Over the next several weeks we will begin a transition phase with our lawns and gardens. There are several indicators to look for to see this transition coming.

The main indicators are headlines about college football ratings, high school football news, along with increasing activity in the hunting camps with food plot preparation and everyone hiding their personal opinions about where the big bucks will be this year. Along with this, everything growing in our lawn and garden is making gradual changes along with the seasons.

In the coming weeks we will begin to see days with shorter photoperiods, lower light intensity and a gradual cooling of temperatures. This has both a positive and negative impacts on your home lawn.

Q: What can I do to prevent all the winter weeds I face every year?

A: In our area mid September is a good time to put out a pre-emergency herbicide to reduce those winter weeds we complain every year all the way until around mid March.

Atrazine is probably the most common and safest pre-emergency herbicide to use on St. Augustine yards to help get control over chickweed, henbit and lawnburweed. Reducing winter weeds has also been proven to help in the spring transition when our summer lawn comes back to life.

Q: What insect are most prevalent in the fall?

A: Fall is the time to be on the lookout for fall armyworms, like I spoke about in detail last Sunday. In addition, chinch bugs still have time to be a nuisance in St. Augustine lawns and should be treated with initial signs of activity. Now is an excellent time to scout and treat fire ants in your yard.

Q: What diseases are predicted to cause the most trouble this fall?

A: The time of the year for large patch or brown patch to invade home lawns is coming upon us. If you have St. Augustine or centipede lawns they are both very susceptible in the fall to this disease. If found in your yard and untreated this will lead to a somewhat unattractive lawn throughout the winter and into next spring.

There is not a problem using a weed and feed fertilizer in the fall to help give your lawn one final boost if the nitrogen source is of slow release in nature. However, to reduce the chances of getting brown patch avoid excessive nitrogen fertilization.

Q: Is there any time sensitive things I need to be doing in my vegetable garden?

A: If you want to have large onions next Spring, you should be planting their seeds now to have transplants ready for the first week of December. Make sure you leave enough room between seeds for the stems of the transplants to be as big around as a pencil (about three eighths inch).

Yellow squash growing now is susceptible to several viral diseases that cause the fruit to be green rather than yellow. The viruses will not harm you and the squash are edible, but the plants do not thrive and production is poor.

David Carter is the director of the Adams County Extension Service. He can be reached at 601-445-8201.