Hit the Dirt; Coastal Lawn Care

Hello this is Dave Weigel for hit the dirt and today I want to talk about lawn care on the area of coastal Maine. We have a lot of problems with our lawns in this area particularly because the soil tends to be so acidic in Maine. And the obvious solution for acid soil is liming and the traditional wisdom has always been to lime in the fall and the reason for that is that powdered lime has always been formulated in the past so that takes as long as six months to actually break down and begin to sweeten or low raise the pH of the soil. This isn't true these days with the advent of pelletised lime and even the powdered lime has been reformulated so that it takes effect in more like six weeks instead of six months. So now instead of having to apply lime in the fall to get the results in the spring we can apply it virtually any time of year and I actually recommend liming twice a year in many cases especially if you have a lot of pine trees around your land or if you notice a lot of blueberries growing in the area anywhere near your lawn that's

Juniper's as a definite indication that your soil tends to be acidic and if you want your grass to do well you'll need to add lots of wine. And a second problem with lawns is that the soil tends to become depleted if you've used chemical fertilizers in the past the salts tend to build up in the soil and the grass becomes very shallow rooted. And the solution for that is to try to use more organic fertilizers and the traditional wisdom of organic lawn care is to let your lawn grow longer than the standard one and a half to two inches that most people like to see their short well manicured lawn three and a half inches is the recommended height for an organic lawn because the roots of the plant are going to grow to the same depth that we allow the blades to grow and a longer lawn will grow deeper roots and naturally absorb the water better and do much better with this becomes a question of taste as well. I'm not convinced that a three and a half inch lawn looks as good

as a two inch long and so use your own judgment but realize the longer he let your lawn grow the more it's going to absorb water from the soil and the better chance it has of riding out the drought that we seem to get on an annual basis in coastal Maine but. Another big problem that we have with lawns is that build up over time and there are several different methods of dealing with that. The traditional method is a mechanical The fatter which I find very disruptive it really along with just with disturbing the fatted also rips up the roots of a lot of your grass and the new more organic method of fats control as a body spray is applied with a hose and sprayer that I can actually recommend at this point because I haven't really tried it I'd like to hear from many of our listeners out there that might have used this method and see if it's really helped with their fats problem. And another big problem with lawns is compact. In any area that gets a lot of foot

traffic is going to get beaten into the ground and grass needs air to the roots to grow and do well it's very important that the grass can breathe. So if you have a lot of foot traffic on your lawns like I do and many of the places that I work you have to error rate on a fairly regular basis which can be done a number of ways. If it's a fairly small on you can take your pitchfork and just stab it into the ground as deeply as you can get it a number of times repeatedly but if you're dealing with a larger lawn you can rent or borrow an air raid or that you roll along the lawn that has hundreds of steel spikes that go several inches into the ground. That helped get air down to the roots of the plants. Another method is golf shoes or aerator sandals can actually be worn every time you mow the grass and that's a trick that I'm actually considering utilizing that I haven't gotten around to yet but it really makes sense that every time you're walking across your lawn if you're helping the grass

breathe better it's going to be much happier. And big problem with lawns of course are we dandelions are a favorite weed and just about any lawn area. And one way that I've read recently to deal with the in the Lions is as they bloom pick the flowers if you don't have time to actually get out and pull the dandelions dig them out by the Taproot I think everyone knows if you don't get the entire root of a dandelion it can grow back from a little nub of the Taproot that's left in the soil. But when they bloom if even you send your kids out to pick all the dandelion flowers so they don't actually get a chance to go to seed you can at least stem the spread until you have time and then every time you go out and mow the grass have your little weed popper in your back pocket and stop as you go along and try to pop out and eventually control the spread of the dandelions. And Pastor always a problem in lawns to change bugs are a real problem in many areas and the best way to deal with those if you have

to reconstruct a lawn area has been damaged by them is use and in to fit it grass seed that is actually poisonous to the grubs of the change bug as they eat the roots of the grass it's a very natural control. And my last tip about lawns is very important as always make sure your mower is very sharp. If you are using a dull mower it tends to rip and shred the grass while it's cutting it and is very disruptive and not good for the lawn at all which is also best to mow in the morning or in the evening time. If you mow during the heat of the day it's stressful to the grass when it's being mowed anyway. And if you do it when it's high it's going to have an even harder time and be much more likely to brown out. And this is a why go for it that there will talk to you again soon.