What we’re noticing:

  • Wildly hot and dry!
    • We’ve had no significant precipitation for a month and are 5.5″ below normal. That abundance we started with was from April snows on frozen ground and dormant turf. It helped the lakes and rivers but didn’t do anything for the grass.
    • Somehow it’s about to get hotter.
  • Misconceptions about lawn care, the heat, and the drought. See section below

What we’re doing:

  1. Our typical lawn care applications. See info about this in the “misconception” section below.
  2. We’re also doing the second round of mosquito treatments and landscape bed applications this week to get our properties in shape for the 4th!

What you can be doing:

  1. Mowing correctly
    • If you don’t have an irrigation system; your mower needs to be at the absolute highest setting possible!
    • If you do have irrigation; I’d personally still mow as high as possible. If you aren’t you need to significantly adjust your watering. THE SETTINGS THE INSTALLER SET FOR A NORMAL SUMMER ARE NOT CORRECT. See below
  2. Watering correctly
    • If you don’t have irrigation; you’ll need to run your hose sprinkler. Start on “hot spots” – tough soil, south facing hills, and 100% sun exposure. I wouldn’t let the grass go dormant this time of year. There’s too much “hot” summer left for it to die
    • If you do have a sprinkler system; it was designed to complement 0.8″ of rain per week average. We’re less than 0.1″. It needs to be adjusted. Quick tips:
      • Run no more than 20 min at a time or there will be saturation and runoff.
      • Your entire lawn probably doesn’t need more than 20 min. Run zones twice for the “hot spots” – tough soil, south facing hills, 100% sun.
        • Run a 20 min cycle, then run the whole system again for 20 min to efficiently achieve 40 min without saturation and runoff. This is called “cycle and soak”.
      • Don’t water in the evening! nothing after 5pm or you’ll have bad turf disease with our high overnight temps. Your system should be done by 7-8am.
      • If your “hot spots” are still yellowing; you need to be mowing higher; your irrigation is not able to keep up with your soil’s ability to retain moisture and your grasses’ ability to use it.
  3. See more in the “misconception” section below about mowing and watering.
  4. We also have a whole “Learn and Earn” about Site Analysis and identifying areas of your lawn that will need extra attention:

LAWN CARE MISCONCEPTIONS

Misconception #1:

“I don’t have a sprinkler system so there’s nothing I can do for a good lawn in this drought”

Truth: Correct mowing is 80% of what’s necessary for any good lawn right now. Only certain areas need watering attention. We’ve actually seen equal appearance/health issues from clients with irrigation and without. Improper watering with a sprinkler system can be as damaging as mowing incorrectly. The green lawn below is 100% sun and what’s visible hasn’t received a drop from a sprinkler all summer. It has a couple heat stressed areas but is overall in very good condition. Other spots of the lawn have been watered. The lawn has been mowed at 4″ since our first email warning went out. It has also received the ProLawns Platinum Program since 2017 (but bad timing – owners lawn, last job done with whatever’s left). The program keys for this durability are the Spring Soil Improvement which increase heat/drought resistance of existing grass and the fall Aeration and Overseeding which improves the root system, increases the moisture holding power of the soil and introduces more heat and drought tolerant grasses. The lawn next to it has been service by a large national company (might rhyme with BooMean) and has also been cut too short. The key take away is neither lawn in the image has received any sprinkler water all summer; watering religiously isn’t mandatory.

Misconception #2:

“The lawn shouldn’t be fertilized if it’s dry”

Truth: This is a true concept from 20+ years ago when fertilizer was applied as a liquid. This was the only way to do it back then and is still the way some companies do it (including a large national company that rhymes with BooMean). Applied as a liquid; fertilizer can dry to the grass blade and suck out moisture. This is bad in these conditions.

However; our fertilizer is a very high end granular. It sits on the soil surface and waits for two things: It needs (1) moisture to start to break down to be available to the roots and it needs (2) microbial activity [active lawn growth] to completely break down the polymer coating and complete the availability. This means that it’s availability is directly related to the water the lawn receives and the growth (life) that the lawn is experiencing. Without these things; the granular just sits and patiently waits. It is impossible for it to activate and effect the lawn without the water and growth conditions that make it harmless. We custom blend this fertilizer for our company and buy it by the semi-load. It is not available in any stores or to other contractors.

