Thought about your lawn lately? Here are a few winter tasks to consider

It’s been a while since we had regular upkeep on lawngrasses.

Cool weather pretty well brings things to a halt. Or, so it seems. But there are a lot of things folks are asking about right now, so I thought it might be a good time to address some of the winter tasks you might want to consider.

For one thing, weeds are coming on strong.

Broadleafed weeds including clover, dandelions, henbit, thistles, chickweed, plantain and others have been growing vigorously in recent warm weather.

Smart gardeners take advantage of those balmy spells and they apply a broadleafed weedkiller spray containing 2,4-D to the weeds. These herbicides often come blended with a couple of other active ingredients that can penetrate into the soil and be taken up by desirable plants’ roots, so you want to read and follow label directions very carefully to avoid unnecessary damage.

But rest assured that broadleafed weedkillers are a lot more enjoyable than hand-pulling of weeds from your hands and knees.

Winter grassy weeds are another issue. We do not have a comparable product to 2,4-D that will eliminate cool-season grasses like annual bluegrass, rescuegrass and winter rye without doing serious damage to your permanent lawn.

That’s why it’s so critical that you heed the warnings to apply pre-emergent granules between August 25 and September 5. That’s before these weeds germinate and start growing, because once you can see them up and growing it’s too late.

You don’t get a second chance.

At this point, just ignore them. As your permanent lawn greens up in a couple of months it will absorb them visually and you’ll forget that you have them.

I’m going to step out on a limb and mention something without really recommending it to you. If you have dallisgrass (dark green clumping grass that sends up seed heads within just a day or two after you mow in the summer), you might have a chance to spot-treat for it now. It often greens up before bermuda or St. Augustine, and that can give you a window of a week or two in which you can spot-treat just the dallisgrass clumps using a glyphosate herbicide applied only to the dallisgrass. Cut the bottom out of a 1-gallon milk or distilled water jug. Remove the lid, and stick your spray wand down into the jug. Place the jug firmly over the dallisgrass, and then spray the greening clump. The jug will prevent overspray, and the glyphosate should kill the weeds. Glyphosate-only herbicides will not contaminate the soil, so your turfgrass can grow right back in to cover. But I’m going to finish this lengthy paragraph as I began it: This is a commentary, not a recommendation. You will assume any risk in misuse of the product.

However, I’ve seen it done successfully dozens of times.

I’m asked every winter about planting new sod to replace grass that’s been dug up during winter construction or beaten down during neighborhood football games. The fact is that the soil is too cold for roots to grow properly.

New sod will sit on top of the ground vulnerably waiting for a bad cold front to damage or kill it. If you have a comparatively small area and if mud or erosion are serious concerns, bermuda sod probably could survive planting now, but St. Augustine definitely would not. If at all possible, wait until mid-March to plant new sod. Seeding needs to wait until May.

I’m still getting questions about leaving fallen tree leaves on the ground as a mulch over the lawn.

Here’s what happens: Folks finally get around to raking the leaves, and as they pull them aside they notice that the grass that’s beneath them is greener and seemingly more vigorous than grass that’s out in the open.

However, that’s not a good thing.

Fungal diseases are cultivated in the warm, humid conditions. Plus, if a strong north wind blows through, the grass will suddenly be exposed to sub-freezing weather. You don’t want to leave fallen foliage on top of your turfgrass.

If you have low spots in your lawn you might be wondering about filling them with sand now so the grass can green up and grow through it in spring. The concept is good, but the timing is off. It’s better to do this filling once the grass has already started to green up and grow. That’s generally April or May.

If the low areas, often where sprinkler lines have been run, are deeper than 1 inch you may need to remove the sod and put topsoil into the trench before you replant.

If you’re wondering about scalping your lawn and when you should do it, that time comes up in late February or very early March.

We’ll talk more about it at that time, but it basically consists of dropping the mower down one or two notches to remove all the browned stubble so the green growth of early spring can show up more quickly. Scalping also lets you remove most broadleafed winter weeds.

And finally, so you can plan timing of your pre-emergent weedkiller applications, you’ll want to apply Dimension, Balan or Weed-EX with Halts granules between March 5 and March 15 to prevent germination of crabgrass and grassburs. Repeat that treatment 90 days later – basically in the first half of June.

Remember that the weeds you begin to see now and into February are cool-season weeds that would have been prevented by fall application of the same granules between August 25 and September 5.

You can hear Neil Sperry on KLIF 570AM on Saturday afternoons 1-3 pm and on WBAP 820AM Sunday mornings 8-10 am. Join him at www.neilsperry.com and follow him on Facebook.

This story was originally published January 10, 2020 at 5:15 AM.