Snowtober!

Snow? In October?

If what the old farmers used to say, that snow is a poor man's fertilizer, then we're all rich this morning. A blanket of white covers most of the Lawn Dawg service area ranging from a dusting towards Plymouth, MA to fifteen inches near Nashua, NH to over twenty inches near Poughkeepsie, NY. Television meteorologists can hardly help themselves - their reports are full of broken records here and superlatives there. Normally, the official color of Halloween is black, this year it's white.

There is actually truth in what the old farmers used to say. Snowfall contains fixated nitrogen that will nourish plants as it melts - somewhere in the range of seven to ten pounds of nitrogen per acre. That is about one-fifth of the amount of nitrogen that we apply in one of our applications, so it is really not a substitute.

Just as quickly as this snow fell from the sky, it will be running down the storm drain during the upcoming week, given the forecast. Today's storm is an aberration, a statistical outlier. The slow march to winter, and all that entails, continues and we must take full advantage of the remainder of the season to prepare our lawn for the spring of next year.

This brings me to discussing why it is so important to maintain our focus upon sticking fast to our annual program. In lawn care, we make applications in anticipation of events, we prepare the lawn for what is coming in the future; just as the old farmer would have done, we cultivate our crop to maximize our harvest.

The old farmer's harvest was measured in bales of hay or bushels of corn. We are farmers of lawns; our harvest is a visual one, an aesthetic one. Our aim is to propagate a healthy stand of turfgrass that naturally fends off as many pests as possible without our intervention, be they insects, disease or weeds. This approach allows us to minimize the use of control products - always a good thing.

Lawns continue to actively grow well past the time of the last mowing.

A well cared for lawn will remain green until just about Christmas in most of the Lawn Dawg service area - going dormant earlier in the north, later in the south. This is a function of a couple of things - soil temperatures that are above freezing and the duration and spectrum of the sunlight that the plant is exposed to. The grass plant reacts to these stimuli by ceasing top growth (grass leaves) and allocating those energy resources towards root growth. Event though you have put the lawn mower into mothballs for the season, the lawn is still green. If it is green, then photosynthesis is occurring. If photosynthesis is occurring then food is being stored by the plants in the root system that the plant is busy establishing. That food is instrumental in the quality of the turfgrass in the coming season.

Lawns establish a sizable proportion of their next-season root mass in the fall.

Research has shown that grass plants establish root mass (the quantity of roots taken as a whole) in the spring and fall. There is a marked loss of root mass in the summer. The more root mass you have going into the summer, the more you have to give away when the seasonal stresses of drought and high temperatures hit. As your lawn care provider, it is incumbent upon us to incorporate this research into our game plan in order to give you the best lawn possible.

Late season fertilization this year is the key to a robust lawn next year.

Research has clearly shown that late season fertilization is highly effective in helping turfgrass establish root mass. Remember, when we say that we feed our lawn, that is a misnomer. The lawn does not need us to supply it with food - in fact, just the opposite is true. Without plants and the photosynthesis that occurs in their leaves, life on Earth is not possible. The entire food chain begins with plants changing radiation from the sun into starch and sugar. What we do when we fertilize is to optimize the availability of those elements that the plant needs to optimally utilize the sun's radiant energy in photosynthesis.

When you have a solid game plan you stick with it - and we'll be sticking to our plan.

We'll be plowing, shoveling, picking up downed limbs and branches for a few days in the aftermath of this storm, but as soon as its right to do so, we'll be right back to work caring for your lawn. Of course, if your lawn is scheduled and its not ready, we'll return when it is.