After a long, snowy winter, this week’s warm weather has many Iowans leaping at the chance to get into their yards and start beautifying and landscaping for the seasons ahead. Adam Thoms, a turfgrass specialist at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, says it’s probably still a little early for mowing our lawns, but when that time comes, he suggests you don’t sharpen the mower blade first thing.
The home improvement stores are stockpiling pallets of weed-and-seed products, and Thoms says now is an ideal time to start spreading those tiny pellets.
Creeping Charlie, or ground ivy, is one of the hardest weeds to control in Iowa. Thoms says he gets calls about it almost daily, and there -is- a chemical out there that can kill Creeping Charlie. The problem is, now is not the best time to try.
There may be a few dead spots in your yard where you need to plant new grass, and there are a variety of turf-building products on the market, but again, Thoms says the ideal season to do that is in several months.
When it comes time to start mowing your lawn, he suggests the ideal cutting height is between three and three-and-a-half inches, and he recommends you never remove more than a-third of the leaf blade. Find more spring lawn care tips, here: https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/
