Basic Turf Plan for Texas

There are two main kinds of turfgrass in Texas. Bermuda and St. Augustine. They have different needs, requirements, and faults. There are similarities though. All turfgrass requires fertilizer, when and how much is variable, but they all need Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium. Those are the three main numbers on a bag of fertilizer, whether it comes in a plain brown wrapper or a fancy label with glossy pictures of green, thick turf. I really do not care at all what sort of packaging they put on it. I want to know what is on the label, the thing the Feds tell the manufacturer must be on the package if they want to market it as a fertilizer. Not all fertilizer is created equally. A 21-0-0 might be radically different than a 12-0-0 in ways than the amount of N it contains. There are actually quite a few elements required by green growing things. The mnemonic I was taught goes like this:
C Hopkins Cafe managed by mine cousin Mo Clyde. That is Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Nitrogen, Sulfur, Calcium, Iron, Manganese, Boron, Copper, Zinc, Molybdenum, Chlorine..I am missing one, that is 15, supposed to be 16. Hmm, been a while. Anyhow the idea is that there are the three main ones of Nitrogen(N), Phosphorus(P), and Potassium(K) and the building blocks of Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon. The micro-nutrients (meaning very small amounts needed) of Manganese, Molybdenum, etc are sometimes found in a sack of fertilizer and sometimes not. Sulfur,Calcium and Iron are in between these two sets. They might be in presence somewhat less than the NPK amounts, but greater than the micros. A typical addition of iron and sulfur might be 5 and 10%. This gets to be important when we take into account our soils. A sandy East Texas soil has different chemistry than a red clay in Abilene, which is different than the reddish sandy clay of the Cross Timbers, which is totally different than the Blackland Prairie that runs from north of DFW all the way down to the coast and which is somewhat similar to the mottled gray clay of the Stephenville, Dublin, Comanche areas. Some of it has to do with texture. A sand sheds water fast, a clay holds it like a sponge and hence the nitrogen solution of our watered in fertilizer might leach out of a sand soil more quickly than in a heavy clay or a sand with more clay in it. Y'all keeping up? Let's sum up: There are several kinds of dirt, two main kinds of grass and you gotta feed them both and what that might be varies.

Whew.
Here take a break and be glad we have motorized lawnmowers. Ponder that a moment. A motor perched on whirling blades that we may or may not get to ride upon. Awesome. Ok, let's keep going.


When do I feed my turf?
I had a doc of grass tell us in a seminar once that a lawn in early spring is like a start-up company, a whole lotta of outgoing and not a lot of incoming. A big stressful situation might crater it entirely. That means when your turf is first waking up from a long dormant winter of perhaps some ice and certainly some hard freezes which ceased its production of carbohydrates it is under stress. It is living off the stored up energy it produced earlier. If I throw a couple pounds of N per thousand sq ft. It is going to force it to use that stored carbo faster. My outgo might exceed my incoming. Again we are talking about sugars. plants take those 16 elements and wheedle them into a sugar. With sunlight, chlorophyll and some good old water, they combine carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to make sugars. Magical even. What that all means is you gotta be patient. The standard rule is to wait until you see a 30% green up or in other words, put it off about as long as you can stand it. That might be Easter weekend. It might be April Fools Day. It might be Tax Day. It will not be Valentine's Day. Unless we get an exceptionally warm March then it is unlikely that we need to feed before the first of April. A good average first feed is about Tax Day or mid-April.


But I am already seeing green growing weeds in my yard. Won't feeding them make them bigger and tougher to kill?
Not necessarily, in fact it might make them more susceptible to my chemical attack. You want them happy and healthy, thinking everything is just peachy when you spray them with an insidious chemical that invades their happy world and wrecks them.

Weeds are on their own schedule. What we aim to do is either get ahead of them and round up the stragglers. There are basically three kinds of weeds; grassy ones, broadleafed and sedges. Sedges look like grasses, but we have to use different chemicals to control them. Grassy ones are a little more problematic. There are some particular ones that require extreme measures. We can get to those later. The vast majority of what we call weeds fall into the category of what is called 'broadleafed weeds' this includes but is not limited to: clover, dandelions, plantains, henbit, chickweed, and about fifty-five other ones. There are several formulations available. The product that is marketed to ranchers under the name of Grazon is the same basic blend that is sold to homeowners called Weed-B-Gone by Ortho. There are three main ingredients, sometimes they play up that fact and call it something like Trimec or Three-Way. They are 2,4-D, Dicamba and Mecoprop. There may or may not be some additional chems in there. Those are the three main ones. This formulation is actually a restricted pesticide. You say wait wait you said homeowners in there but it's restricted? Yes, to both. Here's how it's restricted. Go into your local Tractor Supply. Go over to the chemical section. You will find this same blend in a quart size and a 2.5 gallon size. Homeowner can buy the quart, but unless you have a license of some kind you ain't buying the big size. You are restricted in how much you can purchase of this blend of chemicals at one time. That's how it's restricted. Let's get our quart of stuff and go kill some weeds.

