Toowoomba Winter Lawn Dormancy

You might have noticed your lawn is starting to slow down in growth, where you are mowing less frequently, and the grass might also have lost a little bit of colour.
 

Most Toowoomba lawns consist of warm-season turfgrasses. Kikuyu, Couch, Buffalo and Zoysia lawns are the most common types and fit into this category. As the name ‘warm-season’ suggests; that’s the time when these grasses are actively growing and during the cooler months they slow down and can go into a certain level of dormancy; slowing growth and discolouring over winter.
 

Dormancy is a protection method that lawn grasses use to withstand freezing temperatures and frost with the grass leaves thinning and drying out and the plant’s energy being stored in the lower parts of the grass stem and root areas.
 

This change in growth normally occurs in warm-season grasses at soil temperatures around 14 degrees Celsius. It is not until this soil temperature consistently rises back above this temperature that your lawn will start to speed up its growth again.
 

If you have a warm season grass, make sure you raise the mowing height a little to help it retain nutrients during the cooler months.
 

A lawn in dormancy will lose some colour as it is conserving energy, if you prefer a more vibrant colour, products such as lawn paint and Colourguard can be used to restore colour in your lawn. Alternatively, If you have a full year round fertilisation program in place, the Autumn will have been spent providing all the nutrients your lawn will need to stay as green as possible. Winter will be spent with at least 2 rounds of liquid fertiliser, preferably with a high iron content, that will further force Chlorophyll production in the leaf producing a lush green colouration.