Friday, April 18, 2008

WinterKill on bentgrass lawns


Bentgrass is not a grass or turf species that is desirable in home lawns. This winter has been hard on a lot of bentgrass patches in lawns. Here is one where the entire patch of bentgrass has turned brown. If Georgina (her lawn in the picture) is lucky, the bentgrass will have died and it can be replaced with a more desirable mix of turfgrasses. Knowing, however, that Murphy’s law is usually at work in these circumstance, it is most likely that the damaged bentgrass will perk up in a few weeks and be a green and healthy as ever. While bentgrass is easily affected by winterkill and will be brown and dead looking in the early spring, it rarely completely die out. It’s just the upper foliage that has turned brown. Once the weather and the soil warms up, it will recover and be ready to spread out and overrun other parts of the lawn.


If your lawn is showing a great deal of bentgrass that has winter killed, you may want to take this opportunity to give it a hard raking to get rid of the dead stems and to thin out the unwanted bentgrass. Then add some soil and a high quality grass seed mix. This will thin out the bentgrass for a while. Be forewarned, however, that there will likely be enough bentgrass left that in a few years it will be back as thick and strong as ever.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN:
or call us at 905.318.6677 or 1.888.TURFKING (887.3546)
If you would like more information, please Contact us
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Copyright 2008 Turf King-Hamilton. All Rights Reserved.

Monday, April 14, 2008

What do I do if I find white grubs in the spring?


In the spring, many people will find grubs in their lawns (or the skunks and raccoons find them and leave a big mess.) The good thing is that the skunks are getting rid of the grubs. If you could just teach them to put the grass back after they have taken the grubs out, I’m sure we could hire them out as grub eradicators.

Generally speaking, we wouldn’t recommend trying to treat for grubs at this time of year. And why not?
First of all, most of the damage grubs do to you lawn is done in the fall. By spring, they are not feeding very much. In a few weeks, the grubs will pupate, and then turn into adults. The adults, then fly around, mate and the females lay eggs on lawns. The cycle then starts all over again.
Secondly, at this time of year, a grub treatment is generally not worth the cost. The products available to control grubs do not work as well in the spring. The grubs are bigger and need more insecticide to control them.
Sometimes if the raccoons and skunks are a problem, people may think that a treatment is worthwhile. The problem with this is that even with an grub control in the spring, the grubs will continue to live for a week or two, and the animals may continue to come to rip up your lawn any ways.
Controlling the grubs in the spring is good for your neighbourhood, but not necessarily for your lawn. If there are less grubs in your lawn now, there will be less adults flying in the neighbourhood. But since the adults can fly, even if we were able to get rid of all the grubs in your lawn in the spring, it doesn’t mean that the adults from down the road or across the street won’t fly over this summer and decide to lay their eggs on your lawn.
Helping out the neighbourhood is great for everyone in the neighbourhood, but not necessarily for your lawn. And since you are the one paying for the treatment, we recommend doing what is best for your lawn.
The first thing is to fix the grub damage. Feed the lawn to improve its health. Add seed to the areas that are damaged to fill in the bare spots.
Then we recommend that your consider using Merit this summer to protect your lawn from the next generation. The eggs laid in the summer turn into “baby” grubs. Baby grubs are the dangerous ones. They have to get fat enough to survive the winter. So, they feed on grass roots all fall. This is when the greatest damage is done to your lawn.
Merit is the most effective way to prevent grubs. And Merit protects your lawn. Merit is taken up by your lawn and if the grubs take a bite, they will die. Merit is much safer than the older insecticides. The old insecticides affect insects, worms, birds and mammals. Merit is very specific in that it is a new type of insecticide. It is of low toxicity. In fact, it is used in products directly on the skin of cats and dogs. Advantage is a flea control product from Bayer. It contains the same active ingredient as Merit.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN:
or call us at 905.318.6677 or 1.888.TURFKING (887.3546)
If you would like more information, please Contact us
Follow us on Twitter  http://twitter.com/turfkingofgreen
Join our Facebook page  

Copyright 2008 Turf King-Hamilton. All Rights Reserved.