Get a sprayer. A fifteen dollar one gallon from Home Depot is fine. A fifty dollar fancy one that pumps itself while you pull it is fine too(price may not reflect reality). But get one you feel comfortable with and is big enough to do your job. Read the label. Tear off the little booklet carefully and store it somewhere safe after removal. Keep it, you are going to need it.

Friends and neighbors, I say again, read the label for lo and behold Ortho has TWO products with the moniker of Weed-B-Gon. but one is PLUS CRABGRASS KILLER. Ho there, wait just a minute, plus crabgrass killer? Why yes. Exactly what is this crabgrass killer? Oh that is Quinclorac. I see

thanks, will pass. I want the regular, plain old Weed-B-Gon. But wait again, what is this on my label?

• Active Ingredients

  13.72% MCPA (can't fool me, that is still 2,4-D)
  1.56% Triclopyr (no mecoprop, but this instead?ok....was going to save that for stumps later)
  1.35% Dicamba (yep, still works doesn't it? stinkers)

I gotta go see about Tractor Supply now, this is getting interesting. 

And what do I find? Gordon's Trimec. 5.99 for a pint. Outstanding. Now, this is what a label ought to look like. On chart 3 I see it calls for one ounce per gallon. That's spiffy too. Let's do this thing. 


I go over to my hose and I put some kind of shut off valve on the end of it. I get my tablespoon which will hereafter ONLY be used for chemicals. I put on my good rubber gloves. I also get my leftover liquid dish soap and a teaspoon, which also will never ever be used for anything but chemicals and I arrange them neatly with my newly purchased jug of Trimecky sort of stuff and my newly assembled sprayer and I turn the water on, a little. Not full blast because I had just as soon not blast me and the general vicinity with the rinsate of my spoon nor do I want to knock my sprayer across the patio. I open the valve, squeeze the trigger on my pistol grip spray nozzle and put some water in the tank. 
I don't care if after you let the pressure out it is sorta dribbling. So what? I have all day. I AM NOT GETTING BLASTED IN THE FACE WITH NASTY ASS HOSEWATER. After I put a couple of inches of water in the jug I get out my chemical. Tear off the label and dispose of it properly. Add my two tablespoons equaling one ounce into my jug. I now add one teaspoon of liquid soap to make it stick on the plant well. I am glad if the manufacturer has kindly included an additional surfactant, but I lack confidence in their proprietary blend and so I make sure this stuff sticks A  that dang clover that seems to be taking over that area near the pecan. I fill up my container to the proper marked level. A big fat black marksalot line on the jug at the requisite gallon mark does wonders for speed and reliably hitting the correct amount of water. Now, let's go kill something.

I don't have to spray it to the point where it is dripping off the leaves. I don't want to barely spritz it either. I want a good coverage, but not to the point of run off. I walk back and forth in a pattern so that I don't miss areas. I continue to do this until I run out of mix or weeds, whichever comes first. If I hit one twice, so be it. If I miss one I know I can spot the healthy one in a couple of weeks at which time I can go over it again. 

When do I do this? Whenever I have weeds. There is no set schedule. At the job I never stop. There is always another weed to spray. At the house? On an as needed basis. If we do the next step in the process, the pre-emergent applications, this post-emergent spraying will be minimized. So, let's talk about the least used and little understood part of the yard. Getting ahead of the game. 

