Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Heat and stress on your lawn

 We are seeing extreme heat stress across the Midwest.  I wanted to make you aware that this will cause serious strain on your home lawn.  In the Midwest we have what we call 'cool season' turf grasses for home lawns.  Most of our desirable grasses thrive between 60-75 degrees...not 90+.  Temperatures are expected to be well into the 90's and possibly over 100 degrees over the next week.  Please remember to let the lawn grow to 4-5" during this extreme weather pattern and only mow if necessary.  If you are going to mow, do so at the highest setting, generally around 3.5" or so.  The lawn will undoubtedly experience stress conditions that can cause it to go into dormancy, increase summer turf disease pressure and/or turf die off in areas.  Please try and water the lawn in the early morning between 4-8 am.  Try and give each part of the lawn about 1" of water (one hour) twice over the course of the week due to the heat.  The good news is that our slow release, granular fertilizer will not cause any burning and will actually help the lawn recover from stress faster than not having fertilization at all or skipping a treatment. 



1 comment:

  1. An overly dry lawn will stress the grass, and drive earthworms deeper, resulting in poor soil.
    O'fallon lawn care

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