a twisting-body motion. When done, the compost should be in long, rainbow-like streaks across the yard. Then take a leaf rake and lightly flick up the turf so the compost settles in the lawn. After a week or two, you can’t see it. That will relieve a drought-stressed lawn and reduce disease.”

A finer point is that Duren prefers to spread the half-inch of compost and then use the seed slitter tool to help work in the compost as well as the tall fescue seed.

Duren says a 50-pound bag of seed is about $80, so the seed slicer gets the seed down and out of the reach of hungry birds. “And it will germinate sooner.” He adds that compost is the only amendment to actually loosen clay soil, and that it’s best to compost first, then seed the lawn. By following this method, there’s no need for straw, which is an extra expense.

People who use chemical fertilizers on their lawns should not use them during drought because they’re high in soluble salts. A fertilized lawn requires more water. Duren says the salts “wick moisture away from tender plant roots.” He favors an organic fertilizer such as Marvin’s 8-3-3 that is a well-balanced dose of soluble and insoluble nutrients to be “weathered in.”

He says that grass will try to stay dormant during drought, so chemical fertilizers loaded with soluble nutrients may encourage growth and “exhaust grass,” thus turning it brown faster.

He mentions MultiBloom as an excellent fertilizer product that can be applied with a garden hose. “It’s catfish fertilizer with a mint smell to it,” he says. “We use it on all our nursery plants, and you can water the lawn with it to get a good instant green because it gets to roots faster.”

Duren cautions that not all compost will work the same on a lawn. “The more diverse products in a compost pile, the more diverse nutrients result in a rich, complex compost.” Just leaves are not enough, he adds. “Marvin’s compost includes feather meal, blood meal, pelletized chicken manure, sea kelp and mineral ore all steam- sterilized.

The ecologically sound thing to do is not to water a lawn. “If you break grass out of its dormancy, then you have to become a slave to watering. — It will need one inch of water a week. Put a rain gauge by the sprinkler.”

Duren says that compacted clay soil can be core aerated, but replace plugs with compost or the punched out places actually promote soil erosion. It’s best to core aerate when the lawn is not dormant, in spring or fall.

“The No. 1 thing a homeowner can do is cut grass higher — we recommend 4 to 4 inches — because the blade length roughly equals the length of the grass roots,” Duren says. Shallow-rooted grass soon succumbs to drought. Longer grass blades shade the soil and prevent evaporation and help prevent weeds.

And if your mower deck can’t be set that high, he says, consider buying bigger tires.

“Cutting grass higher and over-seeding this fall should result in healthy turf that will crowd out weeds.

“It’s more productive to strengthen turf grass rather than spending money on chemicals and herbicides to fight weeds.”

Duren would add one last lawn tip: Pray for rain.

Originally published by Post home editor.

(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.