Spring organic turf tips?! YES, even though winter hardly showed its face, and weather is largely in flux. Nevertheless, prep for the season ahead. Get your lawns and athletic fields off to a great start with our top 10 spring organic turf tips.

1.       Equipment Preparation.

   You likely overwintered your equipment, but time is running out for final details of your equipment. Check and adjust your grass trimmer line as needed. Sharpen your mower blades. Fill your portable gas tanks. Exercise the engines in the parking lot before loading them into your trailers.

2.       Finalize Seasonal Product Volumes for Early Commitment Pricing.

   Your customers should be sending back their signed contracts by now. Keep track of each customer, the program they signed up for, and update your product volumes. Administrative work pays massive dividends for your operational work. Reach out to PJC Organic pre-season to firm up your early commitment pricing for seasonal product savings and streamlined deliveries.

3.       Soil Test.

    A must for any organic turf care customer! Markedly, soil test results provide the starting point for a program recommendation. These results take the guesswork out and keep your sale objective. Soil tests show your clients information on how to best influence their underlying soil conditions. Run your soil tests through PJC Organic and we’ll provide you with collateral to make your sales even easier. 

4.       Spring Clean-Up.

   No matter how much time you spend on fall clean-ups, winter has its own plans. Consequently, be sure to repair damaged areas from winter puddles or snow plows, remove any wet leaves (don’t aggressively rake), pick up fallen sticks, prune trees and shrubs, edge and mulch your garden beds. As a result, you’ll set the stage for a successful growing season and get ready to enjoy the spring weather.

5.       Remove your turf blankets.

    If you follow along with our seasonal turf tips then you know the time is near to remove your turf blankets. Even though this winter was mild – the turf blankets are still doing their work for early spring green up. Be mindful of temperatures to time your removal for best early spring production.

6.       Mow High.

   We often see people confusing mowing height early in the season. As such, this is a critical part of our Spring Organic Turf Tips.

   Once you’ve finished debris clean up, repairs and removed turf blankets – mow high or perform a “clean-up” cut. This helps encourage your turf to stand up straighter. In addition, this practice chips up any leftover organic matter missed in your spring clean-up. Also, it gives you a chance to see if anything needs to be adjusted or repaired on your mower.  Once your cleanup is done, lower your height of cut to 2 ½” for the first couple of cuts to push lateral growth, raising HOC to 3 ½” by mid-May. Finally, return clippings to get valuable organic matter back into the soil.

7.       Lime your soil.

    Spring is a great time to apply lime. The overnight freeze-thaw cycles help work the calcium into the soil profile and gives you a jumpstart on raising soil pH based on your soil test results.

8.       Boost your Turf!

   PJC Organic’s newest product, Boost+S3, meets the turf grass and soil’s needs coming out of winter. Its high mineral composition is meant to decrease compaction and increase nutrient holding capacity. All the while, chelated iron increases chlorophyll production in the turf plant. So, give your turf a head start this spring with Boost+S3, while the soil microbes are still waking up from winter.

9.       Remove Weeds.

   Is this the first thing you think of when you hear “spring organic turf tips”?

   Sure, dandelions will be starting to pop as soon as temperatures allow. So, be proactive and pull weeds. Broadleaf weeds do a great job of greening up before turf. Therefore, these weeds grab foothold on local soil nutrients and crowd out turf plants before they can grow. The best management practice in an organic turf care program is mechanical removal of weeds. Take a few minutes a day to enjoy the outdoors and pull some dandelions. Another benefit of an organic lawn is that you can fry these dandelion greens up with some bacon fat for breakfast the next day—a win-win!

10.   Fertilize Your Turf.

    PJC ProHealthy Turf Fertilizers are formulated to feed soil microbes, improve your soil and keep the environment safe. Our lineup features different products to meet different needs. OMRI listed 6-0-6 is an amazing product for home lawns and parks, the medium length nitrogen feed keeps turf happy for 6-8 weeks. 7-0-2+ is a 2 in 1 fertilizer and soil conditioner that has added humates which increase soil nutrient holding capacity while also providing a short and medium nitrogen feed for the turf. Lastly, OMRI listed 8-0-6 has medium and long nitrogen food sources for the turf and is a mainstay on our high performance athletic field programs. 

Now’s the time to get ahead of your workload. Therefore, take into account these Spring organic turf tips and plan their implementation for the weeks ahead. Want more info on our practical approach and proven products? You can always reach out via email or phone. We love to talk about how you can take organic turf care to the next level.