How Can I Shield My Grass from Summer Lawn Problems?

A beautiful lawn is a pride for you. You might even feel like you are doing the right thing and still seeing your grass turn brown despite all of the watering and other care that takes place in every lawn.

That can get really annoying. Because, let’s face it… nobody likes to see brown patches of grass popping up around their lawn.

Not only does your lawn might have looked fantastic in the spring, it very well may already be on a slow decline as summer gets into full swing.

This is not unusual as there are a lot of reasons for summer lawn stress. Knowing what problems, how a number of those that you should have the ability to prevent with the right summer lawn maintenance program could be certainly will help save your own grass.

Summer is a very demanding month for your lawn. Here are 11 of the most common reasons why your grass might be brown in the summer.

Lawn Diseases to Watch Out For

If your lawn is turning brown even when you are watering it, disease might be the issue as a result of living microorganisms. These can become bacteria, fungi, and even short nematodes.

The vast majority of summer lawn diseases are the result of a fungal infection. There are numerous forms of fungal diseases out there, and your lawn might be the next target. A few of the most common, include:

Brown Patch

Brown grass patches are likely due to brown patch — a moisture-loving fungus (Rhizoctonia Solani) that attacks lawns. Brown patch often starts very small, but can enlarge in just a few days.

Dollar Spot

Dollar spot is so named because the greenish/yellow- or straw-colored lesions are one to two inches in diameter, coin-shaped and usually measure approximately that size of a silver dollar.

The lesion is usually surrounded by brown borders. Small areas of the grass may die to start, and then become 2-4 inches across (or even larger) and coalesce into bigger dead spots on the lawn.

Fusarium Patch

It is typically seen during long, hot and dry periods in the summer. They show up as small circles of gray/green, that can be an inch wide to over a foot in diameter.

Pythium Blight

In the beginning this disease cause tiny little biscuit shape spots from half an inch to 4 inches in diameter.

The first symptoms are also water-soaked leaves and stems. After showing symptoms the turf areas become matted. At a high humidity, it becomes very susceptible to spread making the rate in which it can get around very fast.

Red Thread

This disease is a fungal infection that causes reddish-pink thread-like and webby fungal structures to appear in spots on the lawn. One of the most common reasons why lawns can suffer at the tail end of spring, when grass is nitrogen starved and shooting skyward.

What to Do About Lawn Disease

All of our disease treatments begin with an inspection by a professional to determine the best course of action.

For more serious cases, you may need to apply fungicides. Ultimate, but removing thatch or seeding can sometimes be all that is needed. A professional Is good to give you Light on the options to choose from and which are best suitable.

Sometimes, it may vary from one lawn to another. From the specific conditions on your site to how much money you’ve got – it all matters.

Lawn Insects to Watch Out For

Brown Grass in your lawn / garden in summer also can be due to a Pest problem. There are, in fact, a number of different pests that tend to cause summer lawn stress. Here are some of the more popular ones:

Grubs

The grubs — the larval stage of the Japanese Beetle and many other beetle species — live beneath the surface of your lawn feeding on its roots. A grub infestation can be very ugly.

But now, preventive grub control applied once a year can help provide season-long protection. If you already have a grub issue, then you will need to use a product that provides curative treatment. In the event of a worst-case scenario where considerable harm is already done, it would have to be battled out with seeding on the bare patches.

Chinch Bugs

It is important to note that chinch bug is a small pest, and lies just above the surface in the layer of your lawn.

Grub worms are larvae of beetles and they feed on the blades and crown (part that attaches to the root) of your grass, in high population levels it can lead to destroying large patches of your lawn.

This is prime time chinch bug damage, as they are most active and causing damage during the hottest part of the summer.

Reducing thatch build-up and aerating the lawn to de-compact soil are just a few ways that you can effectively rid these pests of their favorite living environment. But if you are like me and have an infestation already, your lawn might need the help of a professional product to eliminate chinch bugs.

Sod Webworms

Sod webworms are also known as “lawn moths,” and these drab-colored moths often measure about ¾ inch long. But it is the larvae of the adult months that actually eat away at the lawn.

During the day, these lawn pests are hidden in some screened slow. They feed most of the time at night. Damage is usually seen as a baseball-size patch of brown grass across the yard. The browning eventually becomes an expansive, brown dead patch. July and the worst damage often comes in August.

If you have a major sod webworm problem, then you may need the assistance of a control material used to suppress larval populations while feeding. In the future, preventative treatment each year around their feeding time may stop them from reoccurring.

Summer Lawn Drought Stress

Extreme heat and drought can lead to browning summer lawns When summer brings high heat and limited water, it weakens grass until it shrivels under the stress, turning yellow-to-brown to outright death.

A telltale sign to evaluate how badly your brown grass is suffering during a drought, for instance, is what an evolutionary biologist would call the “bounce back” of grass blades when they are trod upon.

If you leave your footprints all over the lawn after walking through it, then it’s probably still drought stressed. Just like how you leave tracks from your mower in the lawn and they never disappear.

You could also try a quick and easy test using a sharp pointed object like a stake or screwdriver to see how dry your soil really is.

Drive the stake or screwdriver into both a brown and a green patch and see which site is easiest to pass through. Can the spike push down into the green lawn but not into the brown areas of dry soil, which suggests a drought-stressed lawn.

The best way to keep lawns green (most of the time) is by watering the lawn deeply in the mornings at 2 to 3 times per week so that it gets about 2 inches of water per week.

Proper Summer Lawn Fertilization

The fertility of the soil has a massive impact on how well your lawn is able to function. Lawns are notorious for gobbling up nutrients, and it won’t be long before your soil becomes deficient in all of the necessary food sources.

While your lawn may not require a lot of fertilization to look okay, it needs at least four or five fertilizer treatments annually to replace the nutrients that have been depleted if you want it to thrive.

Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium called the “primary nutrients” are delivered to your lawn via fertilizer.

However, the timing is key. A way to prevent this is to avoid fertilizing in mid-summer, though early and late summer are alright.

The application of summer lawn fertilizer on the hottest of summer days when the temperatures are skyrocketing most lawn diseases, just makes that problem much worse.

At R & S Landscaping, we fertilize in early summer and run that program thru mid-July then no more fertilization start until the first of September.

Improper Mowing Practices

You might not even realize it but, mowing your lawn is probably the reason you have a brown lawn within the summer.

First, mowing while the grass is under drought stress won’t help and can actually hurt more than it helps because the plant cannot recover quickly from your assault on them. If you already have a drought-stressed lawn, consider not mowing.

It is also important to mow at the correct height. You want to mow so it only takes off a third of the blade at a time and do this 1-2 times per week.

You might also cause your summer lawn to undergo a lot of unnecessary stress if you mow too short (under 3 ½”). Try to keep up a regular mowing schedule, too, because regularly cut grass will have the strength it needs to fend off excess heat.

Recommendations for Your Summer Lawn Care Schedule

The right preventative measures will help to preserve your lawn even as the weather starts warming up. Some of the things that you can do include avoiding the common mistakes leading to lawn stresses we have already listed.