Pre-emergents will save your time and money. If I can prevent or kill upon germination a weed, then I have done my job in keeping the turf weed free (or close to it, Augusta this ain't). There are several on the market these days. They vary in price and target weeds. Most will do a good job, though there are some which have been used so many times that resistant populations are beginning to develop. The one I most commonly recommend is one called pendimethalin. It is marketed as Pre-M. It will contain some fertilizer, one blend for during the growing season and another for during dormancy. The kind I am going to recommend for use is the version that has 0-0-7 on the label. The little bit of Potassium is not going to make your grass green up in December, no matter if we had 90 degrees F last week. But it will keep the dandelions that seem to be popping up from continuing to germinate. It is a bright canary yellow product. Looks about the same shape and size as regular fertilizer, but it is very very yellow. It is of low toxicity. Don't worry about the dogs, cats, horses or birds being poisoned by it. Our goal is to water it into the top layer of soil anyhow so any exposure to living things walking around should be limited to the time of application. Figure out how big your area is going to be. Pace it off at least. It does not have to be hyper accurate, but you gotta be in the same zip code at least. Lets say your front yard is about 100 by 50, give or take a corner or two by the A/C and trash cans. That is 5000ft sq. Our label calls for 4.5lbs per thousand. A solid heaped cup is about a pound. So four and a half cups, (per thousand)give a little extra is ok. (not nine or ten please, doubling it is not 'a little extra') And I put that in my handy dandy spreader and get after it. I see that i have carelessly flung a bunch all down the sidewalk and half way across the porch. I do NOT use the water hose to wash it off. I get my broom or blower and I chuck that stuff back into the bushes or turf. Oh didn't mention it was safe for up under the bushes Sure is, fling some there too. Same rate, no big deal.  Water it in. A good soaking water. Set out some empty tin cans of tuna or whatever container you prefer and when you see a half inch of water in it, you are done. If you know there is a good rain coming, hustle out there and get it done. 

When should I do this? This is where it gets a little sketchy. If I expect this product to last for nine months I am dreaming. If I expect it to last thirty days, that is over doing it too. I should figure on about 60 days or two months. If I start seeing things popping up in the corners where my application might be thinner at day 45, that is about right. Time to start thinking about another application. 

a good schedule might go something like this

January: spray stray weeds on nice days. If it is green and growing, it is probably a weed. 
February: first application of the new year of pre-emergent. keep hunting strays with the spray
March: keep hunting strays. Has the yard woken up yet? Maybe, just a little. Wait then.
April: I have mowed a couple of times, and weeds are starting to pop in corners. I put down another round of pre-emergent and my fertilizer. What is the special this week? I do not buy Scott's Bonus S. I get some sulfur coated or otherwise slow release fertilizer from the Feed Store or other seller of fertilizer. I want it to have the micros, iron and about 20% or better of nitrogen. I care not about the phosphorus, I am marginally interested in the potassium. I put it out not too heavily. Somewhere around 2-3 lbs of product per thousand sq feet. 
May: I mow, a lot. I do not do anything else except water and mow.
June: Starting to show some weeds again. I spray the stragglers and do another round of feeding and pre-emergent. I skip the food for my St.Augustine since I do not want to promote fungal issues. 
July:more mow and water
August: summer gotta end soon. It is so dang hot. Mow, water, yeah yeah.
September: finally. Time for more food and pre-m.(including St. Aug) A few straggler weeds here and there, but dang it looks nice and tight for the most part. 
October: mowing has slowed down. finally getting some rain too
November: seen a frost or two. A few stragglers. 
December: one last pre-m. Caught a nice 50 degree day last Saturday and then rain two days later. God loves me. 
January: brings us back around again to hunting strays. 

I swear it is not hard. I know this seems like an enormous amount of info, but it can be boiled down to a few tasks well timed. Hunt the strays, put a good blanket of chems down to catch most of them and feed only when necessary. Ignore the hype of a label. Disregard Scott trying to sell you something. Educate thyself. Rocket science this ain't. Aggies do this for a living. It CAN'T  be that hard. 

hand of doom

Run rabbit run.
And take the sparrow with you.
Tell the snake to crawl away lest they also fall under my scythe of raining death.
Oppenheimer sat down beside the glass sand
of atomic apocalypse
and he cried
at the work of cunning minds and skillful hand. 
Fear of the yawning chasm 
overtook his heart staring at the chaos.
 All they told me to do was make grass green. 
They didn't tell me about tater beetles and sarin gas.

