Lawn care tips for an early spring

PITTSBURGH -- This year’s early spring has left many of us wondering what we should be doing now to take care of our lawns, so Target 11 Consumer Investigator Robin Taylor took your questions to an expert.

We asked our Facebook friends what they would like to ask a lawn care professional.  Then, I took those questions to lawn care specialist Jacob Yuele at Perf-A-Lawn.  Here are answers to some of the most common questions.

Question: What is the best way to control crab grass?

Answer: Typically the weeds aren't up yet.  What you're trying to do is stop their germination from seed, and that's what crab grass preventative does.  It will stop all seeds from germinating, be it weed seed, crab grass seed or even grass seed if you were trying to re-seed your lawn.

Question: Is this a good time of year to put down grass seed?

Answer: It's the best time to get the grass seed to germinate without having to water constantly, but it is a bad time in the sense that you cannot use crab grass preventatives or weed preventatives in your lawn until the seed is fully germinated, which can be up to three weeks.

Question: What should you if you have children and pets and you're concerned about using pesticides on your lawn?

Answer: Most of the products labels simply recommend you stay off the lawn until dry.  If you want to be ultra conservative with it, wait 24 hours.  You could water your lawn first if you have a sprinkler system.  Of course, you should wait 24 hours first to let the material work before you wash it off.

Question: What’s the best grass seed for the buck?

Answer: We always recommend you use Penn State mix.  It's one of our local universities and they have an excellent agricultural program, and they actually come up with the mixes themselves.

Question: What can you do about moles that are tearing up your yard? 

Answer: It can indicate there's some insect activity, possibly grubs in the lawn.  That's one of their food sources, but if you're not seeing grub damage it's hard to say that removing grubs will also take care of the moles.

You can find answers to more common problems on the Perf-A-Lawn website.

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