27September 16, 2015
Mid September is here and there are a few garden chores that you should be doing now.
Mid September is the best time of the year to put down a granular grub control on your lawn. If you had Japanese beetles in your yard this summer, you will probably have beetle eggs hatching in your lawn. The eggs turn into the white grubs that can do major damage to the roots of your lawn. Grub control applied now has the best shot at killing the grubs while they are still small. If you wait until spring to apply the grub control, the grubs will have had all fall to feed on your lawn. Applying grub control now will negate the need to apply grub control in the spring.
If you have Japanese bamboo growing in your yard, you know what a problem it can be to rid your yard of the hollow stem shoots. This plant has a massive root system that stores a lot of food. In the fall, the Japanese bamboo forms white clusters of flowers. Soon after the flowers form, all of the nutrients in the leaves and stems are beginning to be transferred down to the root system. Since the white flowers have appeared on the bamboo, an application of a weed killer now will help to get the weed killer pulled down to the roots along with the nutrients in the leaves. There is a product called Kleen Up that is very effective at killing the roots of the bamboo. It is a concentrate that is mixed with water and sprayed onto the leaves of the bamboo. When spraying, you need to be very careful to avoid getting the week killer on any plant that you don’t want to damage or kill. Once the Kleen Up is on the leaves it will soon be transferred down to the roots and will cause major damage to the roots. If your yard has a severe infestation of bamboo, you will probably need to repeat this process next fall.
Fall is also an ideal time of the year to apply lime to your lawn. Over time, acidity builds up in the soil, making it harder for grass to take up nutrients from the soil. Weeds, on the other hand, can grow really well in an acidic soil. By applying lime you can make it easier for the lawn to outgrow the weeds and subsequently force out the weeds. Your lawn is not the only part of your yard that can benefit from an application of lime. Your vegetable garden needs lime too. Most of your perennials will benefit from an application of lime. Lilac trees do not like an acidic soil. By applying lime in the fall, you are allowing time for the lime to work at removing the acidity from the soil. Come the spring, your plants can make use of all the fertilizer that may already exist in the soil plus any fertilizer that you add to the soil will be better absorbed by your plants.
If you haven’t already done so, your lawn would benefit greatly from an application of lawn fertilizer at this time. The fertilizer will help your lawn to recover from the dry soil conditions that prevailed all summer long. You should follow up with an application of a late fall fertilizer in mid to late October.
Well, that’s all for this week. I’ll talk to you again next week.