Poke Sallet. Phytolacca of many species

Tony Joe White "Polk Salad Annie" 1969

Words change. Sometimes they become obsolete in the terminology of the linguist. Sallet as a food is one of them. Sallet is not known to the Chrome Dictionary. I wonder if it is in the Merriam-Webster. Nope. I stopped down and commented on it. This is what I wrote 

 No, it is not turnip greens exclusively. Or any greens for that matter. It is an obsolete form of salad. My 1971 Compact OED includes it. A Dictionary of Archaic & Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases ..., Volume 2 By James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps maintains it was obsolete in 1852,"Sallet. A salad. Hall." but I would maintain that it is still used provincially in the American south to this day but typically in regards to Phytolacca americana though we all know salad can be any collection of greens. As it is understood today and particularly in regards to poke it is a cooked green as opposed to a fresh one. Polk Salad, Poke salad, poke sallet all refer to the same food. Tony Joe White recorded Polk Salad Annie in 1969. Thinking of poke as our typical fresh salad green has caused some at least apocryphal tales of folks suffering from shall we say gastro-intestinal distress?

I did however find it in the Urban Dictionary.

poke sallet

The term poke sallet is an old Southern term for the cooked young leaves of the poke weed. Sallet comes from Middle English and refers to a mess (another Old or Middle English term) of greens cooked until tender. The term Polk Salad is a gentrified way of referring to poke sallet, and I'm afraid it reflects our inferiority complex when it comes to standing up for our Southern terminology. We are not making a mush of Polk Salad; actually, we are being true to our English ancestors who settled here a long time ago.

Some folks around here always add a little molasses and fatback to the water when they cook their poke sallet. That's the traditional way.

Don't you just love Tony Joe White's song Poke Sallet Annie?

by Flem Snopes July 12, 2008

Sallet is another variation for the spelling of salad, archaic, obsolete and I am among the people on the planet that wants to call this dish by this name. I am hard-headed sometimes. Everybody else calls it salad which has led to some unfortunate dining experiences. Despite its reputation as poisonous there is no reason to avoid this plant. Euell Gibbons called it the 'Cadillac of greens'. There are festivals held in its honor. This song was written with an acceptance of it as a normal, everyday part of the diet. It was even the subject of a dissertation in 1757 at the University of Pennsylvania. If you have access to that work, I sure would like to see some of it. Perhaps Google can be of assistance....

A little background first I suppose would be in order. Poke has a couple of different names, but the varieties are essentially the same. Phytolacca is the Genus. That much is straight forward, they haven't decided to change that part yet. 5.5+ million hits and here are the first five for Poke Salad: Wiki Wild Pantry Don't Eat Poke Salad Annual Poke Salad Festival and Cooks/Recipes for Poke Salad

AUTHOR(S): Callahan, R.; Piccola, F.; Gensheimer, K.; Parkin, W. E.; Prusakowski, J.; Scheiber, G.; Henry, S. 
TITLE: Plant poisonings - New Jersey. 
YEAR: 1981 CITATION: MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep, 30(6), 65-67 [English]
FDA #: F07132 
ABSTRACT: Within a 2.5 month period in 1980, 27 New Jersey residents were poisoned, in 2 separate episodes, by eating wild plants. The poisonings were serious enough that 21 persons sought medical care; 4 were hospitalized. Pokeweed poisoning Passaic County: On July 11, an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness related to eating pokeweed leaves affected campers in a large day camp. Initial reports indicated that the outbreak was limited to a "nature group" whose members had sampled a salad made with this wild plant. The group, comprising 52 campers and counselors, had been offered pokeweed salad prepared from young leaves picked, boiled, drained, and reboiled that morning, a method that reputedly ensured the plant's edibility. Sixteen (31%) of the 51 interviewed met the case definition (vomiting accompanied by any 3 of the following: nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps, dizziness, and headache on July 11). Nine others who were not part of the nature group also had tasted the salad; 5 (56%) of these became ill. Of the 21 ill campers, 18 (86%) experienced nausea, 18 (86%) stomach cramps, 17 (81%) vomiting, 11 (52%) headache, 10 (48%) dizziness, 8 (38%) burning in the stomach or mouth; and 6 (29%) diarrhea. Persons became ill .5 to 5.5 hours (mean 3 hours) after eating the pokeweed. Symptoms lasted 1 to 48 hours, with a mean of 24 hours. Eighteen persons were seen in local emergency rooms or physicians' offices. Four of these were hospitalized for 24 to 48 hours for protracted vomiting and dehydration. Food history analysis was done for all 60 persons. Salad was the only food item significantly associated with illness. Twenty (43%) of the 46 persons who ate pokeweed became ill compared with 1 (7%) of 14 who did not eat it (P .01). Moreover, for those who ate the salad, illness was associated with eating at least 1 teaspoonful compared with less than 1 teaspoonful (p=.02). Vomitus analyzed for 7 persons was negative for Staphylococcus aureus. 

