Here’s another email, I received recently,
Hey Rodney,
We are having a discussion around here as to best practices with watering and drought stressed lawn.
We have customers who have sprinkler systems and have been watering their usual 3 day per week and their lawns are still going dormant with this heat. They are calling and saying “I give up, I’m just going to stop watering all together” We have others who just keep watering 3 days per week even if the lawn is dormant.
What is the best practices to tell these people and give them the best chance of having their lawn come back?
My recommendation is that if you are going to let the lawn go dormant (or if it already has) then stop watering all together. But you should soak the lawn every 2 weeks to keep the crowns from drying out. If you keep on watering even if the the lawn is dormant then you are only watering weeds (nutsedge!!!)
I’ve told them to raise their mower weeks ago, but should they mow in this heat?
Thank you,
Mr. Lawn Care Operator (I changed the name)
Dear Mr. Lawn Care Operator
I think your recommendation to stop watering is correct, with the assumption that the lawn was healthy when it entered dormancy. (But my turf areas are not completely dormant and I’m not throwing in the towel yet…more on that below). Primarily I’m talking about healthy from watering correctly before the lawn slipped into dormancy. If they were watering too frequently and preventing deep roots, shutting off the water ‘cold-turkey’ could cause some damage and death to the lawn. This is what happened to many lawns last year, short-short roots from frequent rains, then rapid high heat and drought. The short root system could not supply enough water for growth and cooling to allow the plants to enter dormancy gracefully, so many turf plants died.
So, assuming they were watering properly, like you recommended, it should be ok to stop watering. To be on the safe side, you could ‘ween’ the grass off the irrigation water. Stop the 3 day schedule. Wait 7 days and the irrigate again, and then go to a two week schedule, assuming we don’t get any decent rains.
You are correct about irrigating the weeds, it is probably too hot to try and bring a lawn out of dormancy…..assuming the whole turf area or a major percentage of the turf area has already turned brown and is sleeping till the cooler weather arrives. But in my yard and my turf areas at the center, the whole area is not brown. The whole area is stressed, but there is still a lot of green mixed in there. So I’m not giving up yet. I’m still irrigating to prevent the rest of it from going dormant. So yes, irrigating a completely dormant yard may only benefit the weeds, if the yard is not completely dormant. Some of your customers may want to continue to follow good irrigation scheduling and try to keep what they have left green.
Good, I’m glad you advised them to raise their mowers when it started getting hot in June….probably as high as their personal mower can go, 3.75 inches or so. I’d also recommend to your customers to hold off on mowing for a while. It is so hot. It is dangerous for their health and mowing in this weather will quickly push a struggling lawn into dormancy. It is so hot, the grass blades are not elongating much, so the lawn can go longer between mowings. So try to hold off mowing till it cools down, (at least into the lower 90s instead of these 99-100s.) And I’m primarily talking about cool season grasses here. Warm season grasses can benefit from raising the mower a little, but most Bermuda, Zoysia, Buffalograss lawns do better near the 2inch mark than the 4 inch mark. Warm season grasses will stress out from mowing when it is this hot, too, but not quite as severe as cool season grasses.
Good Luck
Rodney
