With the passing of Memorial Day and the welcoming of the Summer Solstice, so starts the Dog Days of Summer. For many of us, Summertime encapsulates so many wonderful memories. The smell of a summer rain. The family BBQ in the backyard. The laughing of children splashing in the pool. But for some, Summer is also synonymous with the agonizing chore, week after week, to mow, water, and maintain the little patch of land we call home.
Originating back to the 1700s by the English and French aristocracy, the American lawn spans across city parks, sports complexes, and suburbia from sea to shining sea. Turf grass is the largest single “crop” in the United States, and covers approximately 63,000 square miles, which about the size of Texas. Loved by HOAs across the country, turf grass is as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.
With this love of the lawn, so comes the time and money to maintain this patch of green that surrounds our home. Mowing, edging, trimming, removing debris, fertilizing, and killing weeds can take hours of time every week to complete. And if one can afford a lawn maintenance company, all of us share the same shock when the water bill comes due. More water is “consumed” by our landscapes in the four-month period from May to August than the typical residence uses for interior water consumption over the entire year. In Texas, the amount of water that single-family households use to water their landscapes could fill 590,000 football fields, each with one foot of water.
Love it or hate it, lawn maintenance is part of home ownership. To make this “chore” a manageable pleasure, here are a few tips for mowing, fertilizing, weed control, and watering to encourage a healthy lawn in your home.
Mowing:
- A sharpened blade will cut a clean edge into the grass blade so that the top of the grass looks green and level. If the blade is dull or chipped, the mower blade will tear the grass which leaves the lawn with a spottled brown pattern on top of the leaves.
- To encourage optimal growth, remove no more than 1/3 of the grass blade height with each mowing to avoid scalping the lawn. Excessive removal of leaf tissue through scalping can be detrimental to turfgrass health, as it limits the plant’s ability to produce adequate energy to sustain growth.
- Mowing at the optimal height for your turf type is essential to maintaining a healthy and vigorous lawn. Ideally, one should lean toward the higher of the recommended mowing heights in the table below. A taller lawn encourages vigorous growth which results in a deeper and more robust root permeation. Deeper roots promote a greater resistance to the hot, dry drought conditions that will overtake us in July and August.
| Grass Type | Recommended Mowing Height |
| Bermuda (Common) | 1 ½” to 3” |
| Bermuda (Hybrid) | 1” to 2 ½” |
| St. Augustine | 2 ½” to 4” |
| Buffalo Grass | 2” to unmowed |
| Centipede Grass | 1 ½” to 2” |
| Zoysia Grass (Course) | 1” to 2 ½” |
| Zoysia Grass (Fine) | 1” to 2” |
Fertilizer:
- In the “Black Gumbo” soils of the Blackland Prairie of Rockwall County, the soils are high in Phosphorus content and very low in Nitrogen. Excessive phosphorus can cause problems of toxicity which can build up. Because of this build up, a high nitrogen fertilizer is usually all that is necessary to supplement your turf throughout the growing season.
For example, 29-0-0 as shown on a fertilizer label.
Of course, to be absolutely sure of the nutrient breakdown in your yard, you can conduct a low-cost soil test from Texas A&M. This website provides a terrific set of instructions on how to collect a soil sample and send it to the Texas A&M Laboratory for an analysis.
- A season-long fertilization program involves adding a slow-release fertilizer every two months starting in April and continuing this feeding schedule until early October. This would be the standard recommendation for all grass types; HOWEVER, with the abundance of rain throughout this Spring, it is advised to avoid fertilizing St. Augustine or Zoysia grass until early September. With the high moisture content in the soil and air right now, conditions are ripe for grey leaf spot fungus which would be encouraged by adding more Nitrogen into the soil.
Weed Control:
As we move into June, whatever weed seeds are destined to germinate have already taken hold in your soil. Many scholars will tell us that a good lawn maintenance program following the mowing, fertilizing, and watering recommendations in this article will encourage a rich, healthy lawn that will shade and choke out the weeds. For those of us that aren’t scholars, what should we do?
- Broadleaf weeds: These are the easiest to kill. A simple broadleaf weed spray (containing 2,4-D) will do. Formulas also exist to spray on crab grass. But do take note: 1) Follow the instructions on the label, 2) spray when winds are low to avoid spraying on desired foliage, 3) if you have a St. Augustine lawn, use the weed control designed for St. Augustine turf.
- Grassy perennial weeds (dallisgrass, Johnson Grass): Unfortunately, there is no post-emergent herbicide that you can apply to kill annual grasses once they are growing that will not also damage your permanent turfgrass. This leaves us with only two options,
1. manual extraction,
2. applying a glyphosate-ONLY herbicide (Round Up).A glyphosate herbicide will most certainly kill existing vegetation without contaminating the soil. It will leave a dead spot in the yard for a short period.***Good news is that your turf will rebound in no time.
***Here’s a trick to “shrink” those unsightly dead circles:
Use a spray blocker.
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- Find a wide-mouthed bottle such as a juice jug or liquid laundry bottle.
- Cut out the bottom of the container.
- Remove the cap and hold the mouth of the container closely over the center of the weed.
- Generously spray the herbicide through the open hole.
Watering:
Believe it or not, watering your lawn too frequently does more harm to the long-term health of the grass than watering only twice a week. Sure, the lawn will be green and beautiful; but, the water bill will be just as impressive! As the heat increases in July and August, so will the thirst of a lawn when the roots are short and weak from overwatering. Like an athlete that pushes his body to reach further extremes, so will the root system of turf grass reach deeper and deeper into the soil to reach moisture between waterings. When the 100° days beat down upon the soil, a healthy lawn will continue to thrive.
This strategy beacons a few questions:
- “Water the lawn only two days a week? That doesn’t sound like a lot?”
As stated above, the goal is to train our lawn athlete to run the sunny marathon. A long, deep watering program is key to lawn survival. In total, the amount of water needed to sustain a healthy lawn is no more than one inch of water per week. This equates to two, ½ inch watering cycles spaced every three or four days. - “How do I know when I have watered ½ an inch?”
Technology today has made this a lot easier. Smart irrigation controllers are able to measure the output of a modern automated sprinkler system. But if you don’t own a smart system, there is still a way to measure the output of your system through the “catch can test.”
- Using inexpensive rain gauges or used tuna or cat food cans, set five to six open-top cans randomly on the lawn.
- Turn the sprinkler on for 30 minutes.
- Measure the depth of water caught in each can.
- Calculate the average depth of water from all of the cans.For example, you have used five cans in your yard. The amount of water found in the cans was as follows: 0.5 inch, 0.4 inch, 0.6 inch, 0.4 inch, and 0.6 inch. Add the depths together and then divide by the number of cans you used (five in this case). 0.5 inch + 0.4 inch + 0.6 inch + 0.4 inch + 0.6 inch = 2.5 inches, 5 cans = 0.5 inch of water in 30 minutes.
- From the amount of water that was applied in the 30-minute cycle, one can then determine how long the sprinkler must run to put out 1/2 inch of water.In this example, the system put out ½ inch of water in 30 minutes. Therefore, the watering schedule will run for 30 minutes every three to four days. If it rains ½ an inch during this period, then cancel one day of watering. This will save both water and money.
- “What time of day is best to run my sprinklers?”
Early morning is the best time to water. Wind and temperatures are usually the lowest of the day, and water pressure is generally good. Additionally, many municipalities do not allow watering between 10am and 6pm in the summer months. This is because most of the water cast during this time is lost to evaporation. And watering late in the evening or at night causes leaves to remain wet for an extended period of time, which increases the chance for disease.