There is disagreement about edible parts, season of edibility, and methods of preparation of pokeweed and even about whether the plant should be eaten at all. Indeed, the camp counselor in the Passaic outbreak had been preparing pokeweed salad for many years without apparent ill effects. 

and this

Jaeckle, K. A., Freemon, F. R. 1981. Pokeweed poisoning. South. Med. J., 74: 639-640.

Just google it. It is a book link and Google frowns upon taking whole sections of print from their stacks. 

 and this

In Vitro Antioxidant blah blah blah

What I find fascinating about poke is that it is considered either a green of the highest order or a poison. There is no in between for most people. The scientist sees it differently. They throw things at various and sundry cells just to see what happens. Every PhD had to do a dissertation and every researcher needs something else to research. It was probably a given that they would try this plant out.

I suspect this was one of the early plants that the Euro encountered when they came over the Atlantic. I would venture that it was among the foods served at the first Thanksgiving dinner. There are festivals in celebration of this plant. As cited in from the Poisonous Plants link I did finally manage to find a case of poisoning from eating the greens, but the counselor did not suffer any ill effects nor did over half of those that consumed it. I have eaten it for years. It is delicious. I did not find any citations of poke sallet poisoning in the festivals celebrating it and I sure would love to see the actual case notes from that Passaic case. The other citations I found from the Canadians referred to somebody making a tea from either roots or berries. There is evidence of this plant being used by herbalists in lands other than America. It is cited in "In Vitro" as being used in Iran. There is also a citation in the Canadian link to turkey poults and hogs being poisoned by it, yet its typical vector for being spread around an area is defecation of the seeds by various birds. It is ordinarily found where a bird will perch after consuming the berries and defecating the seeds. I wonder if their system is less likely to break the seed coat and the turkeys more likely to which would release more of the toxin than just the fruit part itself.

This is just skimming the surface some. I might come back and add some more to it, but I have wanted to get this blog entry finished for a while. It deserves some more work, but I have much to do today and I am already being lobbied to get my butt in gear.

Pre-Emergent Application. Or...Kill it early.

Get out there and do something in the yard. At the moment we are enjoying the spectacularly wonderful weather in Texas that draws snowbirds here. It won't stay this way forever. Eventually we will get one of those blue northers and freeze up for a whole day. But, somewhere out there 100F is lurking. I know it. I can feel the heat of it on my head. Looking around the area you can see the trees changing. There are ripples of green on the lawn where some of the frosts we have had are beginning to send the turf into dormancy. But I also see thin spots in the mulch. Acorns and pecans all over driveways, weeds growing in the bare spots and dead shrubs in beds. Now is the time to repair, expand and maintain your spot of earth. 

Whether you are a tofu-eating vegan that would no more spray 2,4-D than you would poke a sharp stick in your eye or you are hardened chemical slinger (ahem, don't judge me!) now is the time to get with it. There are a few reasons why this time of year is crucial to your overall success with your landscape. I am often asked " Is it too late to apply pre-emergents?" First, I had better define "pre-emergent." A plant can be characterized as pre or post emergent. Meaning it has either not sprouted (germinated) from the seed or it has. Big fancy words for still in the seed or sprouting leaves. Now it might bother some of my earthy friends but when I apply corn gluten to my beds or yard I am applying an herbicide. That is what I am trying to do, prevent the germination of undesirable plants. It is in effect a pre-emergent and is marketed that way and registered with the EPA and TDA as such. If I go apply it at your house I have to have a license same as if I was applying simazine or pendimethalin. Those are two popular and effective pre-emergents widely available. Note I do not name a particular brand name. I would recommend looking at the bottom of the label, over to one side of the front or wherever they stick the fine print box of active ingredients and looking for those chemically inclined names with far too many syllables. They can call it "Kill a Weed." Weed Hammer" "Bash a Nettle!" or whatever snappy name the marketing dept comes up with, I could not care less. I don't care if it looks like the old generic "Beer." I buy my fertilizer in a brown paper bag. It has the requisite label and all the info I need on a 3x5 square. It is just like buying meds. Aspirin is aspirin whether it is the CVS brand or Bayer. Ok now that I have gotten that out of my system, here is what you need to know about applying pre-emergents. 

