When December arrives, the cooler temperatures turn many Southern lawns brown — which is the natural dormant state. To combat that appearance, the planting of annual and perennial ryegrasses is common. Ryegrasses germinate quickly without a lot of soil preparation and will provide a winter of green before the heat returns next spring.

So which seed should you choose? Annual ryegrasses are generally less expensive to purchase and in most cases they will suffice for a three- or four-month color fix before the plants die back. NOTE: If by chance you grow a centipede lawn, you should only overseed with annual ryegrasses. The roots of perennial ryegrasses will harm the roots of the centipede plants.

Otherwise perennial ryegrass seeds are gaining slightly more favor in the South, especially in somewhat shaded areas where the grasses can persist even during the warmest times of the year. Sometimes, though, it’s just too hot and sunny for perennial ryegrass and the plants won’t make it through summer. It would be ashame to spend the extra money.

Here’s a great web site that spells out some of the subtleties: http://www.seedland.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=Seedland&Category_Code=RG.

Meanwhile up here in Rhode Island, I didn’t get around to overseeding our lawn with perennial ryegrass until two weeks ago and we’ve since had several fairly hard frosts. Germination, which should have occurred by now during warmer times of the year, has been minimal. Some of the seed may germinate in Spring when the soil warms, but I’m doubting it.

Serves me right for procrastinating.

The Fiskars Momentum mower, the best reel machine on the market today.

Here’s a link sent to us by Katy Moss Warner, the emeritus director of the American Horticultural Society and the woman who built and oversaw operations at the Walt Disney World landscape in Orlando for a quarter century. She’s a huge proponent of sustainable landscaping.

Turns out that at some schools, where budgets are tight, the administrators are having the student-athletes mow the grass with human-powered reel mowers: http://pandscorp.org/editors-picks/football-players-mowing-program/.

It’s brilliant, isn’t it? The fields get mowed. The athletes get exercise. And the environments and maintenance budgets get saved.

Sounds oddly similar to what my grandfather would have told me as he was sending me outside to work . . .

To upgrade a lawn with terrible soil beneath, we brought in a bulk delivery of compost last weekend.

We used a landscape rake to spread the compost approximately one-quarter inch thick. With rain coming today, we'll overseed with a layer of perennial ryegrass — which germinates quickly.

While some folks in the southern tier of North America are readying their lawns by planting annual ryegrass seed for some winter green right about now, those of us in the North should be buttoning up the lawn for the longest season of the year.

Here are a few general tips, which will vary depending on where you live. Use the soil temperatures as your barometer on how long you can push the season.

MOWING — I have always recommended a final mowing that’s a bit lower than I keep the lawn during the rest of the season — but I don’t scalp the lawn. Two to two and a half inches is low enough. Grass that’s too tall is a haven for voles and field mice. It also mats down on itself and can be more prone to snow mold.

Observe the mowing “rule of thirds” on the final cut, just as you would the rest of the year. That means that you never want to remove more than a third of the plant at any one time, especially for the final cut. That would send the lawn into the winter overly stressed.

FERTILIZING — If your grass is done growing for the season, but still green, you can apply a “winterizer” fertilizer that has two or three percentage points of nitrogen and potassium by weight. Any amount in excess of that may just leach away.

You don’t want to be pushing out new growth if the soil under the lawn is close to freezing. That will definitely increase the likelihood of snow mold, which is a fungal disease. The new succulent grass plants will also be prone to freezing temperatures and ice damage.

This is a fine time to put down a thin layer of compost as a top-dressing. By thin, we mean a quarter inch or less.

SEEDING — Any seed applied right now should be perennial or annual ryegrass. Other species take too long to germinate and probably won’t come up during the time we have left in the season. Some folks put down seed now, figuring that what doesn’t germinate now will come up in the spring. That’s generally proven to be a waste of time and money.

WATERING — We’ve had plenty of rain up in New England, but if you live in an area that’s been dry this fall, you can and should keep watering deeply once a week right up until the ground freezes. Dig down six to eight inches and feel the soil. If it’s moist, it doesn’t need water. But if it’s dry, you can really help you lawn emerge healthy next spring by giving it a good drink now.

GRUBS — Grubs that hatched from eggs in September and October and digging their way deeper into the ground by now and, at least in the far north, we’re past our window where grub control products will work well. Be on guard to treat the grubs next spring as they emerge from the soil, usually sometime from late May to late June.

