What we’re noticing:

  • We just experienced the 2nd Driest AND 3rd Hottest June on record; over the last 152 years back to 1871.
    • 1988 (35 years ago) had the only drier June with 0.22″ compared to our 0.93″.
    • Average June rainfall is 4.24″
    • Hotter Junes happened in 1933 and 2021 (hottest year ever recorded)
  • Lawns slowly returned to a state of “not horribly stressed” thanks to last weekend’s rain.
  • This is probably the extent of the recovery unless we get some of the 4th of July rain forecast. The heat we’re supposed to get is going to be brutal on the lawns especially without any rain.
  • We’re still very much in a drought; check out “all” that 1.5″+ of rain did for us…
    • Normalizing to growing season moisture is alarming. Subtract 4″ which brings us down to almost 7″ short so far this year. We essentially got the equivalent of one normal week of rain in the last two months.

What we’re doing:

  1. We wrapped up our mosquito and landscape bed maintenance jobs for a few weeks and will focus on lawn care application; weed control and fertilizer for green and weed free lawns.
  2. It may seem like it’s a ways away but we’ve begun our planning stages for Fall seeding. The way the summer is going we’re thinking there will be high demand for a more heat and drought resistant lawn that we can provide with Core Aeration, Overseeding and Soil Improvement.

What you can be doing:

  1. Continue mowing as absolutely high as possible – the highest setting your mower has.
    • This is if you even need to mow
    • The one rain we got does not change this rule!
  2. If you want your yellow dormant areas to completely green up and stay green then you need to water those. Then keep watering. The rain we got can be a jump start to recovery but won’t be the recovery.
    • Again; we’re way too early in the season to let your lawn go dormant; July and August are typically the “hot dry months”. If we continue the trend that we have been, a dormant lawn will soon be a dead lawn.
    • Water 0.25″ at a time
        • 20 min per zone on a sprinkler system – each hose sprinkler is different so measure with cups to determine how long to run them
      • Wait an hour between watering that 0.25″ so it soaks in. You can do 1″ in a day just let it soak between waterings so the soil doesn’t saturate and the water run off. Sprinkler systems running multiple 20 min in a row accomplishes this.
      • Yellow areas will need 1.5″ per week to green up
      • Green grass needs 1″ per week to stay healthy
      • Any water is better than no water but as close as you can follow the timing below: