Lawn care and pest control in Winona Lake

Winona Lake is the most internally varied ground on our route. The high blocks sit on Kosciusko and Riddles sandy loams, moraine soils that drain well and hold a fair amount of water at the surface. Water capacity runs about 0.17 inches of water per inch of soil in the top few inches, then falls off to 0.04 where the loam gives way to sand around three feet down. Roots that get that deep find nothing to drink.

Then, in the low pockets on the same street, you'll find Houghton muck, ground that runs 70 to 75 percent organic matter, stays saturated, and behaves like the opposite soil. Roughly eight percent of the town maps as muck. A droughty rise and a soggy back corner on one lot is a real Winona Lake pattern, not a mystery.

The third piece is the one nowhere else on our route has. About four percent of the town maps as Udorthents-Urban land complex, which is the soil survey's polite way of saying this ground was made by people and nobody knows what is under it. That block sits under the Village and the college campus, and it is a genuine reason a lawn there behaves unlike the one two streets uphill.

What that means for the work: on the moraine loams, opening the ground with core aeration is the first move, and lighter, more frequent feedings put nitrogen in front of the roots when they can use it. On the muck and the poorly drained low spots, water is never the problem, air is. Cores let the soil breathe so roots can push past the top inch or two. On the made ground, we test, we watch, and we adjust as the lawn tells us what is under it.

The calendar sharpens the split. June normal precipitation in this part of the state runs about 4.88 inches. September drops to 2.91, roughly a 40 percent falloff, and it lands right when cool-season turf is trying to recover from summer and when fall seed goes down.

Winona Lake makes rules other towns nearby don't make. Its ordinance caps grass and rank vegetation at six inches, where Warsaw allows nine. The clerk-treasurer sends a written notice, the owner has eight days to cut, and if the town has to do it there is a twenty-five dollar administrative charge on top of the crew cost. That is a tighter standard than most of the county keeps, and a lawn that is fed, dense and controlled for weeds never gets close to it in a normal mowing week.

Yard waste has to go in biodegradable bags. That rule took effect on the first of July in 2017, and it means the leaf and clipping stream out of a Winona Lake yard is different from the one two miles up the road. You cannot burn leaves or grass here either. The town's open-burning rules put both on the refuse list.

The stormwater utility is where the intent is clearest. The ordinance sets one equivalent residential unit at 3,800 square feet of impervious surface, and it says in plain language that lawns, fields, tilled agricultural land and ponds are not impervious. That is the town telling homeowners that healthy turf is part of how it keeps runoff out of the lake, not part of the problem.

And the reason for all of it is at the end of the street. The Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams at Grace College is physically inside town. It samples sixteen lakes, streams and beaches across the county every summer and publishes what it finds. Its most recent report to the town council said Winona Lake is getting less clear over time, has less oxygen at the bottom than it used to, and carries more phosphorus and nitrogen than is recommended.