KNOW the area. Even a rough estimate of pacing the area off will be better than a wild ass guess. This is important because how much product you put out, whether corn or chems is dependent upon not only the target species but how big the area might be. For example, if the label calls for 4.5# of .5% pendimethalin to control sandburs (aka stickers) per 1000 ft sq. Then knowing that your hard is 30x40 you can determine how much of this canary yellow stuff you need to put out. Well, let's just work that problem shall we?

Ok 30 times 40 = 1200 sq feet. So another 20% over our 1000. We need to add a bit. Tack that 20% to 4.5 lbs and we have 5.4 lbs. Ok this is a good estimate for weight. A cup is usually about a pound. You can get really picky and weigh it out exactly and mark it on a measuring device but a standard cup is fine. Close enough. Just don't mound it up or leave it low. A nice measured cup, flat and even. Just like flour. So in our area in question we can dump five and allllmost a half a cup in our little grindy grindy spreader and walk around . Don't run around with it wide open trying to get full coverage! Open it up about halfway and walk normally back in forth until you have good coverage of the entire area. If you made it all the way across and still have some left, finish it off by going perpendicular to your original pattern until it is gone. Sweep or blow it off the sidewalks where you inadvertently got some product and turn on the water. This scenario applies to corn gluten the same as it does chemicals. Rather than the 4.5 lbs per 1000 it is 20lbs, so adjust accordingly. 

Or you can just go out there in the yard, pull the dandelions and chickweed and eat them. That works too. 

Maybe next time I will talk about planting trees and roses. 

The dreaded and feared Sandbur, aka The Sticker

If you don't have to deal with stickers/sandburs/Cenchrus then goody for you. The rest of us sorry individuals have this rather nasty weed to contend with every summer.
Let the battle begin.


From: Cummings, Dr. Hennen
Subject: Controlling field sand bur in your home lawn
To:
Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 3:19 PM

If you are interested in controlling sandbur (stickers) or crabgrass in your lawn this summer, now is the time. Please go to Home Depot in Granbury or Weatherford. The brand name is Lesco which is why you have to go to Home Depot. You are looking for a 50-pound yellow bag kept with the fertilizers. The product is Lesco 0-0-7 PRE-M. The active ingredient is pendimethalin. Apply it like a fertilizer according to the directions using a rotary spreader. Uniform coverage is very important to prevent weed escapes. The product will stain concrete, so make sure you blow if off your driveway when you are finished. It may also stain on your pants' leg and spreader. The product needs to be watered in with a 1/2 inch of water (run the irrigation until several tuna cans laid out across the lawn are half-full). The product will control summer annual weeds like field sandbur when applied in Feb. before the weed seeds germinate. It will not control perennial weeds like dandelion that come back from vegetative structures. The bag will cost about $21.00 per 12,000 ft². Be careful putting herbicides on St. Augustinegrass. The fewer herbicides placed on St. Augustinegrass the better. Even if St. Augustinegrass is on the label, it may still be stunted for a month or more. Fall preemergence herbicide applications for winter annual weed control (henbit, chickweed, annual bluegrass) are safer on St. Augustinegrass than spring applications, but they control different weed spectrums. The active ingredient can stunt root growth. Do not apply the product anywhere you plan to plant seeds like vegetables or flowers or have wild flowers. Apply 4 pounds/1000ft² of Lesco 0-0-7 Pre-M. You may need to apply again in July, but hopefully, a dense, aggressive turf will prevent sunlight from reaching the soil and stimulating summer annual weed seeds to germinate and a second application will not be necessary. It is too soon for nitrogen fertilizers, so do not apply a preemergence herbicide on a nitrogen fertilizer carrier. Apply the nitrogen once a month starting in April; May would be better if you can be patient. The more nitrogen fertilizer one adds, the more often one should mow. If one cannot mow more often than once a week, then use nitrogen fertilizer more sparingly. Always maximize the amount of slow release nitrogen and iron in the fertilizers for lawns.

Fire ant control measures are available in stores now, but you have plenty of time to get those applied. Products containing fipronil work well for a long period of time.

