North Alabama Lawn Care Calendar: When to Treat, Month by Month

In north Alabama the two applications that decide your whole year are pre emergent around mid February and pre emergent again in mid September. Miss either window by three weeks and you spend the next season killing weeds that never had to come up. Everything else on this calendar matters less than those two dates.

Turf Haven treats lawns in Athens, Alabama and across Limestone and Morgan Counties. This is the calendar we run, written out so you can use it whether you hire us or do it yourself. Where the Alabama Cooperative Extension System has published the recommendation, we link to it rather than paraphrase it.

When to apply pre emergent in north Alabama

Twice a year, and the two applications are aimed at completely different weeds.

The spring application stops summer annuals, crabgrass being the one everybody knows. Alabama Extension puts the timing for warm season weeds at around Valentine’s Day for most of the state. Up here in Limestone County we are usually a little behind the middle and south of the state, so the practical read is the second half of February, adjusted for what the winter actually did. It is a soil temperature decision wearing a calendar date. The seed germinates when the top couple of inches warm up and hold there, not when a page on the internet says February.

The fall application stops the cool season weeds, which is henbit, chickweed, annual bluegrass and the rest of the crowd that makes a dormant lawn look ragged in January. Extension’s fall and winter lawn care guidance puts that window at mid September into early October.

The mistake almost everybody makes is treating pre emergent as one thing you do in spring. Skip the September pass and the yard looks fine through October, then fills with henbit while you are not looking at it.

When to apply pre emergent in fall in Alabama

Mid September to early October, and earlier is safer than later. Once those seeds have germinated a pre emergent does nothing to them, and you are into post emergent work on a lawn that is going dormant and slow to respond.

One exception worth knowing. If you are overseeding bermuda with ryegrass for winter colour, do not put pre emergent down. It will stop your ryegrass the same way it stops everything else.

When to fertilize bermuda grass in north Alabama

After green up, not before it. Bermuda is a warm season grass and it does nothing with nitrogen while it is still dormant, so an early feed goes to the winter weeds instead of the lawn. Around here that generally means waiting until the lawn has fully come out of dormancy in mid to late spring, feeding through the growing season, then stopping well ahead of the first frost so you are not pushing tender growth into a freeze.

Zoysia runs on a similar clock. Fescue is the opposite animal and wants its heaviest feeding in fall.

When to fertilize a lawn in Alabama if you do not know your grass type

Find out first. This is the single most common reason a homeowner program does not work, because the correct calendar for fescue is close to the reverse of the correct calendar for bermuda. Feeding fescue hard in June cooks it. Feeding bermuda hard in October invites disease.

If you are not sure what is out there, walk the yard in late January. Whatever is green is cool season. Whatever is brown is warm season. That one look answers it.

North Alabama grass types

Limestone County sits in the transition zone, the strip of the country where both warm season and cool season grasses will grow and neither is completely happy. That is why the yards on one street here do not all look alike.

Bermuda. The most common lawn grass in this area. Loves heat and full sun, goes brown and dormant over winter, spreads aggressively and recovers from damage on its own.
Zoysia. Slower, denser, more shade tolerant than bermuda. Holds colour a little longer in fall. Slow to repair when something tears it up.
Tall fescue. Stays green through winter, struggles in an Alabama August. Common on shaded lots and in older neighbourhoods.
Centipede. Low input, low fertility, and it will not forgive being fed like bermuda.

When to aerate a lawn in Alabama

Aerate a warm season lawn when it is actively growing and can heal, so late spring into summer. Aerating bermuda in November pulls plugs out of a lawn that has no ability to close the holes back up until April.

Fescue is the opposite again. Fall.

The honest part is that most yards here do not need it every year. Aeration earns its money on compacted clay, heavy foot traffic, and lawns where water puddles rather than soaking in. If you can push a screwdriver into damp soil without leaning on it, that yard is not compacted. Ours runs $110 when it is the right call.

When to apply weed and feed in Alabama

Our answer is generally do not, and it is worth explaining why rather than just saying it.

