I hope everyone had a chance to read my last post concerning soil testing. If you haven’t taken your sample , there is still time this spring to do so.

Your next step is to determine what type of grass you are growing. Generally, if your lawn is brown this winter you have a warm season grass, if most of your lawn is some shade of green, you have a cool season grass. Warm season grasses include bermudagrass, zoysiagrass, St Augustine, and centipedegrass. Cool season grass include Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, and fine fescue.

Whether you determine you have a warm or cool season lawn, please do not be tempted to fertilize your lawn in the spring. You can save on the cost of fertilizers and help reduce the amount of pollutants going into the rivers and bays.

Warm season grasses should fertilized in the late spring and and summer and cool season grasses should be fertilized in the late summer and fall.

For more details visit your local extension web site or office. I will follow with more information in future posts.

Please help to keep our waters clean.

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It is time to start thinking about taking a soil sample of your property. In general, it is better to take samples of both the front and back yards and any other areas that are used for different purposes, like a vegetable garden.

It a very simple process:

Use a small clean plastic bucket and a clean trowel or small shovel (very important)

Collect a small amount of soil from 5-6 spots in your yard on a random zig-zag pattern approximately 4″ deep

Place the soil from each spot in the bucket, removing any debris and blend together

Put the blended soil into a sandwich size baggie, filling about 2/3 of the bag. Mark the sample location on the bag

Fill out the lab’s form with all required information and attach to the sample Lynnhaven River Now Soil Sample Form.

Follow the detail instructions on the submittal form

Look for the exciting results in a few days

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Another setback for a set of new stormwater regulations and the Chesapeake Bay

As reported in the Virginia Pilot on Wednesday January 20, 2010 the Virginia Board of Soil and Water Conservation has voted to put on hold the the new regulations that would improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay that then Governor Kaine had signed off on just prior to leaving office. Last weeks action will require the regulations to undergo another round of public comments prior to any approval by Governor McDonnell.

See Bay Bound Jan. 2010 for a more detail explanation.  Follow the progress in future post.

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I was planning to continue my discussion of watersheds but a trip to the hardware store yesterday for a plumbing part changed my mind.

As I walked through the front door, a new display of stacks of fertilizer bags greeted me. You say, so what.

Referring back to lawn run off, our lawns don’t need to be fertilized in spring. It doesn’t matter if you have cool or warm season grasses.

Warm season grasses should be fertilized in the early summer as it comes out of dormancy.

Cool season grasses should be fertilized in the fall, starting in early September.

This push to sell fertilizer now is purely a market ploy  and can only hurt our waterways.

Get a soil sample done this time of year, so when it does come time to fertilize, you will know the proper amount to apply.

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