Month-By-Month Guide to Organic Lawn Care for North Texas

Introduction

In this video and accompanying article, Tom Stuart shares his personal formula for successful organic lawn care. Whether you have St. Augustine, Bermuda, Zoysia, or other lawn grass, you'll learn a month-by-month organic lawn care program you can follow as he discusses what organic products to use and when and how to apply them. Tom is a former Marshall Grain employee and has been using organic practices on his North Texas lawn for 20 years. His presentation has been edited for readability and clarity.

Watch the Video

Organic Lawn Care for North Texas

Today I'm going to talk about lawns and organic lawn care. I've been organic for 20 years now and I've had no issues with the grass I have. We have a mixture of St. Augustine and Bermuda.  Today I'm going to tell you, month-by-month, how and when to apply the products I use, starting with January.

Why January?

Everybody says, we don't need to do anything in January. That's a problem because if you have a thick mat of leaves in your yard, it’s important for you to mulch those. If your neighbor’s leaves blow into your yard, and you do not mulch those or get rid of those, it will turn into a fungus because when you have any kind of thick layer of leaves that's going to create thatch. Thatch is going to be deadly to your grass. So you need to either mulch them or bag them. Mulching is a good idea because if you mulch them, you're putting fertilizer back into the yard. If you want to bag it, you can bag it. Hopefully you have some place where you can make a compost pile. Ideally, when you compost you want to alternate brown, green, brown, green. That's the best way of doing that.

Also, pull them out of the flowerbeds if you have them. You can mulch those or bag them if you want to, but you can also take the bag of mulched leaves and throw those back into the flowerbeds as mulch to help the flowerbeds.

In January, I also mow the yard.

February

In February, you need to put down pre-emergent and the best time that I found for pre-emergent to go down is usually about the middle of February.

If you see any kind of weeds coming up that produce seeds, the pre-emergent is going to prevent these from germinating. When you use this, if you put down any kind of seed, it's going to prevent that seed from germinating as well. So if you're going to put something in a flowerbed (or vegetable garden), make sure you do not put this in those areas, otherwise the seeds will not germinate.

One week later, I come back with Nature’s Creation 4-2-2 Turf Food with Mycorrhizal Fungi. The 4-2-2 is the NPK. NPK is nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. You do not want a high nitrogen fertilizer. High nitrogen will green up your grass, but it does nothing for anything other than that.

Once I put that down, I water it in thoroughly.

March

Once I get into March, I have already put down the pre-emergent and I have put down the fertilizer. Once again, if there are any leaves on your lawn, get rid of those. Mulch them or whatever.

If you start to see weeds that the pre-emergent did not get, I recommend spot treating them with 20% Horticultural Vinegar. Mix it with one to two ounces of Dawn (or other liquid dish soap) in a spray applicator.

Vinegar is a non-selective weed killer, so it will kill anything you spray. To prevent over spray from harming your lawn, get a toilet roll and put it over top of the weed, and squirt the vinegar down through the toilet roll. Over-spray is a problem especially in March when it tends to be very windy.

May

I fertilize my yard four times a year: in February, June, August, September, and then again in February.

Any type of organic fertilizer is really good, but it's going to take some time for it to improve your yard. Especially if you’ve used chemicals in the past, it's going to take a while for the chemicals to leach through and get the system working.

If your grass is not very green, you probably need some iron. If you need iron, green sand would be a good product to apply. But do not put it in your spreader because it's too thick and won’t pass through easily.

Attendee Question: Before we get too far into the summer, I wanted to ask you about thatch. We have St. Augustine, and we cut our yard pretty tall through the summer to keep watering under control. But this time of year, it's all brown, it's a lot of thatch. Do you cut that back?

Tom: St. Augustine has very little thatch. Bermuda has a lot of thatch.

Attendee: Well, there's a lot of brown grass.

Tom: The reason is because we have had very cold temperatures.

It has put St. Augustine into its dormant state. It's going to be coming up very soon.

Attendee: It's coming up, but there's a lot of tall brown from last year.

Tom: I would just mow it and bag it or get rid of it.

Attendee: Would you give it a little shorter cut for the spring and then go back for longer?

I don't. I know it irritates somebody in my household but it doesn't me, but no. I mow two and a half to three inches on the St. Augustine because it needs to be high.

Bermuda needs to be an inch and a half. One inch to one inch and a half.

