Northeast Ohio got a taste of the heat this past week! Although this can be exciting for us, it’s not fun for our lawns. Extreme heat is not healthy for any lawn and if paired with little to no rain, these conditions can cause a lot of strain on your lawn. Let’s take a more detailed look into heat stress on lawns and what you can do to prevent it.

What’s the Danger?

Heat stress weakens the health of your lawn and makes it vulnerable to things such as disease, weed infestation, and lawn-damaging insects.

Warning Signs

One of the most common warning signs of heat stress in your lawn is compacted soil. When the soil is dry and deprived of water, it shrinks. The best way to see if your soil is compacted is to look at where your lawn meets the sidewalk or any cement. If there is a gap between the edge of your lawn and the cement, then your lawn is most likely suffering from heat stress. Read about other warning signs here.

Maintenance

There are various things that you can be doing to help prevent your lawn from being strained by the heat:

• Mowing: Don’t mow your lawn too short. If the blades are cut too short, then it becomes more difficult for the plant to reproduce energy to grow. Also make sure that your mower blades are sharp, because dull blades can do more damage than good.

• Watering: Make sure you aren’t overwatering your lawn! Overwatering your lawn can deprive the roots of oxygen and also make your lawn vulnerable to diseases. A good practice to get into is to water “deeply and infrequently.” It’s better to water well once or twice than water minimally multiple times.

• Fertilizing: You would think that keeping your lawn fertilized during the summer is smart, but it actually is best to keep fertilization to a minimum. During the summer months lawns are consuming more energy than they produce, and fertilization just increases grass growth which takes up even more energy.

Read more about lawn maintenance during extreme heat here!

Want to know more about how to effectively take care of your lawn during the hot summer months? Download our FREE DIY Guide today! Just click below to get your copy.