Wow! This month had lots of life lessons. Did I curse us in last month’s newsletter mentioning my excitement awaiting the Azalea bloom? Yes, but your azaleas and Japanese maples will survive, not as beautiful, but survive. If your lawn has mud tracks following being mowed, or an off-color yellow to pink color, there is not much you can do. Weather always dictates our job, and the wonderful daily rainfall is the cause for both. You can mow within an hour of one of our applications and not affect the results. Lastly, I want to thank Sara Morgan for bringing our new invasive weed buddy to my attention, lessor celandine, also known as fig buttercup.

That covers this month’s conclusions, so see you next month. Or if I aroused your curiosity, read on.

Just when I thought it was safe, having planted my tomatoes and made my first website video, frost visited and was devastating to the plants just opening buds or blooms. This is why all the Japanese maples and azaleas look so bad around town. Just like our bigger world problem, we do not want it to happen again, and if there isn’t yet another frost waiting out there for us, all but the weakest plants will be fine. Think of a bud being a little package with every little cell inside that will become the entire leaf. The only real difference between a bud and a leaf is the space between those cells.

Packed like a parachute inside that bud, the cells are arranged differently than when they become the full leaf. The outer cells are damaged by the freeze and lose their ability to make sugar, so when unwrapped, or think of a balloon inflated, a mosaic is created. Often that is a leaf with 30 percent or more brown within the green or red of the leaf, empty dead cells. If this is on the outer edge, the leaf can be contorted. If enough of the leaf is damaged, it will protect the plant and fall off. New leaf buds, often in smaller numbers, should develop in 3 to 5 weeks. (Tim please put the link to the new videos here)

I am formally apologizing in writing for the frost. I mentioned the beauty of this spring and looked forward to the azalea bloom eagerly in last month’s newsletter. Thanks to a most wonderful client, Anita Nedeff, for saying that my enthusiasm toward spring brought a smile to her face. Quoting her exact written words, "With this pandemic, it sometimes is a bit difficult to get excited about the most ordinary things. Thank you." She really helped me to see it is ok.

Do you have muddy tracks after mowing, and then the lawn just does not look green and lush like earlier? Weather again is the two-headed monster we get to learn to live with. All of us mowing are forced, when it rains 5 out of 7 days, to cut when it is too wet. The weight of the mowers, even little walk-behinds, squishes out the water, including some mud, causing the tracks. More rain will wash this off, or the mud will be cut off as the turf grows from the soil up.

Our turf woke up early this spring and, in some cases, didn’t even get a winter rest. That means that those little cells now in the grass have been making sugar more than normal. That means extra nitrogen usage, and it then follows that the color created a lot by the fuel nitrogen is not there in the same amounts as earlier. Less nitrogen, less green, so more yellow cells. When nitrogen levels drop in Morgantown, we line up for a fungus known as red thread. This I learned is best treated by growing the grass through the cycle, not applying medicines.

I do not know about other companies, but when Jeremy comes to your lawn and makes an application, he is treating the soil.  The grass just is in the way of that application. He uses 4 gallons of fluid per thousand square foot of turf, so if you have a normal Suncrest lawn he gives you 20 gallons of product.  You cannot balance that on the leaves of grass plants; it is soaked into the soil and root absorbed over time. A good example comes to mind of the food residue brushed from your teeth after eating your dinner.

Looking at fig buttercup, I find this is a plant buddy we really do not want. Sarah did such a good job removing hers that to date I have not witnessed it, but my eyes are open. When I do find it, I will have a video available and start working on a way we can learn to minimize its presence. I love discovering new plants living right under my nose here in Morgantown, so please bring things you discover to my attention.   

I am looking forward to seeing you in your lawn soon!