Knowing how to care for your lawn in the heat of August can go a long way toward saving you money in lawn repair costs. With some regular maintenance scheduled at just the right time, your lawn can look amazing right up until it is covered in snow. Here are some tips.
Maintain Your Lawn
If your lawn is in good shape by the time August rolls around, it’s a lot easier to maintain. If your lawn is already in bad shape, it probably won’t be able to recover in August. Instead, fertilize it and prepare it to get through the winter. Focus on salvaging the healthy parts through August.
Aerate Your Lawn
It’s best to aerate before August because if August is a dry month, your lawn will have a hard time retaining moisture. By aerating your lawn, you help dew and your watering efforts drain into the ground. If August is a wet month, your lawn may become waterlogged. By aerating it you create a simple draining system to get the water off the top of your lawn and into the roots of your grass and shrubs.
Time Your Watering
There is some truth to the idea that you can burn your grass by watering it at the wrong time. The perfect time to water your grass is near sundown. Water magnifies the sun in a swimming pool, making you burn easier.
The same concept applies to your lawn, unless you are using a system that places the water directly into the dirt. The systems that water the dirt itself rather than the top of the grass work well any time. By keeping them at a slow drizzle you can offer plenty of water to your lawn without the worry of burning your grass.
Cut Grass to Match the Weather
If it is a dry season, let your grass grow a little longer than usual. Longer blades of grass can hold more dew to give your lawn a natural morning mist. Your grass does get nutrients through its roots, but it also goes through photosynthesis using the rays of the sun absorbed through the blades. Longer blades allow for more absorption.
During seasons when there is more rain than usual, keep your grass trimmed a bit shorter. You don’t need the extra dew in the mornings because the grass is getting plenty of moisture as it is. As an added benefit, shorter grass can help you significantly cut down on the insects that will disturb you as well as your lawn.
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Rodney Southern is a long time content writer specializing in a wide array of niches both online and in print. His work has been featured on sites such as Yahoo.com, The Sporting News and numerous others over an eleven plus year career. He also runs his own website on diabetes called Dashing Diabetes. He was the National Call for Content Winner for 2008. Southern resides in Greensboro, NC with his wife, Julie, and identical twin daughters, Valerie and Brooke.