Rock on,

Hennen Cummings, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and Director of Turfgrass Management
Tarleton State University



As the timestamp shows, this was THIS WEEK. In the middle of the winter, frost on the ground and colder than a well-digger's butt outside this college boy wants us to start on the yard NOW?
Why yes indeed he does and he is right.
Here is why.
Long before you want to have that cookout in the backyard and long before the seedheads form on the varying species of Cenchrus later this summer the seeds lie in wait for the warming sun of early spring to germinate. Once they have sprouted out of their infernal seedcoat and begun the process of producing more of these awful impediments to bare feet it is too late for this product mentioned to have any effect. The term pre-emergent is what we use to describe a product that prevents or kills a seed at or very close after germination. Now, for those that don't even know the term germination that is when the root and leaf or leaves emerge from the seed. Remember the bean in the cup? Root goes down, leaves go up and what a miracle it appears to be. In the case of the widely despised sandbur this is something we should try to prevent or inhibit as much as possible but not to the detriment of desirable plants.
Pendimethalin is mostly benign to critters that you might have including chickens or other fowl. Since we want to water it into the soil the risk of exposure to you or your animals or any other individual animal is minimal. I can hear that moaning too. Yes, you have to water it in. Yes, it has to be at least a half an inch. Don't tell me you can't come up with some cans resembling a tuna fish can. I can go in your kitchen right now and find some good candidates for water sampling. Don't trust your gut in knowing how much water your irrigation system puts out, whether it is an old school impact sprinkler, high tech rotor or your thumb over the end of a hose.
Do you think for one minute that Colonial or any other golf course would just fling water around willy-nilly with no accurate assessment of how much is actually going on the course? It isn't hard to accomplish the task. Get a dozen or so conveniently open and somewhat flat cans or other containers, spread them randomly but evenly over your given space and turn on the water.
Go away. Leave. Go have a beer, glass of wine or other beverage of your choice.
I'll take a double shot of whiskey, thanks.
Sip on it. Take your time. Check out your spreader. Does it need new tires or just some air?
Spray some WD-40 on the parts that move around and sometimes get stuck. Use duct tape on the parts that should not move but do.
Brace yourself it is time to calibrate this thing.
Got tired head already? Ok go hire somebody. Ask them the last time they calibrated their equipment. Don't remember? Thanks, buh bye. Click. I don't care about how much or how little they charge to apply pre-emergent. If they don't calibrate their spreader it is close akin to a nurse shooting you up with drugs from a syringe without a means of measuring. Gotcha some Demerol, half a tube ought to be about right. There ya go! Brilliant. Your yard is no different.
You need to know exactly how much of whatever you are putting out is going on your yard or pasture. If you are putting out a product over a large area it obviously is going to be more dollars that we are putting at risk, but in any case the effectiveness of the product and its level of impact are determined by the dosage. Duh. Just cranking open the chute on your spreader and stomping around the yard with no concept of how much is being flung around is quite possibly dangerous and certainly less than effective. In the case of pendimethalin it is not so much the risk of toxicity as it is the lack of effectiveness. Note that he says 4# per 1000ftsq. That means you need a way to measure exactly how much stuff your spreader is spreading at a given setting and adjusting that setting to get the correct amount over the desired area. This is called calibration of a spreader. Look it up. Follow the directions. Get on it.
If you know you have a yard that is prone to sandburs I would highly recommend using this product. If you have a yard that is prone to crabgrass, the same stuff works on them too.
I would recommend some old nasty boots or other footwear that you don't care what they look like being used for this operation. DO NOT USE WATER TO GET IT OFF THE SIDEWALK OR DRIVEWAY! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. It will dye it a nice bright yellow. Canary yellow, lemony lemon yellow. A broom will work and so will a blower. Save the water for the irrigation.
Speaking of which, you can go check the water now. Not up to a half inch yet? Repeat process until you do.

Believe it or not. Spring is right around the corner.

Chenille Plant

Red Cat-tail? perhaps. It will grow outside in tropical climates, zone 10 or better. In most of the world this thing never gets as tall as this one. I found it in Fort Worth at the Botanical Garden Conservatory. I like that big glass barn. They have done a good job of updating it over the last decade or so. Several of the overgrown palm trees have been removed and they have done a masterful job of creating microclimates within the canopy and on the floor of the greenhouse. This one is tall enough for me to walk under and take this picture with the sun shining through the flowers. Been on more than one date to this place. A quiet, conversational sort of place in the town of the Cow.
This plant is usually found in the trade as a hanging basket and works well in that regard. It loves humidity. A sunny window in the kitchen, bathroom or other indoor place that sees a lot of ambient moisture is a good location. U of Florida maintains that it blooms best in full sun. I will take that under advisement until I see that it can handle Texas after noon. Nonetheless an interesting investment in your continued efforts to replicate the tropics on your patio. Worth the 20 bucks to park it out by the wicker and see what it does. Might try one on the porch this year.