Misconception #3:

“The lawn shouldn’t get ANY application when it’s dry”

Truth: The pests would love this! The fertilizer portion is covered above. The other treatments being done right now are broadleaf weed control, crabgrass preventer and grub preventer. Google any one of these things to see how much they love taking advantage of heat and drought stressed turf. Weeds and grubs look at weakend turf as an opportunity to take over… Then ,when there are nutrients available, guess what’s going to use them and thrive; the weeds. Don’t let the weeds and grubs take over; stand up for your turfgrass!

Misconception #4:

“Having a sprinkler system means you don’t have to change anything in this heat and drought”

Truth: The unfortunate fact is 95%+ of all sprinkler systems we see make weak turf. They’re setup so the grass becomes dependent on the sprinkler system; a sprinkler system focus vs a turf health focus.

A sprinkler system can compensate for a minor deficit in rainfall without needing adjustment but we’re in a major deficit (~1/3 of normal rainfall so far… 66% less than we should have). Weak “sprinkler system” grass is what’s struggling most right now because it’s never had to grow healthy roots: until now! This is a major deficit. So if you have a sprinkler system; you absolutely need to increase watering times (do cycle and soak to avoid runoff) AND mow higher. Just like everyone else. A slide from our Watering “Learn and Earn” below shows what roots most irrigated lawns have vs what they should have if they weren’t “spoiled”. Don’t challenge your grass now! Build strong roots in normal conditions. But this is why you’re lawn is struggling.

Misconception #5:

“Every year is a drought according to ProLawns”

Truth: I promise that we’re much more fed up with this than you are. Drought is abnormal and it is abnormal that we’ve had as much drought over the last four years as we’ve had. The drought statuses that we report are according to the National Drought Monitor. We’re not making anything up or dramatizing anything unfortunately. This is another serious drought condition we’re in now. It’s not normal. Some irony, if you remember back, is that 2019 was the wettest year every recorded for the Twin Cities! See below for how our drought seasons compare. The red is the most serious drought and yellow is “just” abnormally dry. Looking back 10 or 20 years; it’s common to see drought, even a year or two in a row. But looking back on the last 8 years where we hardly had any drought for 5 years then some extreme drought for going into 4 years straight – this seems brutal.

Misconception #6:

“Looks like the ProLawns product applied a month ago burned the lawn”

Truth: Lawns are horribly dry and super hot right now. There is a tremendous amount of stressed turf due to this especially if not mowing or watering correctly. The unfortunate fact of life is that we have burned lawns with our product before (we’re human and use equipment made by humans). A product burn is geometric and follows exactly the path of our machine. Dry lawns or disease are “biologically” shaped and ebb and flow with shade and moisture conditions. Dry grass and a product burn are incredibly easy to differentiate.

Both images below were accusations of product burn. One was correct. One makes us wonder why we send these emails :(   We unfortunately get many of the latter.

Misconception #7:

“We got some rain so mowing and watering can return to normal”

Truth: Not even close! It is drizzling while I write this. The forecast is for 1/10 of an inch of rain – it’s not even wet under some trees. In a normal year we average 0.8″+ per week in the Twin Cities. We’ve gotten ~2.5″ this growing season so far putting us at about a 5.5″ deficit. Do not mow lower or reduce watering until that deficit is mostly made up. The grass getting wet does not mean it’s been revived and made healthy. It’s still in a state of stress and weak. I’ll let you know when we can resume normal mowing and watering 😊. Here’s what we’ve got as of 5:30 PM Sunday:

Misconception #8:

“ProLawns is an unapproachable business”

Truth: ProLawns was founded by Pete. Currently run by Matt. And Cora is the main reason they are both still working so hard. If you’ve got a question; please ask Matt (the one currently operating Cora’s show). Matt(at)ProLawnsMN.com. I wish it rained more but happy father’s day from us at the Father’s Day Twins Game 6/18/23!