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Fescue Seeding – Slit Seed or Overseed

Turf Type Tall Fescue: Slit Seeding vs. Overseeding

The choice between slit seeding and overseeding for your lawn depends on the current condition of your turf type tall fescue lawn, your specific goals, and your grass variety. Here’s a breakdown of the two methods:

  1. Slit Seeding (Slice Seeding) for Turf Type Tall Fescue:
    • When to Use: Slit seeding is typically employed when your turf type tall fescue lawn has significant bare spots, thinning grass, or poor overall coverage. It’s also a suitable approach when you want to introduce new turf type tall fescue seeds or completely rejuvenate your lawn.
    • How it Works: A slit seeder is a machine that creates small grooves or slits in the soil and deposits turf type tall fescue seeds directly into these slits. This method ensures excellent seed-to-soil contact, promoting optimal germination.
    • Advantages: Slit seeding offers superior seed-to-soil contact, increasing the likelihood of successful germination. It is particularly effective for repairing damaged or sparse turf type tall fescue lawns.
  2. Overseeding for Turf Type Tall Fescue:
    • When to Use: Overseeding is a suitable option for turf type tall fescue lawns that are generally in good condition but exhibit minor thinning or require increased grass density. It’s also an excellent routine maintenance practice to encourage a lush, healthy lawn.
    • How it Works: Overseeding involves evenly distributing turf type tall fescue grass seed across your existing lawn. You can achieve this manually or by using a broadcast spreader.
    • Advantages: Overseeding is less invasive and more cost-effective than slit seeding. It’s a valuable method for maintaining and thickening a healthy turf type tall fescue lawn.

Additional considerations:

  • Turf Type Tall Fescue Variety: Ensure that you select turf type tall fescue grass seed varieties that are well-suited to your local climate and soil conditions. Different varieties may perform better in specific regions.
  • Timing: The timing of seeding remains crucial. Both slit seeding and overseeding are typically performed in the fall or spring when the weather is cooler and moisture is available. Fall is often the preferred season for seeding, as the soil remains warm, and weed competition is reduced.
  • Soil Preparation: Regardless of your chosen method, adequate soil preparation is essential. Ensure that the soil is adequately prepared, free of debris, and, if necessary, enriched with compost or other organic matter to enhance nutrient levels.

In summary, if your turf type tall fescue lawn features extensive bare spots or requires a substantial renovation, slit seeding is the more effective choice. For a generally healthy lawn with minor thinning, overseeding is the recommended approach. Always select the appropriate turf type tall fescue grass variety, time your seeding correctly, and prepare your soil for optimal results.

Best Lawn Watering Practices

How Much and How Often

The right amounts of water delivered at the right times will help you have a beautiful and happy lawn. Proper watering is key to helping your grass develop deeper roots. Deeper roots mean greener, stronger, more drought and stress tolerant grass.

Note: These watering tips are for established lawns. More frequent watering will be needed when starting seeds or new sod has been installed.

How Much?rain_gauge_2

Most lawns and grass types in the Virginia Beach area will do well with 1 to 1-1/2 inches of water per week. Over watering can contribute to fungal growth, unwanted weeds, thatch buildup, insect pests, spongy soil, and oxygen deprived root systems. Under watering will result in browning, dry blades and eventually, a very thin lawn. To measure how much water your lawn is getting, place a rain gauge or empty tuna can on your lawn and monitor it.

Water Deep and Less Often

How and when that water gets delivered is as important as how much. The goal is to keep the soil moist about six inches below the surface. Deep moisture equals deep roots. Some experts suggest applying the desired amount of water only once a week. Others recommend breaking it down to 2 or 3 times a week. Soil, grass type, and weather conditions will have some impact on which method would be best for your lawn.

watering_your_lawn

Short and frequent watering sessions will result in shallow root systems and a weak lawn susceptible to weeds, drought, and disease.

If you’re unsure, 20 to 30 minutes in each zone 2 to 3 times a week is a good starting point. Go DEEP!

Earlier is Better

Early morning watering will allow the water to soak deeper into the soil before the sun starts beating down. During the hottest times of the day, you will lose a good amount of moisture to evaporation. Sprinkling too late in the day can leave the surface soggy for longer periods and encourage disease and fungus growth.

4 Signs That You’re Over-Watering

In the heat of summer, you might be concerned about your lawn drying out and decide to make some adjustments to your timer. Be careful with that, because over-watering can be as detrimental to your lawn as under-watering. If you think you might be running the sprinklers a little too often, here are four signs your lawn has had more than enough water.

  1. Squish: If you’re lawn is constantly wet, soft, muddy, and squishes under your feet, that’s a good indication that you should cut back on the water.
  2. Runoff: If water is running off into the street or pooling in parts of your yard, scale down the sprinkling. Your soil is saturated.
  3. A wilted lawn: This one can be confusing because some of the signs that your lawn needs water–like not springing back up when you step on it, and blades of grass curling up–can also be signs of over-watering. If you’ve been dousing your lawn and it still looks like it “needs water,” it’s most likely wilted from over-watering.
  4. Fungus and weeds: Fungal lawn diseases and some weeds take advantage of moist conditions to spread and thrive. If your lawn has a blight, mold, or patchy weed problems, you’re probably over-watering. You could also be watering at the wrong time of day. Again, early morning is best, so surface moisture can evaporate, as opposed to night, when moisture sits on the lawn for hours before the sun rises.

