It’s been a while since I’ve written for the blog and I am extremely apologetic about that. The last time I was able to get any writing done was just as we were launching our DIY packs to the general public. The need at the time was for me to turn my attention to rapid and mass communication responses via YouTube rather than respond to each and every email and phone call that came into the office with application and product questions. As we have entered into a new year, I am back with monthly contributions. I’d like to make sure that everyone on the blog is also tuned in to my channel on YouTube because these topics are shown in living color when I’m out visiting and walking lawns with people. All that being said, I would like to parallel my series on understanding what your soil/lawn/weeds are telling you.

When I first started “digging into soil science,” it was purely from curiosity. I had so many questions when I started paying attention to weeds and bugs and why they would choose to harbor in a place that was absolute suicide. Think about it for a second, the act of a weed in a manicured lawn showing up and growing in the world of lawn care is a death sentence. Plants can’t understand that, right? What if they did? Would you think about them in a different way? Maybe with a little more respect? Let’s not get too far out there and worry about creating some sort of ethereal karmic repercussion, this is purely a biological action that has higher purpose.

Imagine your lawn; growing along wonderfully all spring, it’s lovely, the perfect shade of green, uniform in growth and a pleasure to mow. June comes along and the kids are out of school, summer vacation time. You plan and pack and hit the road for a couple weeks knowing that your sprinkler system is set and the grass is going to look great when you get home. After the road trip to Wally World and all the adventures that went along with it, you arrive home to see a dried up, weedy, desert landscape that was once your beautiful lawn oasis. Crap. As if you weren’t stressed out enough with unpacking and wrangling everything back into order, you are going to have to find out exactly what happened.

Here’s the order of things, the battery in the timer went dead, and the water stopped a couple days after you left. It started to dry. It got hot, too hot. Dried some more. The ground exposed. Prostrate spurge, crabgrass, and purslane showed up. Lawn life suddenly sucks. If you had a lawn care company you would immediately call your provider and yell at them, probably blame the technician for killing your lawn (lawn biz owners know what I’m talking about). Okay, back to it. You’ve got your water figured out, you go get the weed and grass killer and go to town on the weeds, 2-4d, quinclorac, dicamba, and you know the drill. The grass is barely turning back, kind of patchy green, the weeds are drying but now we’re in July, you think you need to fert this thing to get it growing. You are full of bad choices today.

I want to back up and look at the “why” of what happened here. So… the water stopped, that’s the big problem or at least the source of the compounding issues that were to come. When soil gets dry, it loses life. Worms can’t move through, bacteria die from lack of food, the whole system shuts down. There is a signal that happens when soil begins to dry. HELP. Help comes in the best way possible, low sprawling weeds with the ability to cover and shade the soil. Deep tap roots that keep air moving and have enhanced hydrotropism, meaning they will drive toward water. These plants will keep whatever turf is around them supplied with a small amount of available groundwater and allow for that soil to stay alive. The spurge and purslane are “shaders” of the soil. They will keep it cool and are way more adapted to heat than your fescue lawn. The crabgrass is busy sprawling and driving deep into the subsoil with a huge root system that when it dies, it will leave all of the carbon, all of that space and all of the deeper nutrients it pulls up (that have not been applied to your lawn), in the soil behind it.

Now let’s look at the interference that was run prior to returning your lawn to a growth phase. You jumped on the weed control too fast. Now the soil is going to heat up and you will have bare spots everywhere; this results in you panicking that you misapplied your herbicides. You did per se, by going at it too early. The proper mode of action is to thank the weeds first. Get your water on and start getting the moisture level back to equilibrium before tackling the weeds. This will require patience. If you water too much at once you become wasteful. Short and often will be the need for a few days followed by a deeper, longer watering once you actually have moisture at about the 6” level. At this point, the grass is going to start recovering quickly and when it does, you start on the weeds.

This is an opportunity to look around and see what happened during the stress period. What all showed up? Take a look around and identify. There are helpful guides on the subject and one of them is available here: https://amzn.to/2DdYAwF  (Charles Walters: “Controlling Weeds Without Poison”). You can choose not to read this book cover to cover and just look at the index of weeds, but you will find the fascination with what weeds do and how you can balance the soil very quickly. Once you’ve identified the weeds, correct the soil with the deficiency being shown. I can pretty much guarantee that a dose of calcium, potassium and a good dose of humic are going to be needed. When the soil dries, attention to drainage and organic matter will be paramount. You will want the turf to grow up a little longer than normal to allow for the grass to fill in. After all this, the weeds killer you apply will take hold better and you’ll be less likely to see them again.

Weeds are a wonderful marker for fertility needs, they do not attack a lawn, and they correct the soil so your lawn can be better. Wild violets, pennywort, and others show up when too much moisture is present and organic matter is not breaking down. Nutsedge and wild onion love low calcium and hardened soils with too much compaction. Dandelions are looking for calcium and burrow deep to find it. There are a slew of things you can learn about your soil without the need of a soil test if you look to the plants ready to sacrifice their lives for the betterment of the soil and the life it supports.

So, before you freak out, take the time to step back and read the landscape, you’ve got a road map in front of you every time a weed, disease, or insect chooses your lawn paradise to inhabit. If we slowed down and assessed before reacting, we could enhance these soil profiles to be provided for when the stresses come. Believe it or not, turfgrass roots can run deep into the earth if they are allowed to. The functions of the roots would be the same as many weeds if we trained them to go deeper. As you dig into the earth farther, things slow down, stay cooler, store longer. By borrowing from nature’s fertility markers, you can achieve the lawn of your dreams.

Lawncology® 34: Getting A Lawn Great Together

Related Video

Weed Series 2: ”Weeds in my lawn, what are they telling you? Part 2” … Lawncology® YouTube (16:48)