Category: Maintaining a Home Lawn

As low moisture conditions continue in Indiana and Indianapolis is already requesting volunteer reductions in water use, it is time to start preparing for a potentially serious drought. Generally, turf can survive 5 to 8 weeks of dry conditions without...

Fertilizing sports turf is critical in order to maintain turf vigor in spite of intense wear and tear. However, too little fertilizer or poorly timed fertilizer are common mistakes on sports complexes. Following are our recommendations for sports field fertilization:...

Phosphorus (P) fertilization of turf is being questioned nationally for two reasons. Phosphorus fertilization almost never induces a visual turfgrass response and deficiency symptoms are rarely seen, thus calling into question the need for P fertilization. Secondly, higher levels of...

The annual phase of rapid cool-season shoot growth of cool-season grasses is nearly complete, though it was diminished this year because of the dry and cool weather. It's now time to consider fertilizing your lawn because fertilizer now will not...

Many lawns are slow to green-up this year and it is mostly due to the presence of Kentucky bluegrass. Even though Kentucky bluegrass is the best lawn grass for the Midwest, it is much slower than perennial ryegrass and tall...

Patches of tall fescue or perennial ryegrass are currently much greener than Kentucky bluegrass (photos). Patches of these two grasses are prominent right now as the bluegrass is just starting to green up. Give it another week and the bluegrass...

For the vast majority of homeowners, resist the urge to fertilize now. Fertilizing now can encourage too much growth and could lead to problems later this summer such as poor root growth and disease. Additionally, since spring rains play havoc...

Now’s the time to get the mower out of the shed, make sure it starts and is ready to go when you need it in the next few weeks. Be sure to sharpen the blade and make sure the mower...

After widespread flooding, many question how well turf will survive. Turf injury from flooding depends on water temperature, species, duration of submergence, and depth of submergence. Turfgrasses can withstand submersion for up to 60 days when water temperatures are 50...

Below is a table for the optimum mowing heights for turfgrass species in Indiana. The optimum mowing height is where the particular species will perform best, creating the thickest turf, and requiring the fewest inputs. Mowing above these heights will...

Up until about two weeks ago, autumn 2004 was for the most part a fairly dry season. This means that if you fertilized your cool-season lawn in early September and were unable to regularly irrigate, the nitrogen that was applied...

Most of the state has received 0.5 inch of rain or more either this week or last and thus turf areas are starting to green-up again. It is important to take advantage of the few weeks of growing conditions and...

As promised earlier, grub damage is now becoming apparent on lawns that are greening up with the recent rains. Grub damaged turf will not green-up with the rest of the lawn and is likely brown for good (dead) (see accompanying...

Though areas of Indiana received some rain this week and more is forecasted, most of the state has received precipitation far below normal. Many lawns look as brown now as they normally do in August. This does not bode well...

(Adapted from the Midwest Regional Turf Foundation Factsheet, Oct 1, 2004) After an extremely wet summer, turf drought stress has come out of nowhere almost throughout the state after a dry August and September. Though September and October are prime...

Now that we are entering the fertilization season for lawns, questions sometimes arise about where products go after application to lawns. Research at Purdue and many other universities has shown that fertilizers (including both nitrogen and phosphorus) and pesticides applied...

White grub damage on turfgrass may be more widespread than many expected this year. With ample rain and favorable growing conditions for most host plants during the early and mid growing season, high concentrations of adult Japanese beetles were not...

Well it must be September and it must finally be dry because I have seen some serious outbreaks of rust on many perennial ryegrass lawns throughout the area over the past week. Leaf rust has been most noticeable on lawns...

Although this past growing season across most of Indiana has been cool and moist this is no reason to consider skipping fall core cultivation or aerification. In fact, this abnormal weather pattern is actually more conducive to thatch accumulation since...

Normal growth patterns of cool season grass produce most leaf growth in the spring. Therefore fertilization in spring tends to stimulate even more leaf growth which may in turn decrease long-term stress tolerance in the summer months. On the other...