The scorching summer months are fast approaching, and with them comes the excitement of vacations with family and friends. While we enjoy the blue skies, the radiant sun, and our free time, they can all take a toll on your turf. One moment, you’re loving the greenery spring left behind, and the next, you’re trying to salvage a withering yard.
Knowing how to manage your landscape during the seasons is essential to maintaining it healthy and thriving, so you can spend your holidays without worrying about your investment. Our specialists at Omar Masonry & Painting LLC have all the secret, top tips for lawn care in the summer that can guarantee a happy outdoor space, without sacrificing your time or comfort.
Let’s dive in.
Early Summer
1. Fertilize Appropriately
We all know and love the benefits of fertilizer. A proper schedule has always been a crucial component of achieving a beautiful lawn, but during this season, it’s imperative to design and stick to a proper plan. We understand how tempting it is to apply some fertilizer to your landscape when you see it barely hanging on.
However, we recommend following the manufacturer’s instructions and targeting your specific grass type with the correct amounts of product. Remember, fertilizer is not a magical fix, and adding more than your yard can handle will lead to over-fertilization, which will ultimately kill your lawn.
2. Mow High and Often
No one likes dealing with an overgrown yard, but one of the best tips for lawn care in the summer is to let your grass grow taller. This will encourage strong roots, prevent drought and weed growth, and cool down your soil.
Sharpen your mower blades to avoid any disease, and set them at a high setting, according to the grass variety. For warm-season grasses, it should be between 2 to 3 inches, while cool-season grasses require over 3 inches. You can also leave your grass clippings laying on the ground to help fertilize your landscape!
3. Water Deeply and Infrequently
The hot weather during the summer months can be unbearable. Believe us, it’s the same for your greenery. The scorching sun dries up all the moisture from the ground in seconds, leaving your garden in drought conditions and, therefore, in desperate need of water. Otherwise, it risks dying on you.
One of our summer lawn care tips is to prepare infrequent irrigation schedules throughout the entire season. To avoid setting yourself under the worst hours of the day, start early in the morning. This will not only guarantee a better condition for you. But by giving it a thorough soaking, it also allows the water to penetrate 6-8 inches, reducing the need for constantly watering your landscape.
Mid-Summer
4. Monitor and Adjust Watering
The hot temperatures are rising and setting in. It’s time to revise your watering plan. Yes, we know, again. But it’s especially important to accommodate your lawn to unpredictable weather conditions.
Therefore, if the summer heat is reaching heatwave levels, increase watering without overdoing it.
This means you need to pay special attention to what your lawn needs. As a general rule of thumb, let the soil receive at least 1 to 1.5 inches of moisture per week, including rain. If you have a drip irrigation system, that can come in handy to deliver water directly to the roots of your grass.
And win-win, you can also reduce water waste, which certainly helps the bills!
5. Combat Lawn Pests
Mid-summer is the favorite time for pests to show up. They are stubborn and bothersome once they’ve taken your yard as their home, so early detection is essential to ensure they are gone for good. As a pro tip for lawn care in the summer, look out for any brown patches, wilting grass, or chewed-up grass blades.
If you detect any pests in your landscape, don’t fret. Use eco-friendly pesticides or natural predators like nematodes to manage them without harming beneficial insects. It’s important to recognize that a diverse ecosystem, with a variety of plants, will also minimize the risk of pests in your lawn.
6. Control Weeds
Hand in hand with pests, weeds can also become uncontrollable if they go unnoticed. They’ll the nutrients, water, and sunlight from your plants, leaving them weak and dull. A great way to start weed control is by applying a pre-emergent herbicide early in the season, so your landscape is strong enough to battle weeds and prevent them from growing.
Spot treatments are a great method to kill weeds. You can apply the same herbicide to the weed, or pull them by hand to remove their entire root and discourage regrowth. Mulching your garden beds and around trees can suppress weed growth, as it blocks the sunlight from reaching the soil.
7. Aerate Your Lawn
Lawn aeration is perfect for ensuring your soil receives the nutrients, water, air, and sunlight it needs to thrive. Part of summer lawn care is knowing when to aerate your landscape. So it’s better to do it from mid-summer to late summer, by using a core aerator to boost health and resilience in high-trafficked areas. You can overseed to fill bare spots and promote thicker yard growth, or follow up with light watering to help the soil plugs break down and settle back into the landscape.
8. Apply Mulch To Landscape Beds
Mulching adds more than aesthetic appeal to your landscape. It reduces erosion, retains moisture, and regulates the temperature of your soil, as well as prevents weed growth. Organic mulch is even better, as it breaks down over time and introduces valuable nutrients to your plants. Spread mulch around your trees, shrubs, and flower beds, layering 2-3 thick, but avoid piling it against plant stems and tree trunks to stave off rot and disease
Late Summer
9. Reseed Bare Or Thin Patches
Are you seeing thin or bare areas in your yard? Late summer is the most ideal time to reseed those empty patches! We advise you to choose the grass seed that matches your existing landscape and apply it evenly to the prepared soil.
Then, follow this simple process to guarantee amazing results: First, loosen the surface in the bare spots, mix in some compost, and spread the seed. Lightly rake the soil to ensure good seed-to-soil contact, then keep the newly seeded areas moist until the grass is established. Try to avoid heavy foot traffic in these spaces to give the new grass the best chance to grow.
10. Prepare For Fall
As summer comes to an end, it’s time to prepare your greenery for the upcoming cold seasons. That’s our last lawn maintenance tip for summer. Start reducing the frequency of mowing and watering, as you will soon get a dormant lawn. If possible, apply a late-summer fertilizer high in potassium to strengthen your landscape’s roots for the fall and, especially, winter.
Consistently remove fallen leaves and debris so they don’t smother the grass. Fall is also a good period to aerate again if your lawn sees heavy use, since it helps relieve compaction and improve air and nutrient flow to the roots.
Keep Your Investment Healthy With Our Omar Masonry!
Ensuring your landscape stays healthy and happy throughout the seasons requires effort and patience, we understand. But we’re sure that if you follow our 10 tips on how to take care of your lawn in summer, you’ll love the results they leave behind. Most of them won’t come between your summer activities if done at the right frequency every single time.
Or, you can let our professional team handle the responsibility for you. We are the lawn care company that’s available during all seasons of the year, and provides a detailed, tailored summer lawn care plan to ensure your investment is always in top-tier condition. Get in contact with us to find out what we can do to improve your yard today!
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