We’re Having a Record Year

This year we’ve had record high temps, record drought, record low temps. Unfortunately, they are not good kinds of records. However, this week’s record-low temperatures are not signaling the end of the fall seeding season. Remarkably, these past few days have brought a rare opportunity for those who may have procrastinated in fall overseeding. These bitter cold overnight temperatures will kill ugly annual grassy weeds early this year. A hard freeze this early in the season may only happen once every twenty or thirty years, and now is the time to take advantage of the opportunity.

Not an Average Year

In an average year, the ugly annual grassy weeds like crabgrass and foxtail start to yellow with the shorter daylight hours of fall; however, they don’t usually die out until mid-November when colder overnight temperatures prevail. This year, the unusually early-season freeze will seal the deal on crabgrass and foxtail, and they will die and turn brown much earlier than in an average year.

Fix Dead Spots Now

After these few nights of freezing temperatures, homeowners will start seeing noticeably brown patches of dead crabgrass and foxtail in their lawns. Left till spring, those dead brown patches will be bare, leaving an opening for henbit, and chickweed  to invade in early spring and crabgrass to move in next summer.

Don’t wait till spring to fix those dead spots. The fix is easy; if you see dead patches of ugly crabgrass in your lawn, get out the rake and start roughing up those areas. Raking will do three things for you; 1) it removes loose debris, 2) loosens the soil surface for better seed-to-soil contact, and 3) lifts up grass and dead crabgrass blades, opening the pathway for seed to get to the soil. Throw grass seed down along with Golf Course Starter® or Renovator® and then water it all in.

Best Grass Seed for Cool Soil Repairs

Estate Mix, Macho Mix, or Stadium Special is the perfect grass seed for cool soil repairs. These Grass Pad grass seed mixes contain a percentage of sports turf perennial ryegrass seed. The sports turf perennial ryegrass seed will germinate in cooler soils. These grass seed varieties sown today will germinate before the crabgrass starts to grow in late April. Filling those bare spots with cool soil germinating Grass Pad grass seed will help to eliminate the ugly weeds next spring. No bare spots mean no room for ugly weeds to move in.

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