In the summer months, your lawn can experience the most wear and tear. Family parties, backyard games of catch, and heat in general can cause stress and damage to your lawn. That is why Weed Pro wants to make sure you are prepared with the tools and resources to spot and identify different types of stress on your lawn.

Stress Caused by Heat

As temperatures rise, your lawn may be at risk for drought stress. Drought stress can cause your lawn to wilt, brown, and even die. You can detect drought stress by locating brown patches around your lawn and gently pull on the grass. If it will not pull out easily and is firmly rooted, your lawn may be suffering due to drought. Remember, not all lawns turn brown, Kentucky Bluegrass has a grayish hue during drought, while other grasses become a darker hue. In addition, the grass blades themselves may also wilt. For more signs of drought stress, check out this article. To prevent further damage during drought, avoid heavy foot and vehicle traffic.

Stress Caused by Insects

With the warm weather also comes summer bugs. Insects can turn your luscious lawn to a brown mess. To see if you have root-destroying bugs, testing is done similar to when testing for drought stress. You will pull on the grass, if the grass slips from soil and few or no roots are present, white grubs may be causing your lawn troubles. To learn how to deal with lawn grubs in your lawn, refer to this guide. Other insects that attack lawns during summer are chinch bugs, army worms, sod webworms, and cranberry girdlers.

Stress Caused by Lawn Care Mistakes

Simply things that you may be doing could be causing damage to your lawn. Mistakes like fertilizing cool-season grasses during the summer, overwatering or cutting grass too short can weaken the turf soil and grass can become thin which exposes the soil to weed seeds and insects.

In addition, parking on the lawn or not allowing regular aeration can cause compacted soil which produces poorly rooted grass that cannot survive even when well-hydrated.

Leave it to the professionals!

This free guide will walk you through step-by-step everything you need to know when hiring a lawn care company. Learn what you need to look for by downloading your free guide below! If you're ready to compare prices for lawn care, make sure to visit our packages page to be able to compare apples to apples!