Lulling Your Turf To Sleep For the Winter
How to Help Your Turf Get The Rest It Needs
Dormant winter turf is like the human brain while you’re sleeping. It may be resting, but it’s still doing work. According to Scientific American, sleep “serves to reenergize the body's cells, clear waste from the brain, and support learning and memory.” For turf, it’s pretty much the same thing.
That’s how we know you look at the winter months, too. Your turf is always working, and you can do things now that’ll make it even healthier when spring arrives. After all, in a turf professional’s life, there’s no real off-season.
Get Rid Of Leaves and Debris
Even under snow cover, your turf needs to breathe while it sleeps. It can’t do that very well if it’s covered in leaves, grass clippings or debris. Make sure to clean everything up before the first snowfall. Not only do leaves kill turf, they also contribute to snow mold. Speaking of which…
Fight Against Snow Mold
Clearing up your turf is just one way to fight snow mold. You can also apply a pre-winter snow mold treatment on your lawn that will help with the battle throughout the long winter.
If you’re on a golf course, you can also proactively blow the snow off of your precious greens, especially in the early thaws of spring. Partial snowmelt is the worst for snow mold. Melting snow traps air and moisture under the snow cover, creating a breeding ground for snow mold and other diseases. You can also cover your greens with tarps, synthetic covers or sand topdressing. But don’t spend too much time on those greens, because…
“Get Off My Lawn”
Spending too much time walking and driving on dormant turf can damage or kill turfgrass crowns. That leads to bare spots in the spring, and headaches for you.
Don’t Overlook Overseeding
For those down south or in the transition zone, overseeding is a key strategy to keep your lawn green all year long. If you overseed with a cool season grass like fescue, it will help transition your turf through the fall into winter without fully going dormant. And even if you’re up north, overseeding can help strengthen and thicken your lawn when spring arrives.
Cut It Low
During your last couple of cuttings of the season back up north, cut your grass as low as you can without breaking the hallowed one-third rule. This gives the turf more sunlight through the winter, and it leaves less of the grass leaf to turn brown.
Tackle The Weeds and Fungus
Applying an herbicide before winter hits can help you make sure that weeds don’t come back in the spring. Disease is also a very real threat in the winter months, and regular fungicide application can combat that as well. LebanonTurf offers dozens of weed control options and disease control solutions to provide the best protection against weeds for your specific application.
On top of all of that, winter is a time to plan for the year ahead, so be sure to check with your local LebanonTurf sales rep to get all the products you need for the new year. Also, if you haven’t been keeping up with the LebanonTurf “For The Health of It” blog, you can view all the articles from 2016 here. Knowledge is power.
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For more information about LebanonTurf, our products or how to improve the quality of your turf, visit our website or our Facebook page.