Drought stress is usually worse near the edges, where the soil gets hotter and drier.
Most of our lawns in Southern New England are made up of “cool season” grasses. They prefer consistent rain fall, cooler nights and warm days. That’s (usually) great news in the spring and fall, but it leads to stressed out turf in the summer. Working with you and Mother Nature, SeaScape can help you get the most out of your lawn this summer.
It’s time to turn on the sprinklers
We hoped for some relief, but it’s just not coming. Infrequent, brief thunderstorms don’t bring enough rain to water your lawn. It’s time to get some water to your parched plants.
Your grass needs about 1-1.5 inches of water each week. It’s better to give it a deep watering rather than frequent, short watering throughout the week. Aim for 30-40 minutes a zone every 2nd or 3rd day, if you have an automatic sprinkler system. If you’re dragging out the manual sprinkler, please aim for the same 40 minutes for large areas.
If you can’t or simply don’t want to water, expect your lawn to slip into drought stress. Turf will go from darker green to light green then brown. Most lawns will recover once the rain returns. Recovery, after we receive some consistent and significant rain fall, will take some time.
Continue to mow high. Keeping the grass at 3-3.5 inches long (after it’s freshly mown) will help combat drought, weeds and crabgrass.
A lawn in severe drought stress will appear yellow and unhealthy.
Unfortunately, weeds and crabgrass thrive better in the dry soil. Your SeaScape tech will help control those as best as he can.
If your lawn suffered from red thread and then started to slip into drought stress you’ll see the red color longer than normal.
Your SeaScape technician will adjust your lawn care applications based on the condition of your lawn automatically. Summer applications include insect control for chinch bugs, billbugs and sod webworms, all of which can damage your lawn in drought conditions. Many of you will be getting your preventive grub control applications in the next several weeks.
Summer can be a tough time of year for your lawn. If you see something that just doesn’t look right on the lawn, please give our office a call at 1-800-294-5296 or email us at email@seascapeinc.com and we’ll send a tech right out.