Weed and feed is one bag doing two jobs on one date. The correct date to feed your grass and the correct date to hit the weeds that are up are almost never the same date, so one of the two jobs is always being done at the wrong time. It is also a granular product asked to stick to a leaf, which is what the label means when it tells you to apply to wet grass. Separating the two, feeding on the grass schedule and spraying on the weed schedule, is more work. It is also why a program beats a bag.

Common weeds in Alabama lawns, and when each one shows up

Knowing which one you have matters more than knowing what to spray, because the timing changes completely between these groups.

Summer annuals. Crabgrass, goosegrass, spurge, knotweed. Up in spring, gone with the first frost, stopped by February pre emergent and very hard to control once they are standing.
Winter annuals. Henbit, chickweed, annual bluegrass, deadnettle. Up in fall, obvious in February, stopped by the September pre emergent.
Perennial broadleaf. Wild violet, dandelion, plantain, dollarweed. These come back from the root regardless of what you did to the seed, and they are the ones that take more than one season.
Sedges. Nutsedge and kyllinga. Not grasses and not broadleaf, which is why a general purpose weed killer did nothing to them. They need their own chemistry and they want to be caught while young.

Extension publishes the full product list in its home lawns chemical weed control guide, which is the document to read before you buy anything.

Armyworms in north Alabama

Late summer into fall, and they move fast enough that people describe it as the lawn browning overnight. It usually is not overnight. It is a few days, but the damage curve is steep enough at the end that it feels sudden.

What to look for is a ragged edge advancing across the lawn rather than a round dead patch, and birds working an area harder than usual. Warm season grass generally recovers if it is caught and treated. The thing that kills a lawn is deciding it was drought and watering it for two weeks.

Mole crickets and grubs

Both live below the surface and both get blamed for damage the other one did. Mole crickets tunnel just under the surface and leave the ground feeling spongy underfoot. Grubs eat roots, so the tell is turf that lifts like loose carpet because there is nothing holding it down.

Timing on both is about hitting the young stage. Treating a mature grub in October is throwing product at something that has already done its damage and is on its way down for winter.

Mosquito season in Alabama

Roughly spring through the first hard frost, with the worst of it in the humid stretch from June onward. Alabama has a long season and a lot of standing water in this part of the state.

Ours runs $55 a treatment and it works on a cycle, because a barrier treatment breaks down and the population comes back from wherever it is breeding on or near the property. Anybody promising a one time fix for the whole summer is describing something that does not exist.

Lawn disease in warm weather

Brown patch and dollar spot both show up in humid stretches, and both get worse with the two things homeowners do to fix them, which are watering more and feeding more. Extension’s home lawns disease control guide covers identification properly.

The practical version is that watering deep and early in the morning beats watering often in the evening, because the thing feeding the fungus is how many hours the blade stays wet.

The eight visit version of this calendar

Everything above is what has to happen. Our program is the same calendar with somebody else watching the soil temperature, at $49 a visit, eight visits a year, roughly six weeks apart. If weeds come back in between you call and we come back out at no charge, which ends up mattering most, because the year a homeowner program falls apart is the year they get busy in March.

You can absolutely run this yourself. Plenty of people in Limestone County do. It takes buying pre emergent and post emergent separately, watching the weather rather than the calendar, reading the label for the grass you actually have, and not skipping the month you are busy.

Putting a name on what you have

The calendar tells you when. It does not tell you what. If you are standing in the yard looking at something and you have no idea what it is, start here instead: lawn weed identification for Athens, Alabama. It goes weed by weed, with what each one looks like and the month it shows up.

What we do not do

We do not mow. We are a treatment company, so if you are looking for someone to cut the grass every week you want a mowing service, and we would rather tell you that than take the call. We do not treat flower beds or hardscape as part of the lawn program. We do not do termite work.

Get a price for your yard

Turf Haven treats lawns in Athens, Alabama, plus Decatur, Madison, Priceville, Tanner and Hartselle, across Limestone and Morgan Counties. Request a free quote or call 256-938-7188, 7:30 to 5 Monday through Friday.