APRIL 2025

As enter the month of April, we will continue to treat for your weeds and apply our custom blended, slow release, Florida Friendly Fertilizer, which is meant to green up your lawn.

In March we observed that a lot of our clients have overly dry lawns. As we fully enter our growing season, it is critical that you properly water your lawn to promote its health, deter weed, disease and pest issues and to reap the best results from our applications. The other issue we observed is lawns being cut too short. Again, it's crucial to your lawn's health that it is correctly mowed. While our applications are an important element for your lawn, they are only 1/3 of what it takes to promote healthy and beautiful turf, and the remaining 2/3 is up to you. Implementing the correct irrigation and mowing practices during the start of our growing season, greatly aids in it being healthy and resilent during our imminent soaring temperatures.

Irrigation: Your lawn needs 3/4" to 1" of water applied with each watering. For those with automated systems that usually translates to 45 minutes to 1 hour per zone. As mentioned in last month's newsletter, we strongly urge you to inspect your irrigation systems thoroughly, even if you have them maintained by a professional. Many irrigation companies only verify that your system is operational by checking that your control panel functions correctly and that sprinkler heads are intact and pop up when activated, among other basic functions. While they make sure your zones are being covered by each head, it is simply impossible to verify by sight alone that the water is providing the correct amount to each zone in its entirety. It’s very easy to test it yourself. Just place several straight-sided cans (such as tuna fish or cat food) throughout your lawn, paying particular attention to areas that often seem to have issues. Run your irrigation as you normally would and once complete each container should have 3/4” to 1" of water inside. If any do not, make note of what zones you will need to adjust. To configure the adjustments, once again place the empty containers in those areas and run your irrigation until they finally have 3/4" to 1" of water inside. Record the time it took and program it into the appropriate zone. It is not unusual to find that some zones require different run times in order to provide the same quantity of water as the rest. If the difference in the amount of water in each container is significant, a more thorough audit of the irrigation system is most likely needed and it may be best to reach out to an irrigation specialist.

Mowing: St. Augustine grass should be mowed at a height between 3” to 4”, especially in partial shade conditions. Repeat after me, "the higher the better"! You never want to cut more than 1/3" of the blade with each mowing, which means during our growing season you should mow weekly. It's important to always leave as much leaf surface as possible so that photosynthesis can occur. Grass undergoes physiological stress with each mowing, especially if too much leaf tissue is removed. The effects of scalping, or removal of too much shoot tissue at one time, is long-term damage, leaving your lawn susceptible to drought, insect, disease, temperature/sunscald stress, poor soil conditions, and traffic issues. Correctly mowing your lawn also greatly influences its root depth. Deep roots aid in the prevention of the above mentioned issues, while shallow roots promote them. Additionally, leaving your grass clippings provides a valuable energy source because it contains nutrients your lawn needs. Some mistakingly believe that grass clippings contribute to thatch, however, research has shown that clippings are readily decomposed by microbial action. Simply leave them on your lawn and they will quickly breakdown and feed your lawn, adding a boost of nigrogen and phos. If there is clumping, you can either lightly rake them, or gently use a blower, to dispurse them. Determining whether your lawn is being mowed at the appropriate height is quite simple. After it has been freshly mowed, take a measuring stick or tape measurer and insert it vertically into your lawn until it makes contact with the soil. The height of the blades should not be any lower than 3”. If you discover that it is indeed shorter, your mower should be adjusted upwards to achieve a higher cut.

Lastly, in addition to the the correct mowing height, there are other important mowing practices that should be followed: 

• Frequently sharpen your blades to prevent tearing the grass blades. Dull mower blades produce a ragged cut to the grass blades making it easier for disease and insects to attack your lawn. 

• Change mowing patterns each time. When it's repeatedly mowed in the same pattern it causes the grass blades to lay in the same direction, creating wear patterns and ruts. Changing the direction with each mowing greatly reduces the possibility of scalping the lawn, which not only stresses it, but also makes it susceptible for weed, pests and disease issues.

• Rinse or blow off your mower after each use to remove weed seeds to help deter spreading them in your lawn.

If you are not a native, it may seem that the above cultural practices are daunting or perhaps, just plain weird because they differ from how your grass was cared for in another state or region. There is a lot of science that backs up the hows and whys of its care. While we wish that our spray hoses were magic wands that instantly produce a healthy, gorgeous lawn for you, that is unfortunately not the case! The good news is that through teamwork, combining our applications with the proper irrigation and mowing practices, we can achieve our common goal of not only a beautiful lawn but one that is healthy and thriving.