On October 4th, Teddy Mathis, Graham’s national sales director, appeared with Jason Creel of Lawn Care Life on his weekly show taking questions live from viewers.
Jason has purchased Graham rigs for his own lawn care company, Alabama Turf Pros, and we’re proud to say that during this show he was generous in his praise for Graham generally and his guest specifically, citing Teddy’s twenty-one and a half years in the lawn care industry as the basis for his expertise.
The following are a selection of questions submitted by viewers. We’ve edited both questions and answers for clarity and length.
1) How much Tribute Total as well as Spectacle Flo should be used per thousand square feet?
JASON: If you’re blanket-spreading Tribute Total mixed with Spectacle Flo, you’re going to be in the poorhouse. For Spectacle I use 6.5 ounces per acre. I stocked up on Spectacle this year because the effects of prodiamene on poa annua and other weeds weren’t lasting through the whole summer. Spectacle is also effective against doveweed, kyllinga, chamberbitter, and spurge.
I use Tribute Total for spot treatments, mostly for dallasgrass, because of the expense.
TEDDY: Tribute wasn’t common when I was running my own company, but I have a lot of experience with Spectacle. I had good results with split applications. We applied 0.09 ounces per thousand square feet in mid-September and then came back in November and early December for a second treatment with 0.07 ounces. That comes out to about seven ounces per acre.
2) What’s the best way to justify weed control to a customer who doesn’t have any weeds?
JASON: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a yard with literally zero weeds. That said, I don’t think I could justify it. Maybe you could offer them something else that would benefit the turf. Maybe you could just congratulate yourself because your other seven treatments are working so well.
3) How can I eradicate dallasgrass from cool-season grass?
JASON: A shovel? Most products for warm-season grasses without MSMA aren’t that effective against dallasgrass either. It’s a perennial, so it’s just always going to be bad.
4) What do you think about applying chelated iron?
TEDDY: Iron is good coming out of transitions, depending on what fertilizer you use. The problem is iron is hard on equipment. Anything that has a metal outer casing, anything on the inside that’s not stainless steel – the iron will just eat it up.
5) What’s the best fertilizer to use on warm-season grass in the fall?
JASON: Most people aren’t applying fertilizer in the fall.
TEDDY: Grass will only absorb nutrition under certain circumstances. Fertilizing too late means you’re trying to get grass to eat while it’s going into dormancy. This will lead to dead spots in the spring. Also, the fertilizer that’s not absorbed is wasted — you’re leaving money on the ground.
6) Can you recommend anything to eliminate foxtail and torpedograss?
JASON: Torpedograss, no. The best thing I’ve found couldn’t kill it with three sprays. It just turns yellow but doesn’t die. You need to talk to the customer and tell them it’s not going anywhere. For foxtail, Celsius is the best.
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To view the episode in its entirety, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PByboTriIaM. From there you can follow links to Jason’s many other videos.