Summer Lawn Care Tips

Whether the topic is warm season grasses or cool season grasses, North American residents think green lawns during the summer.

No doubt culture accounts for some North American green summer lawn fervor. At the same time, climactic conditions across much of the continent provide an optimal green summer lawn growth environment.

Given the range of North American summer weather patterns, no brief summer lawn care tips article could possibly provide a one size fits all green summer lawn program.

Individual factors such as soil conditions and previous yard care practices influence the health of any single lawn. Newly sodded lawns require different maintenance routines than older established lawns.

From another perspective, traditional summer lawn care activities might vary between areas receiving adequate summer rainfall and areas receiving little if any summer rainfall.

Due to the natural growth cycle of the Bermuda grass varieties common to southern lawns, summer generally marks the height of traditional southern warm season lawn care activity. By extension, southern homeowners traditionally associate the summer lawn care season with mowing and watering tasks.

Because warm season grasses germinate and grow in the southern heat, early summer represents an ideal time for patching, reseeding and thickening warm season lawns. Again, depending on the specific lawn needs, the early summer reseeding project could be accompanied by a lawn fertilization project.

An extra busy summer of warm season grass management would also include a weed and pest management strategy. Bare spots or brown patches on otherwise green lawns often indicates some type of pest problem.

Northern perspectives on summer lawn care slightly differ from southern perspectives. Summer can mean the dormant season for many cool season lawns in the north, especially those known for their summer dry seasons.

While some northern homeowners choose to allow their lawn to go dormant during the summer, others prefer the summer green lawn look, and choose to invest time attending to mowing and watering tasks.

Summer sun and heat typically translates into the average lawn needing approximately one inch of water per week to encourage healthy root development. Watering in the early morning helps slow down evaporation.

Mowing techniques, such as setting the blades at the three or four inch level, promote a green summer lawn.

Opting for a summer dormant grass regime provides homeowners a perfect time for lawn care maintenance activities such as trimming around the edges of foot paths and buildings, along with weed management.

Precaution is commonly advised for dormant grass maintenance tasks such as aeration, dethatching and edging because of the naturally weakened state of dormant grass. Further weakening dormant summer grass with extended maintenance, potentially extends the grass dormancy period into fall, because of the lawn's new need for repair time.

In many instances of healthy lawn growth, however, perennial lawn grasses consistently overgrow their specified boundaries, encroaching on cobblestone and concrete walkways, or clumping against wood or metal fencing.

Using summer as a lawn edging season to halt the aggressive growing nature of some lawn area will not harm the integrity of the entire lawn. Rather, it might be the case where the maintenance actually deters further aggressive grass growth during the fall.

Weed management can actually become easier during the summer in instances where homeowners opt for a brown, dormant lawn rather than a green lawn.

Traditionally weed development increases as competition with the grass for food and water decreases during the grass dormant period.

Allowing yard weeds a week to sprout following the lawn going dormant provides an easy way to identify a lawn's most significant weedy spots. Taking a morning to saturate the weedy spots with water will loosen the soil sufficiently to make removing most of the weeds by the roots an easy task.

© 2006-2012 Patricia A. Michaels