 

Related articles from other sites:

Video from Organo-Lawn in Colorado, but information is applicable anywhere.

Avoid Over-Watering Your Lawn

Popular Mechanics – 8 Watering Tips for Healthy Lawns

Southern Living – Don’t Be A Lawn Watering Dummy

Leaf Removal – Fall Lawn Care

Every Fall, They Fall.

Leaves. Everywhere. You could just leave the leaves where they lay to suffocate your grass, get tracked into your home and provide camouflage for doggie doodie, or like most, you’d rather make them go away. Our leaf removal services can handle this annual task for you using different strategies for different leaf removal jobs.Leaf Cleanup Virginia Beach

Remove or Recycle

Depending on the amount of leaves we’re dealing with, and customer preferences, we make them disappear by baggin ’em up, choppin ’em up, or a combination of the two. When we need to bag, leaves are blown and raked into big piles and stuffed into bags to be left at the curb for city pick-up. What’s left gets chopped into little bitty pieces that decompose quickly. Note: the City of Virginia Beach asks that you put no more than 25 bags out at a time and that each bag weighs 25 pounds or less.

If the piles aren’t too huge, we can mulch the leaves into oblivion. This is our preferred method as the leaf remnants will decompose and return nutrients back to the soil, naturally. It’s good for the soil and the environment.

Mini Leaf Clean-Up

This is a weekly removal or mulching of leaves to prevent a huge buildup. For our regularly scheduled customers with little to moderate amounts of leaf accumulation, we provide what we might call “mini leaf clean-ups”, up to 3 bags, for the regular cost of mowing plus a bagging fee.

Major Leaf Removal

When we need to tackle yards with several mature leaf shedders and the mini clean-up just isn’t enough, we dedicate a visit for major removal efforts. As with most of our other non-mowing services, fees for leaf removal are based on our current labor rates. Contact Us for details.

Incremental Leaf Clean-Up

Leaf Removal BlowerWhen the leaves are still falling and we are called for a clean-up, we do our best to make the leaves disappear from the lawn and blow out/rake flowerbeds, under shrubs, and other areas where leaves can accumulate. Getting these areas completely clear of leaves can be time consuming (costly), so we recommend incremental leaf clean-ups until the trees are naked. After the last of the leaves drop, we can get all the nooks and crannies cleaned out for you.

 

Choke Out Weeds By Mowing Higher

Mow High, Mow OftenMowing higher for better lawns

Lawn care experts agree that different types of grasses have optimal mowing heights to help keep them happy and healthy.

Some folks figure that the shorter they mow their grass, the longer it will be before they need to do it again. That may be true, but when it’s cut too low, the grass will be less healthy and it will be easier for weeds to thrive.

Mowing Trauma

Mowing is actually hard on grass. Every time you do it, you’re chopping back the plant’s photosynthesis laboratory, its leaves. Grass blades, like all leaves, convert sunshine into sugars which then get converted into starches and stored in the roots. Cut the too grass short, and you drastically reduce its ability to perform photosynthesis. This will weaken the grass, roots and all, making your lawn more vulnerable to weeds, pests, and diseases.

Taller grass is healthier in itself, and it gives weeds less opportunity to take root. Many of the weeds in our lawns grow low and have shallow roots. Short grass allows these weeds plenty of space to soak up sun and settle in. They’ll grow like – well – weeds. Let the grass long and strong and it will curb weeds, simply by shading them out on the topside and choking them out underneath.

Arrow Lawn Care recommends a minimum mowing height of 3″ for most of the lawns we maintain. Lawns with fescue blends are often cut at 3.5″ to 4″. We mow a little lower for the warm season varieties such as bermuda, zoysia, and St. Augustine – 2″ to 2.5″.

Remember to keep your blades sharp and cut pretty!

Sources and resources:

www.planetnatural.com, www.richsoil.com

 

Grass Clippings – Bag or Mulch?

Back in the olden days we just shot grass of out the right side of our mower and that was that. If it left an unsightly mess, we raked it up and put it in bags. If not, all was well. Nowadays, many mowers don’t even come with discharge chutes so we’re faced with the big decision between bagging or mulching. Which one is best? I vote for recycling.

“Recycling” your grass clippings, or grasscycling, helps feed the lawn by returning the organic matter and grasscyclenutrients back to the soil. Grasscycling can also reduce the need for watering, reduce or eliminate the need for fertilizing, and help prevent common turf diseases.

Some people just don’t want the clippings left on the lawn. My mom insisted on bagging because she didn’t want clippings getting tracked into the house. So, of course, I bagged mom’s yard every time… because she said so!

That being said, we mulch most of the yards we service and bag when we need to or when it’s requested. A good mulching mower with sharp blades will chop those clippings small enough that they just sift down through the lawn, decompose quickly and feed the lawn. Mowing when the grass is dry also helps ensure that the clippings will scatter evenly rather than clumping.

Whether you bag or mulch… just Cut Pretty!