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Planting and Seeding Seasons: Austral

LAWNS. The spring seeding season for lawn grass starts in the Lower Austral Zone in February, about the middle of the month, and continues to May Ist, but may be shut off by the advent of hot weather as early as March 1st. As one goes farther north, the season does not lengthen very much, but merely opens later, extending from about April 15th to June Ist. Thus, this seeding season, to a great extent, overlaps the planting season and cannot be protracted past the closing date for planting without great risk of the bad effect of hot weather on the young grass. The autumn season starts in the North as early as August ist, and closes not later than October ist, but generally by the 15th or 20th of September, thus not overlapping the autumn planting season to any extent. As one goes southward, the season again merely shifts along, so that, in the Upper Austral Zone, it opens about September 15th and closes about November Ist, while in the Lower Austral it is pushed along to October 15th. Here the practice of seeding stops, except for the use of English rye as a green winter carpet, and is superseded by the practice of "sprigging" or planting pieces of Bermuda and St. Augustine grass. This grass planting is commonly done in southern Florida in June, while farther north, and especially in Alabama, it is done through the winter months so as to take advantage of the then abundant rains (See Page 59). Grass seed sown too early in the autumn and not artificially watered will generally lie dormant until the fall rains start germination, and, likewise, seed sown too late in the autumn or too early in the spring will lie dormant until the ground warms up sufficiently to start sprouting. The grass seeding season is from the time the ground gets warm enough in the spring until it gets too cold in the autumn to start the germination process, but this season is as a matter of practice divided into two parts by the period in the summer when the ground is too dry to start germination and the weather is so hot as to require constant artificial watering, both to start germination of the seed and to keep the young plants alive. It is also generally considered wiser not to seed so late in the autumn, in the North, that the young grass plants will not be well established before freezing weather. These are the factors which influence the establishment of the lawn seeding season dates diagrammatically shown on the chart (Plate III). Making lawns in the South is a process of seeding when adaptable mixtures of northern lawn seed are used, and a process of planting roots when the native Bermuda and St. Augustine grasses are used. Northern grass is seeded in the period from September to January. Italian rye is seeded from October to January, and native grass roots are planted as shown on the chart in stations 21 and 22.

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