RAKING — Don’t procrastinate on this one. I’m in a bit of a panic myself. With several business trips next week, I’m concerned about the oak leaves that are still on the lawn. I hope they’re still light and dry when I finally have time to remove them next weekend.

Its terrible for the lawn to leave a heavy layer of leaves in place for the winter.

DETHATCHING AND AERATING — In the most northern states, it’s too late for these activities. In the middle of the country, you probably still have time to aerate and dethatch if necessary.

LIME APPLICATIONS — If the ground isn’t frozen, go ahead and apply limestone or gypsum if your soil test indicates you need to either raise the pH or increase the calcium-magnesium ratio. This great post by Craig Dick of Calcium Products Inc. and NatraTurf explained the differences.

The photos, below, emulate many of the steps a homeowner might undertake in a fall renovation:

Dr. Mark Carroll, the project's lead researcher, stakes out the trial area.

Graduate student Siqi Chen mows the grass to 2 inches, bagging the clippings to collect any weed seeds.

Next, Dr. Carroll, left, oversees the aeration of some of the plots; others were left untouched in the study for comparison.

The core aerator made one pass in each direction, pulling up thousands of tubes of soil and turf and leaving holes that compost, air and water can easily enter.

Next, Siqi dethatched the lawn to remove any dead grass and surface roots.

UMD's Peter Flack then raked the thatch off the affected plots. In a home lawn renovation situation, overseeding immediately after dethatching is highly recommended.

UMD's Mathew Kasalaruis spread a carefully calculated amount of compost over each of the plots. Two different types of composts were used — one from leaves and one from human waste (biosolids). And different depths of compost were also applied in various plots so that researchers can evaluate any variability in outcomes. By design, all the products used in these trials will be readily available to the public in Maryland.

Applying different treatments to 36 different 10 by 10 plots took the research team several hours. The crew will return monthly to evaluate differences in the trial plots and, beginning next spring, will apply compost teas to one half of all the plots to evaluate the impact of the liquid.

Meanwhile, the lawn on the Glenstone campus, which has not had synthetic fertilizer applied in more than 15 months, was shimmering green just as the maples were at the peak of fall color last week.

After more than 70 years in business, Milorganite is finding its product illegal as a lawn fertilizer in some states due to the 2 percent phosphorus in the bag. Other organic fertilizers are fighting the same issue.

The coming year is shaping up as a major battleground and your lawn may be caught in the crosshairs of a fight that stretches from Maine to Washington state.

The issue is phosphorus, denoted by the letter P and the number 15 on the Periodic Table of Elements that hung in your high school science class. It’s also the middle number on your lawn fertilizer bag and, if a growing number of lawmakers continue to get their way, that number will soon read zero (0) if it doesn’t already.

“Legislators always seem to like to take things to logical extremes, which results in illogical legislation,” said Paul Sachs today by phone. He has been selling organic fertilizers for longer than just about anyone else in the nation as owner of North Country Organics in Bradford, Vt.

When Great Lakes states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota first began looking at bans on phosphorus in lawn fertilizers a decade ago, environmentalists like us touted the movement as fundamentally positive. Phosphorus that runs off into fresh water supplies can produce massive algae blooms that suck oxygen out of lakes, rivers or streams and leave them as a eutrified, putrid mess. Homeowners and some lawn care operators, who tend to think more is better when it comes to the application of fertilizers and weed controls, were being fingered as the culprits.

And when professor John Lehman’s research started flowing out of Michigan, showing that the lawn phosphorus ban in that state was in fact reducing phosphorus in the lake, his findings gave massive amounts of fuel to the discussion of phosphorus bans. Now, virtually every state from Maine to Virginia on the Eastern Seaboard has some sort of lawn phosphorus legislation already in place or percolating.

So far, so good, most of us thought . . . except for the one massive consequence that Paul Sachs predicted way back in 2007: many organic fertilizers were going to be legislated out of business. That’s because it’s easy to remove phosphorus from the synthetic chemical fertilizers sold by Scotts Miracle Gro, Bayer and others; meanwhile it’s virtually impossible to remove all the phosphorus from many natural organic fertilizers derived from animals and plants.

As one fertilizer manufacturer said in this SafeLawns interview last year, these phosphorus bans “will effectively kill the organic fertilizer industry.”