Attendee: My second question is, if you don't have very many weeds, is it best just not to mess with the pre-emergent thing?

Tom: No, because the second you don't put down a pre-emergent, you're going to have weeds. Weeds come by next door neighbors, dog, wind, birds. So, you might not have them right now, but if you have any of those that I mentioned, you will.

Another thing that will help your grass is molasses. Molasses is a sugar, which helps promote growth with the grass.

Has anybody here been to Hawaii? You know how nice and green it is there? What do they have that we don't have here? We don't have volcanoes. Lava sand is great for greening up grasses, anything in the flowerbeds. It works really, really well.

On the fertilizer, personally, I don't like to have anything with an NPK higher than a six on the nitrogen. If you look at some of the packages at some box stores, they'll have NPKs like 20-0-0. That is a synthetic, chemical fertilizer, which doesn't work with an organic program.

I use the 6-2-4 or the 4-2-2, which are organic.

One advantage about the Texas Tee versus the one that I use is that the Texas Tee is really good for your trees, shrubs, and other plants. Even when I use the 4-2-2, I still open up my broadcast spreader to get the fertilizer into my wife's flowerbed. So if you don't apply any other fertilizes in your flowerbeds like my wife does, then the Texas Tee would be a good product to use because it is for both lawn and flowers.

The 4-2-2 is pretty much just for lawns, which is wonderful. But my plants still love it.

If you haven't fertilize at all yet (in mid-March), go ahead and apply it. I've already fertilized once. Since you have used the synthetic, I would put the organic down heavy.

One thing about the organic versus the synthetic is that you can put the organic down and you don't have to worry about watering it in. With the synthetic, you had better water it within 24 hours or you're going to have dead grass. Like I said earlier, its main ingredient is salt.

Organic will not burn. Organic will not hurt animals. We have people and animals walking around on our fertilizers before being watered and it’s not a problem.

About Aeration

If you have a really good organic yard, you're going to have worms out the wazoo. That is a better way to aerate than if you go out there and make holes. If you're new to it and you want to get some air into the soil, then, yes, I would do that. But I have lots of very large worms in my yard. I know because when we make a new flowerbed for her, we find worms. I mean, we're talking long and round, big round ones. And if you want, another thing that you can use is worm castings. Worm castings are really good for your soil.

Have you ever seen a worm casting? if you see a lot of those on the top of the soil, that means the worms are telling you your soil is not very healthy. They're coming up for air and they're depositing their castings, then they're going back down. They're trying their best to improve the soil.

Attendee: You mentioned getting leaves off the grass. Is it okay through the winter to let leaves remain up around the base of your plantings in your garden?

Tom: As long as you mulch them. Because if you have a pile of leaves, they're going to create a fungus underneath because everything gets wet. The moisture will cause them to become compacted. So you can pull those out, mulch them up, and then put them back into the flowerbed. You can use them as a compost and also use them as a mulch.

June

So getting back to my program, in June, basically I'm mowing my yard.

When you mow, make sure you don't go the same direction every time. Keep changing it up. If you don't want the grass to grow one way, you want to make it move around.

July

In July, you’ll continue doing the same thing. You are maintaining.

If you have Zoysia, mow to a height of one inch. For Bermuda, it’s one to one and a half inches and for St. Augustine it’s two and a half to three inches.

Watering

When you water, you want to apply one inch each time. If you're not sure how much water you're putting down, get several tuna fish cans, which are about one-inch deep. Place them around the yard. Then turn on your sprinklers and notice how long it takes to fill up the cans. That is how long you should run your sprinklers. If you have an area where the water runs off, run your sprinkler for about five minutes to create a sponge effect. Let the water soak in and then come back and water it again. That way the water will soak in better.

I water twice a week. That's all I water. In August, maybe late August, I might have to go in with a supplemental because you don't want to stress the grass.

September

In September, the weather is starting to cool off a little bit — hopefully. That's when you might start cutting back on your watering.

Continue mowing. During the May, June, July, August, and September, I mow twice a week because my grass grows so fast because of these products that I use.

I've got lava sand to put down. I need to put down green sand and molasses in my yard. I'll put all those down and then I'll water it in sometime during the week.

Azomite, which I forgot to mention — goes down in March. I need to get that down as well. Azomite puts vitamins and trace minerals back into the soil. The reason I use this is because, in the past, all these synthetic fertilizers everybody's been using have drained all the trace minerals and vitamins out of the soil. They're gone.  What you have to do is rebuild this. I put an entire bag down on my yard. It’s also very good for vegetable gardens.