New Gardens

There are gardens we plant in places that have seen flowers before
places that have known the fragrance of roses and the seeds of zinnias

Then there are places that have not seen anything but the grass or trees that have been
an unbroken chain for millenia. Ours is the task to change it or preserve it.
I cannot change the fact that there will be new houses in old places.
I can help them find the plants that are best suited to that place
and how to maintain the integrity of the environment.
Follow the directions on the label. La Label es La Ley. Why is it so much easier for the female of the species to grasp this idea? Because they actually learned how to follow the directions of a recipe? Application of chemicals whether they are considered organic or not. Some chemists despise the terms "organic" and "chemical" when it comes to agriculture, gardening or landscaping. The others just giggle and wag their heads in disdain. They have entered the vernacular and I am stuck with them for lack of better options.
Not following the directions on the label of the bag, bottle or container of stuff whether it came from the petro-chemical industry, squeezed out of an orange peel or was scraped off the barn floor means that it can be ineffective, dangerous to non-target species or a waste of money. If you spray orange oil as a herbicide willy-nilly anywhere you have a mind to and without regard for established procedures then you will cause harm where it was not intended. Applying any product without regard for the directions is going to cause problems.

There are so many products on the market that fail to live up to expectations. I thoroughly detest "weed blocker" because it does not work as promoted. In fact it actually makes the situation worse. I have pulled up far more of this weed laden fabric and impermeable plastic than I have ever laid down. One of my previous bosses was crazy about the stuff. It wasn't as though we did not have an unlimited supply of mulch and compost. He was convinced that this cloth would prevent weeds from growing. It does not. It cannot. A perennial plant will grow through it and embed itself in the fabric. Nutsedge will embed its tubers in the fabric meaning that extraction of them is impossible other than cutting out the fabric and splicing a fresh piece.
It sucks. It doesn't make my job easier, it makes it harder. The only time I find fabric like this useful is as a backing for a dry stacked wall to prevent or retard the soil from seeping through the gaps in the blocks or stone. That is it. As a weed preventer or barrier it is worthless.
Another product which seems to be heavily promoted is Atrazine. Supposedly a wonder bullet capable of rendering any lawn on par with a USGA green. The problem is that they don't bother to inform you outside of the very small paragraph buried in the boilerplate that it is mobile in the soil and can damage trees, shrubs and flowers. Gee, that sort of info might be handy.
I am downright anal about putting out chems of any kind. I want to know as much as is available about what it does and what to expect. I want to know about any risks or shortcomings of the product. The retailer just wants to sell me something. I don't begrudge him that fact.

Flowers

I like flowers. Growing turf for football, soccer, golf or cows requires all the brain power of a gnat. Dirt+water+sun+some sundry elements/ leafy green material= Turf. Yeah, sure the golf course goes to great lengths to present a table top in the form of a green to confound lowly humans into breaking their putter into pieces so that they will buy another one, but they have a whole barn full of toys/equipment to fool you into believing that it requires a degree to run the place. The lady who owns one of the most exclusive private clubs in Texas, daughter to the man who established Colonial has exactly three fellows of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity who combined might have fifteen minutes of formal instruction in the art of turfgrass cultivation.
I asked the man when we went on tour if he had problems with migratory birds bothering the greens or fairways looking for grubs or other insects. His reply was yes it happens occasionally, but it really was not much of an issue. I inquired as to his method of excluding these federally protected species of avian attackers of good golf.
"Oh, I just tie the dog between two trees for a few days and then they leave."
Yeah, it requires some serious brain power to grow grass.
Flowers on the other hand will confound the most dedicated of gardeners. As if they were bent on a suicidal deathwish they receive our loving attention with all the regard of a catatonic patient. Coddling, coercion, cajoling in any measure will garner me nothing with some of the more recalcitrant ones. Some survive and even thrive as a means to spite me. "Oh you ignore me now! I will show you, you sorry sonofabitch! I am gonna bloom my ass off! Take that!"
They perturb and intrigue me. They never cease to surprise me.
Grass is easy, corn is easy, flowers are hard.