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Guidelines for autumn lawn care
Where grass is greener
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The 9/11 observances are past and football is back – two sure signs of fall. Another is the big-box advertising for fall lawn fertilizers – after the fall deadline for autumn fertilizer for most of us has passed.
At times, I wonder if the poor timing is just national marketing not caring about local or regional conditions or if it is deliberate.
One of the best ways to get people to spend more money than they should on their lawns is to sell them the wrong thing at the wrong time. For instance, the weed and feed shows up on big-box store floors in February, when everyone is ready for winter to end and spring to start.
In Coastal Georgia, pre-emerge herbicides should be put down in September for winter weed control and then again in February or March for spring weeds. If homeowners were just putting down herbicide, that timing would be fine, but this is a weed and feed. It has fertilizer in it.
Our window for fertilizer on Southern lawns is May through August, with a few turfs getting by with an early September application. Homeowners wind up either putting fertilizer on too early or herbicide too late.
So what makes this a big deal? Everybody out there making a home in your lawn wants that nitrogen. Yes, the grass wants it, but so do the fungi, insects and weeds. If one applies nitrogen when the grass roots are not active, the fungi, weeds and insects get a bigger dose of nitrogen and get stronger. Now why was it you wanted to apply weed and feed?
I saw phosphorous-free fall lawn fertilizer being advertised in September. If you have a St. Augustine lawn, you can use it this month if you do not have any take-all patch active in your lawn. If you do have take-all patch, make sure the nitrogen is a slow release source.
However, most of us have centipede lawns, which rarely get take-all patch, and our last fertilizer application should have been applied in early August. A phosphorous-free fertilizer is just what we want for our centipede lawns, but we want in May through August.
If you have purchased this fertilizer and have not put it down yet, don’t panic, and don’t apply it now. Find a cool, dry place for it and store it for use next May on your lawn. You can count on the same fertilizer being more expensive next spring.
In fact, finding phosphorous-free fertilizer is not that easy in this area. This might be a good time to lay in a supply for next year.
University of Georgia fertilizer recommendations for centipede lawns are built on a 15-0-15 fertilizer, which supplies the nitrogen and potassium we need without the phosphorus we don’t. If you can find a 15-0-15 with slow-release nitrogen, call me. I could use some for next year.
What you want to do now is get the first pre-emerge herbicide applied to the lawn this month. Late this month or in early October, I recommend applying a pre-emerge herbicide for winter weeds.
There are several good materials from which to choose: Surflan 4AS, Balan 2.5G, Crabgrass Preventer 2.5G or 1.75G, Halts 1.72G, Team 2G or XL 2G.
Any one of these will do a good job. Shop based on the price per treatment. Buy enough to make two applications: one for this month and another for February or March to control spring weeds.
If you have weed and feed, it can be used in the middle of the growing season next year – June, July and August – to control post-emergent broadleaf weeds or as a pre-emerge for grassy weeds, depending on what the herbicide active ingredient is.
It is not that a particular fertilizer, weed and feed or herbicide is good or bad. The issue is matching the product to the appropriate landscape need at the most appropriate time.
Timing is everything, like bringing home flowers to your wife for no apparent reason. It seems to have a much better effect than bringing them home only after you mess up.

Gardner is the extension agent for Bryan County. He can be reached at dgardner@uga.edu.

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Record April boosts Savannah's container trade at port
GardenCityTerminal
The Port of Savannah moved 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units in April, an increase of 7.1 percent. - photo by Provided

The Georgia Ports Authority's busiest April ever pushed its fiscal year-to-date totals to more than 3.4 million 20-foot equivalent container units (TEUs), an increase of 8.8 percent, or 280,000 TEUs, compared to the first 10 months of fiscal 2017.

"We're on track to move more than 300,000 TEUs in every month of the fiscal year, which will be a first for the authority," said GPA Executive Director Griff Lynch. "We're also anticipating this to be the first fiscal year for the Port of Savannah to handle more than 4 million TEUs."

April volumes reached 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units, up 7.1 percent or 23,700 units. As the fastest growing containerport in the nation, the Port of Savannah has achieved a compound annual growth rate of more than 5 percent a year over the past decade.

"As reported in the recent economic impact study by UGA's Terry College of Business, trade through Georgia's deepwater ports translates into jobs, higher incomes and greater productivity," said GPA Board Chairman Jimmy Allgood. "In every region of Georgia, employers rely on the ports of Savannah and Brunswick to help them become more competitive on the global stage."

To strengthen the Port of Savannah's ability to support the state's future economic growth, the GPA Board approved $66 million in terminal upgrades, including $24 million for the purchase of 10 additional rubber-tired gantry cranes.  

"The authority is committed to building additional capacity ahead of demand to ensure the Port of Savannah remains a trusted link in the supply chain serving Georgia and the Southeast," Lynch said.

The crane purchase will bring the fleet at Garden City Terminal to 156 RTGs. The new cranes will support three new container rows, which the board approved in March. The additional container rows will increase annual capacity at the Port of Savannah by 150,000 TEUs.

The RTGs will work over stacks that are five containers high and six deep, with a truck lane running alongside the stacks. Capable of running on electricity, the cranes will have a lift capacity of 50 metric tons.

The cranes will arrive in two batches of five in the first and second quarters of calendar year 2019.

 Also at Monday's meeting, the GPA Board elected its officers, with Jimmy Allgood as chairman, Will McKnight taking the position of vice chairman and Joel Wooten elected as the next secretary/treasurer.

For more information, visit gaports.com, or contact GPA Senior Director of Corporate Communications Robert Morris at (912) 964-3855 or rmorris@gaports.com.

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