Now’s the time to Revive® your lawn.
Heat stress is a common challenge for lawns this time of the season. The prolonged high temperatures can aggravate existing conditions such as compacted clay soil, as well as poor watering, fertilizing and mowing practices. This will cause the lawn to look thin, weak, or have many dead patches throughout. Underlying all of this is the fact that most of our turf grasses are cool-season grasses, adapted to the cooler weather of spring and fall. During the heat of the summer, they tend to stop growing and sometimes will go dormant.
To help your lawn recover, it’s important to follow the best practices for mowing and watering, combined with Revive®, Humate and an iron-based fertilizer.
Some summer lawn problems come about due to poor mowing and watering practices. At this point in the season, your mower should be raised to its highest setting, and you should be mowing twice a week. Mowing higher and more frequently will reduce moisture loss and minimize heat damage.
Watering correctly is important too. Watering your grass every day encourages shallow root systems. When the weather turns hot and dry, these short, shallow roots can’t supply enough water, and your grass begins to dry up and die. A better approach would be to water deeper and less frequently. This will encourage grass roots to grow longer, reducing the heat stress effects on your lawn.
If you start to experience runoff while you’re watering, turn the water off and let it soak in before you resume watering. This soak and cycle method will help reduce waste from runoff and the water at the root system, where it's needed.
In addition to applying good watering and mowing methods, it’s important to improve the soil your lawn is growing in.
The keys to building better soil in existing lawns include spring and fall aeration, regular applications of organic material and using granular Revive® three times a year. Revive® is a local product designed to improve soil structure which encourages strong root development and improved water and nutrient uptake.
By using Revive® the water you put on your lawn moves down to the roots more effectively and there’s less loss due to evaporation and run off.
In conjunction with Revive® we recommend you include humate in your lawn maintenance schedule. Humate is a highly concentrated soil conditioner derived from the remains of decomposed organic plant materials. Feeding your lawn humate will make your soil healthier, increase microbial activity and enhance nutrient uptake. Humate is available in granular form in Natural Guard HuMic. You apply it using a fertilizer spreader.
Revive and HuMic are chelating agents. Chelating agents increase nutrient availability to plants. This means more of the fertilizer you put on your lawn goes to feed the grass.
Now’s the time to add ferti-lome Lawn Food Plus Iron. This product contains Nitrogen, Potash and Chelated Iron, and is designed to green up your lawn and keep it green long term. That's because ferti-lome Lawn Food Plus Iron contains chelated iron. It's important to use chelated iron in our heavy clay, high pH soils because your grass can absorb it more effectively than non-chelated iron. This is true any time you're adding iron to your lawn, trees and shrubs. Always look for products which contain chelated iron.
Revive® and HuMic plus best practices mowing and watering will help ensure a healthy lawn through the rest of the season.
