How to Adjust Your Lawn Care in Extreme Heat

We’ve reached summer’s peak. There are many days of extreme heat and much fewer with rain than what we saw in the spring. This May was the driest in 29 years and you need to know the possible damage that it can do to your lawn.

Everybody’s first inclination when extreme heat arrives is to water their lawn more often, but that is rarely the solution. This can often lead to watering your lawn too much and negatively affecting its ability to have a strong solid base on which to grow. However, there are ways to allow your lawn to better retain moisture while keeping the amount of water you give your lawn the same.

The biggest impact the heat will have is a slowed growth. The grass blades on your lawn will grow much slower, so it’s important to make sure that they’re healthy and strong enough to withstand the heat.

The reason this is important to know, is because the most important adjustment you need to make to your lawn in extreme heat is how you mow it. You want to significantly raise the blade on your mower for the summer, which also means you shouldn’t be cutting it too short leading up to the summer, because the growth will soon slow.

Mowing your lawn at a higher level will achieve a couple of benefits for your lawn in extreme heat:

  • Longer blade leafs can retain more water and nutrients, so as to better withstand the heat.
  • Longer blade leafs also shade the soil beneath them, reducing the drying effect of the sun baring down on it.
  • Allows you to keep a consistent mowing schedule at a healthy level.

Consistency with your lawn is important too. Not only aesthetically, but cutting off big chucks of your lawn’s length is unhealthy for it, so even with the raised blade, it’s important to do things gradually, don’t let it grow out for too long for trimming a little off the top.

Other than that, it’s important to adjust the fertilizers you use, keep watering consistently and allow grass clippings to remain on your lawn to give back some nutrients through thatch. Just don’t forget to dethatch your lawn when the buildup gets too thick.

Click here to sign up for a program with Hometurf which will help prepare your lawn for all the dangers of extreme heat.