ALL PHOSPHORUS IS NOT CREATED EQUALLY

As one of the big three macronutrients — nitrogen and potassium are the others — phosphorus is essential for the general health and vigor of all plants. Among the benefits it provides are stimulated root development, increased stalk and stem strength, overall vigor and increased resistance to plant diseases.

Without phosphorus, in other words, we wouldn’t have lawns as we know them. Any grass that did grow would be wispy and of pale, pinkish green in color. Lawns wouldn’t have the ability to make it through any drought stress of summer or long, harsh winters, either, without phosphorus — so it’s traditionally been added to our fertilizer mixes in somewhere between one-tenth and equal measures to the nitrogen that’s included in the bag.

Proponents of the bans state that most soils in the U.S. already have enough phosphorus in place for established lawns and that the only time you need to apply phosphorus to lawns is during overseeding or repairing bare areas. In fact, in the 11 states where phosphorus is legislated, all of them allow for phosphorus to be put down when overseeding.

The phosphorus cycle explains the various ways plants can uptake phosphorus. (UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA)

Though phosphorus deficiency can be difficult to diagnose on lawns, it shows up more visibly on grass's cousin, the corn plant — which shows vivid red blotches when P is not available.

But can lawns really thrive without any additional phosphorus being added? If clippings are left on the lawn, and the lawn is otherwise treated organically so the soil is alive with microorganisms, the answer is most always yes. Mother Nature has the ability to “mineralize” phosphorus from leaves, clippings and other organic matter and turn it into a form plants can use (see chart, at left).

But Paul Sachs says he has customers call him all the time saying their lawn is turning the wrong color ever since they stopped using phosphorus in their fertilizers. Maybe the mineralization process isn’t functioning well, or maybe the homeowners are bagging their clippings.

“The edges of the blades of grass will turn red in response to a phosphorus deficiency,” he said. “The result of a prolonged period without phosphorus will be weaker stands of grass, which ultimately will lead to more erosion of top soil and even more of a nutrient load in the lakes after all.

“The legislators, in other words, will have worsened the very problem that they’re trying to correct.”

Some of those legislators in favor of no lawn phosphorus frustrate organic lawn fertilizer manufacturers in one other significant way: by not differentiating between organically derived sources such as composts and plant and animal fertilizers, or the chemical products that include synthetic forms of phosphorus. The synthetic phosphorus has been treated to be more water soluble, which automatically makes it more prone to leaching during and after a heavy rain event. Within organic fertilizers, the phosphorus is usually bound tightly to iron or aluminum and won’t release and leach readily.

Attorney Tom Crawford has been fighting this battle on behalf of his company, Milorganite, for more years than he likes to count.

“Legislators just don’t want to hear about these differences (in phosphorus) because it confuses them,” he said. “And then there are the lobbyists for the chemical industry who will testify with a straight face that all phosphorus is created equally. It’s a bold-faced lie, of course, but who’s the legislator going to believe?”

The result has been a mishmash of laws. In Illinois, lawn care professionals can’t apply phosphorus to lawns without a soil test that proves the customer needs it — but the rules don’t stop the customer from applying the phosphorus themselves. Four other states, New York, Maryland, Washington and Vermont, effectively make no distinction between organic and synthetic fertilizers in their bans, according to Crawford. On the other hand, New Jersey, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota all exempt organic fertilizers from their bans — primarily because Crawford personally fought long and hard to make those state officials understand the differences. He has a scientific study from Florida that shows Milorganite — made from composted human waste — is seven times less likely to leach through the soil than synthetic phosphorus. That same study shows that phosphorus bound in compost is also far less prone to leaching than synthetic sources.

That data alone ought to be enough to persuade lawmakers, but as Crawford approaches his retirement next year, he echoes Paul Sachs’ sentiments about illogical legislation.

“After a while, you just shake your head,” he said earlier today. “You just hope that Pennsylvania, which will be next in line with a phosphorus ban, will follow New Jersey and not New York or Maryland.”

The end of Crawford’s career is significant, not just for Milorganite and other biosolids fertilizers companies, but for the organic fertilizer industry as a whole. Few other organic companies can afford to maintain full-time staff attorneys to assure their products’ rightful shelf space. It’s not inconceivable that other states could follow New York’s lead without someone like Crawford to stand up to bad legislation.

THE REALITY ON THE GROUND

Much of the battle is being fought at retail centers where bags full of lawn fertilizer containing phosphorus will either be illegal to sell, or will carry a stern warning label. Since many of the newest laws in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and elsewhere really don’t take full effect until 2012, the entire organic fertilizer industry seems to be holding its collective breath.

