Anchorage Daily News

Lots of questions this month are related to lawns. I have some general observations and suggestions which all readers should consider this week.

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Gardening calendar (7/2/09)

Thin: Beets, carrots, lettuce in particular, need thinning. However check all your vegetables. Generally you can eat the thinnings.

Stake: Come on. Stop stalling.

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First, this is a great time of year to over seed your lawn. Get a bag of grass seed and apply it in areas where the grass is thin. You can sprinkle it by hand or get one of those inexpensive, hand cranked jobbies that spreads seed.

Next, when was the last time you sharpened your mower blade? A sharp mower blade makes a clean cut, straight across the leaf. New cells grow and the leaf remains green. A dull blade tears the grass leaf and creates considerably more damage to cells. The results are tips that brown out. Since this is happening to every blade of grass, the lawn looks yellow, brownish or “burned.”

It might surprise you that professional lawn care manuals suggest sharpening lawn mower blades every 8 to 10 hours. If you spend 45 minutes to an hour every week during a season, that means you need to sharpen your blade at least twice a season. I am betting you haven’t.

With some mowers, it is easy sharpen a blade while it is still attached to the machine. Others will require you remove the blade. In either case undo the sparkplug wire to prevent any potential accidents. And make sure you don’t spill gasoline or oil if you tip the machine over or on its side.

You may be able to sharpen the blade yourself with a file or large knife sharpener. If you can’t, take it in to a mechanic and have them run it on their sharpening tool. If the blade has really been abused, it might be time to start over with a new one.

Reel mowers too, need sharpening. Some of these have self-sharpening capabilities. An Internet search on how to sharpen a reel mower or reference to the manual that came with the machine will help. There are also some special sharpening kits for these push mowers.

Next, there are always complaints that feeding a lawn organically is a waste of time because the grass greens too slowly. If this is the case, the reason is usually because the soil food web is not recycling the organics into nutrients for the grass plants quick enough.

There are two great ways to speed up the process.

The first is to apply good compost or humus to the lawn. It sounds like a lot of work, but if you have a wheelbarrow or garden cart and a 4 foot aluminum cement rake, you can do a 5000 square foot lawn in an hour or two. The compost has to be applied about ¼ inch thick as you don’t want to smother the crowns of the plants.

Dump two or three foot piles around the lawn. Rake these down with the large rake. A metal garden rake will work, but won’t do the job as quickly. One the material is distributed, rake it around further with a lawn rake. The idea is to get it in between the crowns, not to cover them. There are compost computers on the Internet that will tell you how much compost you will need to cover a specific area ¼ inch deep.

The second method is to brew a bucket of protozoa that will eat the bacteria that hold in nitrogen. This releases nitrogen in plant usable form. Simply take a few handfuls of hay, straw or tall grass and soak it for 48 hours in a bucket. Stir at least twice a day to get air in. Then apply the liquid soup, which will be full of protozoa, with a sprayer or a watering can.

Finally, you can watch a bare spot in your lawn and it will grow in over the course of a couple of months or so as the root rhizomes grow into the area. Or you can reseed and enjoy a fuller lawn in a matter of two or three weeks. If you choose the later, put down some compost, add seed, water and keep moist. It really isn’t hard and you can use some of the seed purchased to over seed.

Jeff Lowenfels is a member of the Garden Writers Hall of Fame. You can reach him at teamingwithmicrobes.com or by calling 274-5297 during “The Garden Party” radio show from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KBYR AM-700.

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