Bent Grass Woes

Bentgrass is not the grass of choice for a home lawn. Golf courses love it for the putting greens because it tolerates being cut short. But bentgrass needs a lot of extra care. It loves to be pampered with extra fertilizer and a lot of watering.

Bentgrass grows in the wild and birds can bring along a few seeds and drop them in your yard. Once started, bentgrass will sprout and spread. The other problem with bentgrass is that a short stem that is cut when mowing, can land in the lawn elsewhere and take hold, form roots and grow. So you can be spreading bentgrass to uninfected parts of your lawn when mowing.

Bentgrass has short shallow roots. This means it tends to dry out easily in drought conditions. On home lawns, people are unhappy that their lawn is yellow or brown in the summer. In dry weather, the shallow roots are just not enough to keep bentgrass green. Unfortunately, it is hardy enough to go dormant in dry conditions, but not weak enough to die out. Once the cooler fall weather comes with more moisture, bentgrass will revive and turn green again.

Bentgrass with its shallow roots will sometimes form a thick mat. The stems of bentgrass often grow on the surface. As they spread out, they will sprout small roots. But the stems will smother other lawn grasses. Bentgrass is a vigorous growing plant and can easily outgrow other turf grasses.

Bentgrass is a weak grass and is often slow to green up in the spring. Bentgrass is often subject to winterkill and you lawn can have large patches of yellow grass that hasn't greened up. Again, the best scenario would be for it to have really died. Unfortunately, it will eventually turn green and live to take over more lawn than before.

Sometimes, once the bentgrass has turned brown, a little tug of a rake will lift the stems and the shallow roots up and leave a large bare patch.

How can one deal with bentgrass. There isn't a product that can be applied to the lawn to selectively control bentgrass.

The best one can do is to rake the bentgrass hard to remove as much of the stems and roots as possible. Then rake the soil to loosen it, add good quality grass seed and then keep moist.

I wish I could say this would do the trick for the lawn. Bentgrasss is very prolific and very vigorous and will likely be back. But this is often a better, less expensive solution than ripping out the whole lawn and resodding.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN, the King of Lawn Care:

Turf King Home

Click here to Request a Quote Online -

or call us at 905.318.6677 or 1.888.TURFKING (887.3546)

If you would like more information, please Contact us

Follow us on Twitter  http://twitter.com/turfkingofgreen

Join our Facebook page  

http://www.bit.ly/FacebookTK

Copyright 2009 Turf King-Hamilton. All Rights Reserved.

Why do some people get chinch bugs?

A homeowner asked, "Will I need chinch bug treatment every year?"
And, "Why do I have chinch bugs and my neighbour doesn't?"

Chinch bugs like warm, sunny conditions. They're like "fair weather" enemies. You are most likely to find them in the sunniest spot on your lawn. Check for them on the south facing lawns, away from trees, shrubs, even fences. Any where that there isn't any shade.

Chinch bugs overwinter in the bushes, along the house foundations, anywhere they can hide for the winter. They are back on the lawns now. (a bit earlier this year than most years.) We are finding them now. This picture is not very clear but it show how small the chinch bugs are.

With the new organic treatments for chinch bugs, not all chinch bugs will be eliminated. We can achieve a level of control that permits the lawns to not show visible damage. This means a few chinch bugs will survive to come back another year.

There are a few things you can do to reduce chinch bug damage and populations.
1. Mow the lawn high. We recommend 3" mowing height. The longer grass blades shade the soil and keep it cooler. A little bit extra shade may be enough to discourage the chinch bugs.
2. Water deeply and infrequently. A stronger, healthier lawn will withstand chinch bug damage better. Chinch bugs suck the sap from the grass. Damage is always worse, for instance, on bentgrass, which is a shallow rooted variety. Deep watering encourages deep roots.
3. Overseed with perennial ryegrass with endophytes. Short version- endophytes discourage chinch bugs. So by having more endophytic perennial ryegrass in your lawn = less chinch bugs.

And the neighbour- maybe he has more shade and is doing all the right things. Sometimes, though it's the neighbour who neglects his lawn that seems to avoid chinch bugs, while you look after your lawn and why do you get the chinch bugs?

I guess, you have to look at it from the point of the chinch bugs. If you were a chinch bug looking for a lawn to feed on, would you choose a neglected lawn or would you choose the green, succulent one that a homeowner can take pride in? Since chinch bugs are sucking insects, small wonder they pick the nice lawns. One of the downsides of having a nice, green lawn.

Chinch bug Article in Library.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN:

Turf King Home

Click here to Request a Quote Online -

or call us at 905.318.6677 or 1.888.TURFKING (887.3546)

If you would like more information, please Contact us

Follow us on Twitter  http://twitter.com/turfkingofgreen

Join our Facebook page  

http://www.bit.ly/FacebookTK

Copyright 2009 Turf King-Hamilton. All Rights Reserved.

WinterKill on bentgrass lawns

Bentgrass is not a grass or turf species that is desirable in home lawns. This winter has been hard on a lot of bentgrass patches in lawns. Here is one where the entire patch of bentgrass has turned brown. If Georgina (her lawn in the picture) is lucky, the bentgrass will have died and it can be replaced with a more desirable mix of turfgrasses. Knowing, however, that Murphy’s law is usually at work in these circumstance, it is most likely that the damaged bentgrass will perk up in a few weeks and be a green and healthy as ever. While bentgrass is easily affected by winterkill and will be brown and dead looking in the early spring, it rarely completely die out. It’s just the upper foliage that has turned brown. Once the weather and the soil warms up, it will recover and be ready to spread out and overrun other parts of the lawn.

If your lawn is showing a great deal of bentgrass that has winter killed, you may want to take this opportunity to give it a hard raking to get rid of the dead stems and to thin out the unwanted bentgrass. Then add some soil and a high quality grass seed mix. This will thin out the bentgrass for a while. Be forewarned, however, that there will likely be enough bentgrass left that in a few years it will be back as thick and strong as ever.

If you have a lawn/tree/shrub that needs some Tender Loving Care- get The KING OF GREEN:

Turf King Home

Click here to Request a Quote Online -

or call us at 905.318.6677 or 1.888.TURFKING (887.3546)

If you would like more information, please Contact us

Follow us on Twitter  http://twitter.com/turfkingofgreen

Join our Facebook page  

http://www.bit.ly/FacebookTK

Copyright 2008 Turf King-Hamilton. All Rights Reserved.