“I have no idea how they think they’ll implement this, much less enforce it,” said Sachs, who said his company has seen no drop in sales — yet — related to the phosphorus laws that are hitting like dominos across the Northeast.

A quick Internet search didn’t unearth any prosecuted cases based on the phosphorus laws and reason dictates that the no-phosphorus craze in the U.S. will probably police itself, much like the no pesticide laws have done in Canada. In other words most people will try to follow the law; a certain percentage won’t hear about the law and a few others probably won’t abide it if they do hear.

The bottom line is that reduction of phosphorus in lawn fertilizers is a great intention. Responsible states like New Jersey, that quantify how much can be put down — without eliminating P entirely — have it right. The old days of putting 10-10-10 chemical fertilizer everywhere need to end immediately.

The sad irony of all this, though, is that if everyone simply tended their lawns organically, and let the soil organisms do the work of cycling the natural phosphorus through the system, then green lawns and clear water could easily co-exist. That organic fertilizers are being lumped with their chemical counterparts is an ignorant travesty that’s not supported by sound science.

In the end, our advice is two-fold for both the companies that call us looking for updates and the homeowners who want to know how to be upstanding citizens within the law. First, keep paying attention to these phosphorus bans and make sure organic products like compost, fish meal, chicken manure and alfalfa meal get the exemptions within the laws.

And, second? Overseed your lawn every fall. You should do that anyway . . . and within the letter of law in these phosphorus bans, you’ll be allowed to apply fertilizer containing phosphorus at that time.

The No-So-Instant Makeover: A Lawn Renovation

As much as a complete new lawn construction removes much of the mystery from the process, a renovation is the ultimate horticultural puzzle. Finding the solution begins with a big multi-pronged question: What is it about your current lawn that you don’t like and what is causing the deficiencies?

Somewhere along the way, you might have read Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In other words, simply putting down new grass seed over your existing soil will likely result in the same poor lawn you’ve had all along. If you don’t fix an underlying problem, the appearance on the surface is doomed to be poor or, at best, mediocre.

Assuming you don’t have the money, desire or time to tear out the lawn and start over, here are the considerations in lawn renovations:

Evaluation — Like the doctor who asks you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, you should go through the same exercise with your lawn. Do you really hate it (10), or is it mostly livable (5 or 6). Then, talk to your accountant (or husband or wife) and rate your ability to pay for a renovation on the same scale of 1 to 10, with a 10 meaning money is no object. The final consultant is the daily time manager. On this scale, a 10 means you have all the time in the world. If you add up the points on all the scales and score a 30, you’re a perfect candidate to go back to the beginning of this chapter and start from scratch. Just tear out the lawn you have and been done with it. If you fall on the other end of the continuum with only three points (no money, no time and you don’t hate your lawn that much), then don’t bother making any changes.

Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. At this point, we still have plenty of questions to ask ourselves. What bothers us? Weeds . . . well, what about the soil is causing the weeds? Poor grass color or quality . . . well, why can’t the soil grow better grass? Uneven appearance . . . what is causing the imbalance? Uneven surface . . . do you have the time for labor and money for topsoil to fix the problem?

You get the idea. Every lawn has its unique set of problems and every homeowner has an equally unique set of desires. Matching those with solutions is the ultimate challenge.

Soil test — Go back to chapter 2 and be sure you understand the differences between soil tests. A small renovation might not require the expensive bioassay; the Cooperative Extension test, that details nutrient deficiencies and pH readings, might be enough. If that test comes back with decent results, you might try a Solvita test to determine if your soil is “breathing.” Maybe the nutrients are present, but they’re locked up in an anaerobic soil.

You should also give your soil a simple visual test by digging down and looking at what you find. What is the quality of the soil structure and texture? Does it appear to be nice topsoil to a depth of at least six inches, or do you quickly hit hard-packed clay or porous sand and gravel? For some many homeowners, that is the first big clue solved. The soil may simply not deep enough and the lawn will always struggle until more healthy soil is added.

If, in fact, you’re going to add a substantial amount of new soil, go back to the early part of this chapter and treat your renovation as new lawn construction. The steps are the same.

