New Year – New Lawn Prep

Much of the country (except the north east) is covered in white… but here in the Valley of the Sun we can thing of getting started on new lush green lawns for your commercial property. The better you look (your property) the better you are than your competition.

Dethatch Your Lawn
Warm weather grasses like Bermuda grass and paspalum thrive in humidity, yet still require preparation before the desert storms roll in. The best way to maximize the benefits of seasonal weather is to first open up the blades with a power rack. 

The idea is to decrease the lawn's volume without digging into the soil. While methods vary, take the foolproof approach by dethatching the lawn from opposite directions and mowing up the remains. Your end goal is to give your grass maximum exposure to sunlight while allowing stolons to take root. While it's not necessarily catastrophic to skip this step, lawn professionals deem it wasteful as overgrowth will simply sit with nowhere to go until it's mowed up.

Transitioning From Ryegrass To Dormant Bermuda
Since Bermuda grass only needs to be planted once, subsequent summers will involve the Bermuda coming out of dormancy. The Bermuda will come in more fully and rapidly if the death of the Ryegrass is accelerated by letting it dry out in early May. Two weeks without watering is usually sufficient to kill the ryegrass. After the Ryegrass has turned brown, resume watering to encourage the Bermuda out of dormancy.

Rye Grass Life Cycle
Rye is grown in the Phoenix area in winter. Since Rye does not survive the summer, it needs to be replanted every fall, in the middle of October. Rye grass stays a lustrous dark green until the middle of May, when it quickly dies off as temperatures approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Watering Frequency
Bermuda and Rye do well on a grass watering schedule.

Watering Method
Grass is generally watered using sprinklers but can be watered using flood irrigation as well. Flood appears to be an option only for Bermuda because it involves infrequent deep watering. Ryegrass is not as drought resistant as Bermuda and therefore does not appear to be as well suited to flood irrigation.

Conserving Water
Given the Phoenix areas limited water supplies there is a lot of concern about conserving water. Listed here are some ways to use water efficiently.

No matter what you call it, you don’t need to worry about your lawn maintenance. It doesn’t matter to us whether you want desert landscaping, lush lawns or some type of landscaping in between, we can help.  We serve businesses like yours all over the Phoenix Metro Area. To find out how give us a call at 623-848-8277.

Presented by:
Greens Keeper Landscape Maintenance, LLC
623-848-8277
http://www.commerciallandscapecare.com
greenskeeperllc@cox.net