By DoMyOwn staff
Paul has been hard at work preparing his lawn for Spring green up. But mother nature has not played along. In this episode, Paul will talk about some of the weather issues you need to be aware of when tackling a DIY lawn care project.
You work hard, you plan, you do the best that you can. But sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to.
But before I get into explaining what I mean by that, let's first recap. We've done a general yard clean up and overview of what we're dealing with.
We've gotten rid of bushes and shrubbery and pruned up a lot of trees.
We've measured and gotten the square footage of our yard.
We touched on the equipment we need.
Spreader and sprayer. The two most importance pieces of equipment you need to take care of your yard.
We've done an initial weed control application.
We've gotten soil samples.
We've done a follow up spot kind of treatment with weed control products.
We've gotten rid of moss.
And we've dethatched the yard.
The plan for this video was going to be aerating the yard and going into everything that deals with that. But one important factor has held us back...the weather.
A few days after dethatching the yard, literally about two days after, the temperatures plummeted into freezing temps. And it was like that for about a week.
Pretty sure I stated before in other videos, but I've got to wait for at least 75 percent green up on my lawn before I can get the aerator out to puncture some holes in it, and start fertilizing and over-seeding. The cold weather snap that we had really delayed that process and bumped it back even further. So I've got to wait even longer because of the weather.
So it got us thinking, got our gears turning, while we're sitting around playing the waiting game, that we should make an episode that talks about weather and all of the factors you have to think about during your rehab program.
Factor number one that I stated at the beginning of the video, temperature.
Think about this, if it's too cold, plants are dormant. They're not doing anything. They're lying low. No activity is happening. So if you put down any kind of application, the likely hood of those plants absorbing that product are very slim.
On the opposite side of that, if it's too hot, if you're spraying at high noon in the middle of summer, you risk burning up a ton of stuff, possibly killing your yard and you're back to square one. Which is the complete opposite of what we want to do.
So when is the best time of day to make any kind of application or do any kind of control products in and around the yard?
Applying in the evening is best, because the plants are in recovery mode and trying to recover from the stress, and the heat and the weather from that day. So they're absorbing moisture from the soil and other things it needs to complete the process.
Therefore if you make an application late in the evening the plants are more readily available to accept an herbicide being applied.
Another thing you'll hear people talk about is waiting for soil temperatures to be about 55 degrees, especially when you're going to put down some pre emergents.
There are soil probes that will take the guess work out of it for you. You just simply stick it in the ground and it will measure the soil temps. I'll leave a link in the description box below so that you can click over to the website and read more about those.
If you don't want to go that route, basically all you have to do is wait for five days of consistently nice weather and that should get your soil temperatures up to about 55 degrees when it's good to apply pre emergents.
It's trying really hard! I can tell it wants to. It wants to green up. I'm seeing some green popping up. We're almost there. Soon...soon...
Second factor to consider, rain fall.
Some rain fall is OK. It can actually help you in the long run. If you've got a granule your putting out and it says you've got to water it in, that rain falls going to take care of that for you. But as a general rule of thumb, if your going to get more than two inches, I would hold off on doing any king of applications in or around your yard.
The reason for waiting and putting it off, if you've got more than two inches, that product you put down, it's just going to wash out of your yard, and you've got to put even more down, and you're wasting product.
One thing that hasn't had a problem greening up is where the Crepe Myrtles use to be. Chalked full of weeds! Nice disgusting salad bar. We're going to have to take care of that at some point.
Third factor to consider, wind.
If there's alot of wind, or big gusts of wind coming through every now and then on the day that your thinking about putting down a control product, I would put it off for another day.
The reason being, think about it like this, if you're trying to spray a mist out of your sprayer onto your yard, a big wind comes through, it's going to blow it out of the area that you intended, into another portion of the yard that you didn't intend, or worse maybe it's going to get into an ornamental plant bed and kill a lot of things that you did not intend to kill.
Just as a side note to, I'm wondering what I should do right here. This is where all the bushes and shrubs were, and in front of the porch, not sure what I really want to do here. I'm open for suggestions, leave them in the comment section below. What do you think I should do right here?
The back and the side of the yard is in really sad shape. It really wants Spring to get here, and it really wants new grass seed, and lots and lots of love and affection!
So to sum it all up, weather has a huge impact on your rehab program!
I've stated it once, I'll state it again, timing is everything, especially with pre and post emergents!
If you've got a lot of weather extremes, meaning too much rain, or not enough rain, you're in a drought, or you've got heavy winds, it's too hot or it's too cold; those are going to play a big part in your control program.
If you click the "i" icon in the upper right hand corner of this video, it will take you over to our lawn schedule within our Lawn Care Guides on our website.
This is for both cool season and warm season grasses. So for all you people in the North and for us folks down here in the South, it will give you a broad over view of when you should consider doing all of these applications; your pre and post emergents, when you should consider aerating and dethatching, all of that good stuff.
Pretty sure I hit on the major topics that we wanted to discuss. If there's something that we missed or you have further questions when it comes to weather and when you should time your applications, leave them in the comments section below, or type up an email and shoot it over to the customer service staff, or just pick up the phone and give them a call.
The weather has been crazy! It's been all over the place, it's been hard to predict, and it's been hard to stick to our original plan of when we wanted to do everything.
But again, that's OK! That's what Doing My Own Lawn Care is all about.
Learning, moving things around, scheduling, learning what it takes to really put into place a rehab program to get that big beautiful green luscious lawn you've always wanted!
When are just now creeping back up into the 60's, low 70's. So, if that continues, we should start to see green up on the law, which means I can get the aerator, I can get the fertilizer, the grass seed, and really get into the meat of the rehab program.
So make sure to follow along by clicking this button to subscribe to the channel. And also check out all the other videos by clicking this playlist that we've done in the series so far.
I hope you're still learning and I hope you're still having fun watching the videos. I know I'm having a blast making them for you!
And as always, thanks for watching!
