Have you ever wondered why your lawn looks like this?
Kentucky Bluegrass goes to seed...
May - June
Kentucky Bluegrass (Latinized as Poa Pratensis) is one of the most abundant turf-grasses in the United States. While bluegrass isn’t native to North America, we’ve taken it and made it our own.
It’s one of the most popular grass varietals due to two major factors – that it tolerates cold weather really well and that it grows via rhizomes. “Rhizomes!” you say. Yup, rhizomes. Rhizomes visually resemble roots but play a much different role. Kentucky Bluegrass send their rhizomes through the soil parallel to the surface, and every so often will generate a “node”, from which sprouts up new grass. Many other grasses require seed to germinate new grass, but Kentucky Bluegrass can spread and thicken by either seed or their rhizomes.
Each year about this time...(May - June), the soil starts to warm up to a point where Kentucky Bluegrass seed would germinate. Reports vary to exactly what the soil temperature needs to be to germinate seed, but 50-70 degrees is the window, with 60-65 seeming to be the most popular. Since seed would successfully germinate, Kentucky Bluegrass naturally produces it, thus the weedy appearance.
With proper germination conditions, germination takes 7-10 days. Once ground temps exceed 70-80 degrees, germination drops off significantly, if not completely. In our proverbial neck-of-the-woods, Kentucky Bluegrass only goes to seed once a year. So while your lawn may appear to be infested with weeds, you now know it isn’t.
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