A website from UGA Cooperative Extension

by Ed O’Connor, Fulton County Master Gardener Extension Volunteer trainee

This article is part of Garden Buzz, a series from Appen Media and the North Fulton Master Gardeners, where rotating columnists explore horticulture topics like herbs, insects, and wildlife conservation. Find all Garden Buzz articles here.

Those of us that enjoy our lawns are thrilled to have the warmer weather here in north Georgia! We are once again seeing our warm season grass at its peak beauty! Below are a few pieces of advice I would like to suggest to help maximize and maintain the appearance of your lawn now and throughout the year.

Test Your Soil

While the best time to test your lawn soil is actually the fall, it is never too late and never a bad time to test. This low cost, potentially high impact activity can provide dividends to improve your lawn’s appearance. The actual results could save you money by providing a road map for exactly what fertilizers, or lack thereof, is needed to improve the overall health of your lawn. For more information on this, contact your county Extension office or call 1-800-ASK-UGA1.

Limbing up and thinning out tree coverage allows for sunlight and air circulation on turf lawns. All images courtesy of the author.

Manage Tree Coverage

The common thinking on lawns over the years has been that you cannot have a nice warm-season lawn and trees at the same time. Further, as the thinking goes, it is nearly impossible for the two to coexist. I am here to tell you that it IS possible, BUT it may take some work. The first thing to evaluate is the location of tree limbs and lawn coverage. For most deciduous trees, you will want to limb up as high as possible. It is usually recommended that you leave the top two thirds of the tree canopy to maintain a healthy tree. This will not only allow for sunlight to reach your warm-season grass, but it will also vastly improve air circulation on your lawn.

We all know that to have a healthy lawn, good sunlight is necessary. Equally, without good air circulation, we are setting our lawns up for the ideal site for fungus growth. The damage to warm-season grasses due to fungus growth is potentially catastrophic. I would suggest that one of the best things we can do for our lawns is limb up and thin out tree branches. It may be necessary to contact a local arborist for extensive tree work.

Manage Site Drainage

Most people do not understand that too much water and/or poor drainage is a surefire way to damage our turf lawns. If your lawn has low spots where water tends to pool after a good rain, now is the time to fill those spots and allow your turf time to adjust. Managing water runoff is equally important. Your lawn may be challenged by water from gutter downspouts and or other runoff points. If so, the necessary nutrients normally provided by topsoil that your lawn needs will not be there to support growth. Managing that excess runoff through underground drainage pipes may be necessary. This simple activity can pay dividends on improving the appearance of your lawn.

Mow Correctly

When your warm-season grass needs to be trimmed, never cut more than one-third of the leaf canopy in a single mowing. Cutting more than that amount can cause your lawn to stress, require your lawn to need more water resources and will actually increase your mowing frequency. Under normal circumstances, clippings should be left on the lawn. Returning the clippings will provide additional nutrients to the soil and eliminate yard waste. Late summer is such an exciting time of year for your warm-season grass! There are lots of little things we can do to ensure we maximize their beauty.

Happy gardening!


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This week’s “Garden Buzz” guest columnist is Ed O’Connor, a 2024 Master Gardener intern and member of the North Fulton Master Gardeners. Ed is a graduate of the University of Tennessee with a degree in business administration. Ed is an avid gardener, hiker, camper, backpacker and all things outdoors.

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