Preparing to Replant — After you define the area to be renovated, and are not going to add a more than an inch of new soil, you’ll want to prepare the existing soil for a tune-up. Begin by mowing the existing lawn quite low, to about one to two inches high at the most. Rake and compost the clippings.
Then evaluate your weed population. If your lawn is mostly weeds, you may decide to spray with a non-selective natural herbicide that acts like the synthetic brand known as Roundup. Two natural weed killers are Burnout and Nature’s Avenger (see Page 262). You can also blanket your lawn with a flexible rubber material that will kill all vegetation (see page 176).

Pulling or digging weeds, of course, is always an option. When you’re preparing for a renovation anyway, you don’t need to be gentle to the surrounding grass. One option is to dig right in with a grub or grape hoe, which works like a pick-ax with a hoe blade on the end, and you can eradicate weeds from a large area in no time. If you pull weeds, take the time to pull as many of the roots out of the soil as possible and add these to the compost pile,too. Even if you feel it’s not practical to remove all the weeds, clipping them back to the soil surface will weaken the plant and give new grass seed a chance to compete favorably.

Two other steps may be useful to prepare the soil for amendments and overseeding. “Dethatching” the soil removes any dead, undecayed material from the base of the grass plants and also scratches the soil’s surface as you go along. Using a rake, preferably bamboo, a dethatching attachment on your lawnmower, or a specialized power dethatching machine, be sure to scratch the soil in at least two directions to achieve a thorough loosening of the soil surface. The goal is to provide good seed-to-soil contract when you overseed.

Core “aerating” can also be useful prior to overseeding. These machines have finger-like hollow knives that remove turf and soil from the lawn and lay the “cores” on the soil surface. The resulting holes allow air, water and soil amendments to get to the roots of the grass plants more easily.

Amending the soil — Armed with the results of a soil test, you’re now ready to take the final steps before putting down new grass seed, sprigs or sod. Top-dressing with compost is always a good idea no matter what the results of the test may say. Compost is typically fairly low in macronutrients of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — it’s always a good idea to have the compost tested, too — so you may need to add other materials to increase fertility. Take an especially good look at levels of calcium, sulfur and magnesium, which grass plants actually use in higher percentages than phosphorus in many cases. Chapter 6 details organic sources for many nutrients and now is the time to work them into your soil.

Picking replacement grasses — With the soil prepped, you’re ready to begin the process of planting new grass. Selection of species is the first step; begin by identifying the primary turf you already have in place. Some grasses blend together well, but others won’t. Revisit Chapter 3 for this information.
You also need to decide whether to overseed your newly prepped area, or to put down sod. For small renovations, putting down sod can be a great way to “patch” the lawn and have it appear — from a distance at least — as if you were never there. It’s rare, though, to find a really good match between sod and your lawn.

That’s why most lawn renovations are accomplished with overseeding or, in the South and West, sprigging. Once you have identified the primary turf varieties growing in your lawn, you’ll usually be able to find seed that will blend reasonably well. If you’re not sure what’s growing in your lawn and can’t tell from the photos in Chapter 3, cut out a small piece of your lawn and take it to your local garden center, lawn care professional or Cooperative Extension Service for a positive ID. Otherwise, you might be disappointed to plant a light green fescue in with your Kentucky bluegrass, or a centipede seed in with your St. Augustine.

One note: Once you have a seed blend that works well for your lawn, keep some on hand in a cool, dry area, or at least be sure to write down what you purchased. You never know when a re-seeding will be necessary. Overseeding every autumn as a matter of course can be part of a good lawn maintenance program.

Planting — Establishing grass seed, sprigs or sod in a renovation is no different than planting a lawn from scratch. Because the areas involved are often smaller, spreading of seed is done by hand. Sodding may be done in a far more random pattern, too. Or, the renovated areas can be larger, in which case you will employ many of the same techniques and tools as outlined on page 88.

One note about sod: If you purchase sod from a garden center or sod farm, try to obtain some of the same kind of turf in a seed mix. By planting the seed next to where the sod ends, it will allow you to “feather” the transition between the new sod and the established turf.

As the maple leaves peaked yesterday at our organic lawn trials at Glenstone in Potomac, Md., the question arises about how to care for leaves.

That was the question during our weekly radio interview this morning. For a full analysis of whether to rake, or not, this fall . . . read on:

Part I, Foliage: http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2009/10/fall-leaves-part-1/

Part II, Collection: http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2009/10/fall-leaves-part-ii/

Part III, Gadgets: http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2009/10/fall-leaves-part-iii/