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Shaded GrassA shaded yard can be a healthy yard. |
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Transcript: Shaded Grass
Have you ever noticed that you don't see a lot of grass in the forest or for that matter, many trees on the prairie? You see, grass and trees are competitors for sunlight. Grass likes a lot of sun. It does best where it gets full sun, although some grasses will put up with a little bit of shade. For example, St. Augustine will put up with quite a bit of shade. But in our beautiful older neighborhoods as trees get larger, the grass starts to struggle and has difficulty developing a good, dense turf in shady areas.There are 3 things we can do to help grass grow in the shade.
Number one, re-route the pity patter of little feet. The more wear and tear of foot traffic you have, the more difficult time grass is going to have surviving in shady areas.
Secondly, set your mower a little taller. Those grass blades are like solar panels, collecting the light that comes down. In shade there’s not as much light, and if you mow your lawn short, you’re not going to have as much grass blade there to collect the light that’s available and your lawn’s going to decline.
Finally, you want to trim the tree up a little bit to allow more light in. We can remove low-lying branches such as this to allow more incidental light in from the side, or perhaps remove a few limbs in the canopy to brighten the shade, allowing a little more light in to help keep the grass strong.
And finally, we don’t want to try to grow grass in shade by adding extra water and fertilizer. You can’t replace sunlight with water and nutrients. That just leads to more disease problems.
With your common sense tip on having a healthy green lawn in the shade, I’m Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006