This weekend seemed like the big kick off to gardening — finally! Not only did we have Julie Weisenhorn from the U of M talking to area gardeners at our Master Gardener event, we also had her working with youth from Lyon and Lincoln counties with her Flowers for Pollinators programs. The day was wonderful and after all of these learning opportunities, I was ready to go home and relax a little bit. However, the lawn needed a lot of work, so I decided to stay out in my own garden and get some clean up done.

Julie had brought up at the Master Gardener program about lawn care. I think this is the second biggest area that I field questions from. The first is what is wrong with my plant. Lawns are an important part of our garden just as much as the plants are. The kids need a place to play and it works as a nice backdrop to our homes and gardens both. We do have some reasonable and some unreasonable expectations about our lawns though. The first is that we need to water, water, water them. This is not true. The grasses we typically grow in our area are cool weather grasses, so they naturally go dormant in the summer. We just need to mow in the spring and fall months. I realize that no one wants a brown lawn, but you can save not only money but time too in taking care of something that just wants to go to sleep in the hot months of July and part of August. It is fighting an uphill battle. If you need another reason why to let your lawn go dormant, you will actually wreak havoc on the roots of the grass plants roots because they have a natural ability to go dormant when it is too hot.

There are other things that you can do as well. Fertilizing too early in the spring will encourage the grass plants to start growing when it is not time yet. Fertilizing when it is too hot will cause damage to the plants as well. Who knew that grass plants were so fussy? If you need another excuse to stay off the lawn or out of the garden, spraying for weeds in July and part of August is probably going to harm the grass plants as well. The key is to make sure to apply products according to the package label. This also includes crabgrass. Using a crabgrass preventer in the fall will not help you with crabgrass because it is busy developing in the spring.

So, this may seem like a lot to remember, so what is a gardener to do? There are a few guides out there to help you out. The first comes from the Minnesota Department of Ag and can be found at http://www.mda.state.mn.us/news/publications/chemfert/applicationguide.pdf. This is an Application Guide for lawn and garden products. This is a very easy to read handout and one to print off or attach to your desktop. Another handout that works well, is a calendar from the U of M for what to do with your lawn and what specific time. It can be found at https://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/turfgrass/lawn-care/lawn-care-calendar/index.html.

For more information on gardening, you can reach me at s.dejaeghere@me.com