In most parts of Texas, lawn grasses go dormant over the winter months. Warm-season grasses like zoysia, Bermuda and St. Augustine grass go dormant after temperatures drop below 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and cool-season grasses like ryegrass and bluegrass go dormant when the temperatures consistently stay below 45 degrees. It’s like the grass is sleeping until warm weather wakes it up in the spring. This means a few months break from lawn-mowing, but there are other lawn-care tasks you can continue doing to make sure the lawn comes back healthy in the spring.
1. Water Dormant Lawns
Dormant lawns don’t need nearly as much water as growing lawns, but the grass will die if it doesn’t receive some water. Make sure your lawn receives water at least once a month by irrigating it if four weeks pass without any rain.
Another reason to irrigate during the winter is to protect the lawn from particularly cold weather. Moist soil does not change temperature as quickly as dry soil, so watering the lawn before a hard freeze helps protect the grass plants and insulate roots.
2. Control Weeds
Though the grass stops growing and goes dormant in the winter, many weeds do not. In a healthy, actively-growing lawn, weeds are kept in check since they are crowded by the growing grass. In a dormant lawn, however, weeds that thrive in cool weather can take-over the lawn if not kept in check.
You can spot-treat weeds that appear in the lawn by pulling them or applying a chemical herbicide using a sprayer. If your lawn is Bermuda grass and it is completely dormant with no greenery at all, you can use a non-selective herbicide like glyphosate (found in Roundup) to kill the weeds. For all other types of grass, and for Bermuda grass that is not complete dormant, use only a selective herbicide like 2,4-D and/or MCPP (found in products like Trimec Turf Herbicide and Bayer Advanced Weed Killer for Lawns ).
3. Treat Dormant Grass Differently
Since dormant grass isn’t growing, it doesn’t bounce-back from heavy traffic. Try to limit activity on the lawn while the grass is dormant. If the lawn is stressed by too much activity, some parts of the lawn might not green-up next spring and the lawn will look patchy. So long as it’s just a few areas, though, the grass will spread and fill-in bear patches during the spring and summer.
During particularly warm winters, certain types of warm-season grass may continue growing. It’s not usually enough to warrant getting the mower out – especially since that will increase the stress and traffic on your lawn. If the edges of the lawn start to look unkept, though, or a few patches grow higher than you’d like, you can use a string-line trimmer to keep the lawn looking neat and trimmed.