Attendee: Can you elaborate on starting from scratch?

Tom: Starting from scratch, I would put vitamins and fertilizer down first because you want to build up the mycorrhizal fungi in your soil. What you want to do is feed the soil. When you feed the soil, the soil feeds the grass. It creates the mycorrhizal fungi and if you look at a cross section of the soil and look at the roots of your lawn or your plants, you'll see a lot of fungi attached to the root system and that is what is going to feed your plant.

Attendee: I've never done any of this before, so can you explain how to physically lay this stuff down? And how thick do you lay it down?

Tom: You can use either a drop spreader, which will take forever, or you get a rotary spreader. In most cases, the bag will tell you what number you should put your spreader on.

You can also just look at it as it's coming out. You want good coverage on the fertilizer. If you're just starting out, you might want to go very heavy.  I would also put out lava sand and molasses, plus Azomite. Azomite is really good for plants also.

Attendee: The Texas Tee has molasses in it. Would that be enough?

Tom: It should be enough, yes.

Another thing that dry molasses is good for is, ants. They don't like it. Especially fire ants.

In September, as I said, I'm backing off of stuff.

So to summarize, I fertilize in February, May, August, and November. About ever three months to four months. Some people will tell you that’s overkill. My response is: look at my yard. That's all I have to say. I'll give you my address and you can come in August, the worst time of the year for turf, and you’ll see that I have no problem.

The key is you need good soil. You can use a 20-0-0 and you'll have really beautiful grass, but the problem is, it won’t last. You're going to have issues with chinch bugs. You're going to have problems with brown patch or take-all root-rot because there's nothing to actually sustain the grass.

If you go to a box store, you will see weed and feed, which sounds great, right? But if you put that down right now (in mid-March), it will take care of the weeds, but what are you feeding? The grass is dormant. This fertilizer is for greening up grass. That is all it's there for, so you're wasting your money. Do it my way, and you'll have no problem.

The only time I have issues with weeds is when they come in via the four things we talked about earlier. And I will say, that since we’ve been putting down the corn gluten, the weeds are easier to control just by pulling by hand. After you've been using that for a couple of years, you're going to get it under control enough that you can manage the ones that come up by hand. It's going to take a while. Don't get impatient. It's going to take you at least nine months. This is not instant gratification.

I do want to say one thing about weeds. I have more fun with horticultural vinegar. When I’m outside using it, it smells like a salad. But the weeds die. The difference between vinegar and chemical weed killers is that the chemicals can be toxic. One caution about the vinegar, however, that it does kill everything.

Another good product for controlling existing weeds in your lawn is Pulverize Weed Killer for Lawns (green formula). Look for the picture of the dreaded dandelion on the bottle. It comes in a hose-end spray bottle, which allows you to treat your entire lawn to kill flowering weeds such as dandelions, without harming your grass.

Pulverize also comes two other formulas: the blue formula kills both flowering weeds and grassy weeds. The strongest formula, in the orange package, kills brushes and vines like poison ivy. With all of these it may be necessary to treat more than once to fully all the eliminate the weeds.

There are really only two types of weeds: grassy weeds and flowering weeds. The Pulverize Weed Killer for Lawns only kills the flowering weeds, which is why you can use it on your lawn.

With grassy weeds, it is more a matter of opinion whether they're a weed or a lawn grass. And, and it's basically impossible for anyone to make a product that can distinguish between your lawn and a grassy weed. A good rule of thumb is, if you don't like it, you just pull it.

October

As we get into October, everything's really winding down. You should be mowing again and mulching your leaves. Get rid of any leaves.

If you have a fungus, it can often be treated with horticultural corn meal. Horticultural Corn Meal also contains garlic, which is another fungicide. Corn meal is often used to treat toe nail fungus.

If you have chinch bugs, Marshall Grain recommends using the Fire Ant Insecticide, which is Diatomaceous Earth blended with pyrethrin. It’s important to note that you need to treat at least two feet out from where the damaged grass is, because the chinch bugs will have already moved from there to living grass. Also importantly, do not get this product wet. It should be applied when you know it will remain dry for at least 48 hours. Otherwise, you will need to reapply it.

If you have questions, the experts at Marshall Grain can help you. Another good resource is Howard Garrett, The Dirt Doctor. He will tell you the same thing I've said, but in more detail.

