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Lawns and Hanging Baskets If you have yellow spots in the lawn and have an automatic watering system, be sure the spray is hitting all area of the yard. Sometimes yellowing can occur in areas where the water is over or under spraying. Watering should be done infrequently but deeply. That is, the soil should be damp six inches below the surface. Once a week is about right if we don't have any rain. If you water less than the equivalent of an inch of rain every week on dry sandy or clay soil, St. Augustine turf grass won't make it through the summer. However, if you water more than the recommended amount and have brown spots on the lawn, it could be brown spot disease, caused by too much moisture. But, if the grass is dying in large patches very quickly it's probably take-all-patch. There are only a few fungicides that will work on take-all-patch and they are not carried by department stores, but by specialty plant nurseries. In addition to a good fungicide, you will need to acidify the soil in the affected area with sphagnum peat moss, not just regular peat moss. Grinding the sphagnum peat moss up and sprinkling it on the affected area up to eight times will help stop take-all-patch in addition to using the correct fungicide. The month of May is the time to add a second application of Pre-emergent herbicide to control warm season weeds, especially grass burrs. Remember that a pre-emergent containing Dimension is less toxic to our native post oaks, although no herbicide should be applied heavily inside the drip line of any large tree. I wish there was a more organic solution to creating a pretty green lawn, but a big stretch of land where only one thing is growing is as far from a natural situation as can exist on the planet, so it's going to take an unnatural solution to keeping it going. Spring is the time of year (May) where you see beautiful bougainvilleas and petunias in hanging baskets at many nurseries, and although they look great when you purchase them, the color can fade after a few weeks if you don't know the secret to maintaining them.The the color or "flowers' that you see are actually bracts that surround the small white flowers that appear on new growth. That's why it's important to trim them back as much as 18 inches after the color fades so they can regrow and bloom again. The best fertilizer for bougainvilleas is time-released hibiscus food. Petunias can be cut back in the middle of the summer to get another flush of blooms. If you are putting any new hanging basket in the sun, be sure it can handle direct sun. Many baskets are grown in greenhouses and will burn up after only a few hours.
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It's time for questions about brown spots on the lawn again. Chinch bugs, grubs, Brown Spot disease, and Take All Patch disease cause some of the most common problems. Trying to identify what is wrong is time consuming and can be costly. The most important thing you can do for your lawn is to have a soil test to see what nutrients are lacking in the soil. Contacting you county extension office is the most effective way to get started. You can pick up the little bags that are sent for analysis. The soil test will tell you if you have too much or too little of anything and the Ph of the soil. A healthy lawn is less likely to have problems and will save you lots of money in the long run.