Attendee: I have an area in the yard where there is a lot of foot traffic and the grass isn't very strong. In addition to fertilizer, is it good to add some rich soil or compost?

Tom: Compost works. I would recommend the Mayer Rejuvenate compost. But don't put down more than half an inch.

There are a lot of good products out there. Some are better than others. And the ones you see up here are the ones that I like.

Attendee: What about Texas native grass?

Tom: Do you mean St. Augustine? Or Bermuda? 

Attendee: For the shade.

Tom: Ground cover. Another option might be Fescue. Fescue does better in shade, but that would be the only other thing. Of course, then you would have three kinds of grasses: St. Augustine, Bermuda and Fescue. Fescue is really nice. But it dies in summer. And it looks different from the others.

You could also try to limb up your tree to let more light in. If you're not sure about what to do, call an arborist — a true arborist — because, trees take a long time to grow. Once you've got them established and they look good, don't mess them.

Attendee: I know you can’t buy St. Augustine seed in the store, but

at certain times in the growing season, it'll send up a shoot that has seeds on it. Should we let that come off and do something with it?

Tom: I have never tried that. I don't know. It has to get really tall for that seed to come up. And I never let mine get that tall. I mow on Mondays and Thursdays because if I don't, my grass will get too tall.

Attendee: We've also read that you're not supposed to mow when your grass is wet.

Tom: That’s correct. It will rip up your grass. I will not let my wife touch my grass. And if one of those mowing companies comes in and mows a wet lawn, now they have that on their wheels and they can spread from yard to yard. If somebody has a fungus, your lawn will become infected.

Attendee: Regarding organic fertilizer, does using a rotary spreader cause streaks?

Tom: It can. To avoid that, you want to overlap each row. When you're applying it, watch to see how far you're throwing it, then you want to overlap it just a little bit.

But if you use synthetic fertilizer and you don't water that area, yes, you'll you have patches that will be dead.

I will tell you a story. We used to have Scotts put out our fertilizer  before we went organic. And one time they came and fertilized they dropped a big pile of it in the yard and left it. And killed it. They got fired immediately. And that's when we started researching organic and doing it ourselves.

Since I don't work here. I can say this: This is the best place to get organic fertilizer. This is the best place to talk to people. Everybody here is good.

Attendee: Any pros or cons on going from a gas powered mower to an electric mower?

Tom: The only issue I would have is whether the electric mower would mows high enough. I haven't messed with them. If there is one, I would love to have that because you're not breathing in the exhaust.

If you have St. Augustine, you need to look for one that mows at two and a half to three inches. If it doesn't. You're going to ruin your grass. Remember that St. Augustine can be thick. Even mowing twice a week, it's still going to be high and thick because of what I do.

Attendee: When you mulch, do you mulch all summer?

Tom: I mulch it all. Even in the winter. When I get ready to mow. My wife wants me to bag it. I won't. It's my lawn. I don't tell you what to do with your plants. You don't tell me what to do with my lawn.

Another thing you can do when you fertilize is try a different one each time. It won't hurt because they are all organic.

Attendee: Coming into this season you want that nitrogen more than the other, right?

Tom: Yes, but remember when you're fertilizing that the nitrogen is for greening up grass. You don't want the nitrogen to be what is greening up the grass. You want the soil and the trace minerals and the mycorrhizal fungi. Those are the things you want to green up the grass. If you have healthy soil, you're going to have healthy grass. If you have bad soil and you use a high nitrogen synthetic fertilizer, sooner or later you're going to have issues. I've had my grass 15 years. And I've had no problems.

Marshall Grain offers custom organic maintenance programs, which doesn’t include mowing, but does include applying corn gluten meal and fertilizers and other soil amendments, as well as other services.

We have a lot of customers who come to us because they have some kind of issue with their lawn and we often find that they have take-all root-rot or brown patch. And invariably those customers have been using chemical fertilizers.

If you're on an organic program you can still get it. Especially if you're using somebody else's lawn mower because, as we said earlier, they can bring those things in. But if you have a nice healthy lawn with healthy soil, you're much less likely to develop those kind of problems.

Conclusion

As Tom's experience shows, using organic methods is proven to give you a better result over time with fewer problems caused by pests and diseases. At Marshall Grain, our staff of experts are all organic gardeners themselves and ready to show to how to achieve the same kind of results for your lawn and garden.